|
INTERNET / EMAIL - Paradise Valley Campground
High speed DSL Internet access is available in Paradise Valley
now from Windstream. This service requires that you have a land line
and a one year DSL service contract. The rate in
December 2005 was $35.00 and $40.00 per month for
DSL service, depending on the speed selected.
Windstream telephone land lines start about $25.00 per month
with out long distance.
Windstream and Earthlink offer
dial up access which of course requires a land
line. My experience with dial up in the Cleveland
area has not been good, with not infrequent
disconnects and very slow service during the
normal busy traffic times. I suspect that the
service provider does not matter as far as these
difficulties are concerned since "drops"
and the slow service are from the local phone service
connection to the Internet, not the "service
provider" of record.
For seasonal use owners at Paradise Valley any
above listed Internet access becomes relatively
expensive since:
- vacation charges
for no service on your land line is 50% plus high activate fees
- dial up service dates and phone service dates can
differ forcing an extra month of dial up
- DSL requires a 12 month contract and
50% vacation fees for no service
- regular dial up rates (not promotion) are high at
around $20 per month
For the 2006 season Sherry Ivie with Keller
Williams has equipped the sales office area with
high speed WIFI capability. You may visit with
your laptop and enjoy cost free access! Thanks
Sherry!
The possibility exists for all of Paradise Valley
Campground to be provided High Speed Internet
access via cable modem, like the well known Road
Runner service. To accomplish this major
modifications would be required in the private
cable system, taps, if any, removed and a T1 or
multiple DSL lines brought to the head end
building in the park. Since this was written
changes at the head end are obvious satellite
antennas for TV reception. This is probably not
financially feasible at this time. To further
explore this possibility a detail survey of owners
would be required to determine just how many
owners would have a sincere interest in this
service and what they might be willing to pay
monthly. A survey of this type would be a good
idea for the 2007 season as a part of the long
term planning effort underway.
Some in Paradise Valley use the Internet
services offered by their cellular provider.
Accessing Email in this manner helps keep in touch
but this method is rather slow and expensive for
all but simple text transfer or a quick look here
or there on the web. Cellular providers do
continue to increase the bandwidth capability of
their services and cell phone capability improves,
but our remote and thinly populated (by urban
standards) service area will be the last in the
network to receive the latest of such such
capability. Our difficult terrain and distance
hurts reception. Excellent signal strength is
required for error free high speed data reception
which negatively impacts our cellular situation.
Cellular operators full of wild promises when
these networks were introduced, quickly settled
upon the "urban salesperson with laptop" as their
real market for this service and promptly
increased prices accordingly. Most cell users are billed on a
"minutes" basis for their Internet
access. This is very slowly changing. Witness TV
commercials touting fast cell access.
Satellite Internet is out of
reach for most RVers on two counts. The necessary
equipment is bulky and heavy, and every aspect of
this service is quite expensive.
I invite comments from owners sharing other
solutions, bargains, or ways you have devised to
gain access to the Internet.
If any Paradise Valley Campground owner would
like to receive Email using this web site URL
(address) I will be pleased to arrange a
"name" that would provide a unique
mailing address for that individual. Example:
name@pvc4u.net
. Normally Email like this would be forwarded to
your mail client where you maintain your primary
Internet account, like Juno, AOL, etc. Such an
address would be FREE for Paradise Valley
Campground owners. This might be of special
interest if your name is John, for example,
because every Email provider long ago had every
variation of John you might imagine. Here there is
none of that huge volume restriction and your mail
address can be kept short, simple and easy to
remember.
If you would like to have a web based mail
account with an address as above, but rather than
a forward one that you could access from any
library computer, your computer or a friends
computer, get in touch. There would be some dollar
or two cost involved, and storage limitations just
like hotmail or msn. This might be just the thing
for those of you without computer but in need of
an Email address to check once in awhile. Stamps
are going up again. Join the Internet
revolution.. It's time if you haven't
yet! This is an easy beginning.....
First December 2005, Update September 2006
|
|
| |
|
