I can certainly identify with Tom Howe's frustration over getting high speed Internet service to his Putney location. We were first promised DSL on our little island in 2004. In 2005, we finally got dial-up service, though we soon realized that it often took as many as thirty tries to get a connection. In 2006, we got the DSL service we'd been promised, but it was hardly faster than dial-up, and the connection failed over 45 percent of the time. We were simply in too remote an area to get good service.
Finally, in the spring of 2013, we were offered wireless Internet service (WiMAX). When Tom wrote “the company won't have to finish the Putney project until 2015 - and that's wireless, not cable,” I know just how frustrated he must feel. However, we were desperate, so we signed up. What a pleasant surprise. We just had to plug in the modular antenna/transceiver, and our service came right up.
It's been better than we could ever have hoped for. Our service is now up 99 percent of the time, and I just measured 16Mbps download and 3.3Mpbs upload.
Don't sell WiMAX short. It can be quite good - so good that we canceled our satellite TV service and now stream whatever we want to watch over the Internet.