Internet progress

Phil to the rescue
This morning, Phil, the Economic Development Officer for the Shire of Perenjori, saw me carrying my laptop into the Telecentre, and enquired into the status of my application for a satellite connection.

I explained that there seems to be some problem with the Federal Government subsidy approval, and Skymesh had ignored my last two email enquiries. Phil said leave it to me, and a little while later he popped his head into the computer room and told me it was all fixed. Phil deals with govt people all the time, knows how to untangle red tape. The approval will be in the mail to me and I have to forward it to Skymesh.

An incredibly helpful guy. He knows all about the Puppy project and wants to help out in whatever way possible.

Netbay
Today I also posted a cheque for 3 months dialup Internet with Netbay Internet. Incredibly cheap, see my recent post. If it works okay, I'll probably sign up for a year, as I have realised that I should not abandon dialup just because I have broadband satellite available. I do need to test Puppy with dialup. Rerwin is carrying the ball here, helping Puppy users to get their dialup working and also now going into 3G modems. Rerwin sends me patches, but I really do need to be able to test after I have applied the patches, as a confirmation that I have implemented it right.

ABG
For those of you who are not Aussies, you will not know about the subsidy that I have mentioned above. Before the great economic catastrophy that has struck the world (and just after, in an attempt to stave off a recession), the Aussie govt was splashing money around, subsidising this and that. One of the things that the rural politicians managed to wrangle was a subsidy known as the Australian Broadband Guarantee, intended to enable anyone in rural Australia to have broadband Internet access at a comparable price to city people. Where broadband is not available via the telephone line, or a local wireless network, the govt provides an up-front payment for a satellite installation.

I do have such an installation, but with technology moving on apparently to get reconnected I need to upgrade my transceiver unit and the dish. That's where the red tape came in, and that's what Phil has fixed.

Photovoltaic subsidy
The Federal Govt now finds itself in the red, billions of dollars in the red, so is desperately trying to rein in expenditure. There's one subsidy that I would have liked to avail myself of, which expires on 30th of June 2009, that's their photovoltaic system installation subsidy -- another up-front payment that covers most of the cost. Vendors were offering 1Kw installations, grid connected, the whole thing including installation, for about $2500 after the subsidy.

But, I didn't know what vendor would install in my rural area, nor do I have the money, so let it go.

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Comments

Thanks to Phil
Username: Lobster
It used to upset that a developed nation could not provide broadband. Many thanks to Phil. Bravo. I hope he will continue to support Perenjori, Ozland and Barry as Puppy moves towards top 5 distribution status and open source becomes the modus oparandi for governments and citizens worldwide. Maybe the Telecentre and other local facilities will become Puppy powered? Being modem friendly is also a great Puppy strength. Good news.

Tags: general