Internet Blues

One of the few things that I don't like about living in the country is the internet. When I first moved in, I got stuck with dial up, which isn't horrible, but is not good for someone who works online. Dial up is also rather expensive, as I was paying $35 a month for the dial up and another $35 per month for a phone that was basically unusable. ($70 per month for extremely slow internet rather sucks).I got rid of the dial up, cause Bell totally pissed me off. I had high speed internet before moving to the country and so had a contract with Bell. Before moving to the country I confirmed with Bell that they could give me high speed there, which they of course said yes they could. When the Bell guy showed up to hook up the internet he of course couldn't give me high speed as the phone lines were too old, and than Bell tried to charge me $200 for not fulfilling my high speed contract! Seriously?! Bell broke the contract not me, they told me they could give me high speed and than couldn't produce it.

After ditching Bell, I got a Telus wireless stick. It worked good, but was stupid expensive. Telus charges $60 for 5GB and than $60 per GB you go over, so I had $200 -$400 bills every single month, not cool.

Finally, EBTech came to my area and I got wireless from them. Their internet comes from a radio tower so is not extremely fast or reliable, but it generally works good and is unlimited for only $64 per month. EBTech internet worked solid all winter, but for the last two weeks it has been horrible - thanks to a huge chestnut tree beside the house blocking the signal.

The photo shows the chestnut tree directly blocking the antenna on the roof of the house

So, what to do? Cutting down the tree is not an option (in my books, it would be downright horrible to cut down a 100 plus year old tree for internet) and moving the antenna wasn't an option as the tree blocked it no matter where on the roof it got moved. So, we gave the tree a serious trimming instead and voila! it works! Its still moving a little slower than normal, but it's at least working solidly! Thank Fortuna!