Stephanie in Madison Today, Welcoming WiMAX

Speaking of connections, Sioux Valley Energy is working toward the day where our Internet connections will be all magic. Congresswoman Stephanie Herseth Sandlin comes to Madison to inaugurate Sioux Valley Energy's new WiMAX service. She'll say a few words in praise of rural broadband at a community picnic at Library Park (complimentary picnic lunch—that says "Free Food!"—starts at noon; program starts at 12:15.)

WiMAX—Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access—is clearly one of those globalist plots (the guys in black helicopters need Internet, too). It also means more signal in more places—cool!

Sioux Valley has put up its WiMAX beamer on the Madison high-rise apartment building (the only skyscraper in the county not storing grain or water). They map the signal as covering all of Madison, but my mom got hooked up a couple weeks ago, and the signal appears to reach just fine from four miles away. The Sioux Valley tech guys were a little surprised. They say they have to be careful about hooking up customers too far from the central tower, since the entire network is only as strong as the weakest connection. If one user gets weak signal, the system boosts power to reach that weak node, which draws power away from the rest of the network.

For now you still need a special WiMAX modem to pick up the signal. That equipment, about the size of a thesaurus, replaces the cable modem and roof antenna you currently need to get Sioux Valley's existing wireless signal. But you can't cruise around town and get the signal on your laptop yet: manufacturers are just starting to install WiMAX-capable chips in their computers (like the Asus eePC). So for now, the main advantages of WiMAX are less equipment in your house and $5 less amonth for service.

But in a year or two, as WiMAX becomes standard laptop equipment, you'll be able to cruise around Madison and be online all the time. Pretty soon the Internet will be as ubiquitous and accessible as TV and radio signals. Just another step toward what my wife and I keep joking about: Brain-Internet! (WiMAX chips in our heads... there's another globalist plot.)

By the way, I'm on baby patrol today, so I can't make the picnic. But if anyone else gets some good photos of the picnic and of Rep. Herseth Sandlin at the park, send them my way, and I'll post them here!