Now to the data related part of this ramble. One of the interesting things in moving is that we have to get a number of core services setup at the new house. We're on well, septic, and propane, so electricity is the only real utility to move and that's already on. We'll just switch the name on the account. The telco thing, however is a challenge.
Phone is most everywhere, even in rural Elbert County, CO, where we are going. We're at the back of a neighborhood, but we're 2 miles off the main road and on 35 acres. My driveway alone is 1000 ft, so distance limitations come into play. We called Comcast, who we use now, and they laughed. They don't even consider running wires to ots over 5 acres because it's not economical. We knew the first few houses in the neighborhood had DSL, but being 2 miles in, that's 10,000 more feet on what used to be a 18,000ft or so limitation, so we figured today we'd be calling the wireless guys. We had wireless in the current house before cable came through and it worked well.
So when my wife came down to the kitchen and said she was ordering DSL, I was amazed. I annoyed her by asking her to find out what kind of DSL it was, and after a couple hand slaps I stopped. Somehow they must have the length extended or the CO is in my neighborhood somewhere. I guess it could be slightly South and behind the neighborhood as the local "town" is there. All 4 buildings of it.
One other interesting thing was that Qwest had our zip code as different than the mailing one we'd gotten from the realtor. Apparently they use the 911 database, which can have different zip codes for responses. That alone is interesting. How does the data get reconciled between the post office and the emergency response teams?
And why are they different?
Steve Jones
Woah: 35 acres! You could build a soccer pitch and live my dream for me
Good luck to you. I moved recently here in the UK and from experience would say:
Don't be so optomistic about 2-3 days as 3 weeks sorting out the basics is far more realistic!
Get everything packed sooner rather than later - you run out of time and boxes!
Get a box of the vital items and know where it is (keep it in a car) - kettle, tea, coffee, mugs (lots), plenty of chocolate biscuits and cutlery (took us 4 weeks to find the knives and forks!)
Get the removers to re-check the estimate just before the move - ours vastly underestimated and we ended up hiring a trailer to shift the rest ourselves!
Buy in extra supplies of packing tape - it always runs out or gets lost.
AND especially don't believe the phone company when they say they can supply the service. BT told us we could have 2meg broadband in three days after the move. Eventually over a month and various engineers later we got a 1meg service which still drops out frequently. And we're only about 3-4 miles from the exchange!
Good Luck!!
One of the biggest problems that I face in a rural area is the telephone company. When they first installed our line, they piggybacked on the line that ran to the original farmhouse on the property. Who knows how old that line was, 30, 40 , 50 years old?
When we first moved in, they had the line on top of the ground until the subcontractor could bury, tentatively to occur within 4 weeks. Fourteen weeks later when the county maintenance department mowed the ditch, they shredded the line. Needless to say it was buried the next day.
Anytime it rained, or mice needed a place to build a home, we were affected. Most often it appeared in our dial-up internet access first, with poor connection speeds.
Ten years later and more than a dozen repair calls, they have finally replaced the original line with a brand new one. I guess that they finally decided that the cost of the new one was cheaper than sending out service people all of the time.
I would gladly rid myself of the telco, but I am dependent on them for phone service. I seem to live in dead spot within the cell coverage. If I need to place a call on my cell phone, usually I can stand out on my deck to make the call.
Regards,
Scott
One place I used to live shared a zip code from a nearby large town that was actually in a separate county. As far as emergency services, however we had no connection at all to that town.
Interestingly the county offices hadn't figured it out either. I once got a jury summons from the other county.
