EVDO Success in the Middle of Nowhere

BlkAdder

I work for an energy company that has many small oil/gas wells scattered around the countryside. Late in 2006, the field workers who run all the remote field sites were given a new application that they needed to do their daily maintenance work to replace an older system that printed out their jobs on a daily basis. The new system gave them a laptop, but needed to download 10MB - 25MB of data per day before they could start and upload 5MB every night before they could go home. Using poor quality dial-up lines like they did previously was not working, and the guys to get by were drawling lots to see who would take everyone's laptop home to use their home broadband to do the transfers for a few hours every night. When they asked for a solution to their problems I remembered the Kyocera KR1 router I had read about the week before. We ordered one out of desperation and placed it at their morning meeting site so they could all connect to it and get their daily updates over a cup of coffee in the morning and upload their findings in a minute in the evenings. In the end we had to put up a yagi antenna because their cell tower was so far away from them, but it does work. A year later now it is still working for them and they were so happy the company gave me an award for innovative thinking. Laughing

Species8472 · Posted: Thu Nov 29, 2007 9:07 pm Post subject:

Great to hear. What kind of EVDo device and provider are you using?

BlkAdder · Posted: Thu Nov 29, 2007 9:30 pm Post subject:

This was in southern Alberta, Canada, so Telus is the EVDO provider here. Previously mentioned I used an Kyocera KR1 router with a Kyocera 1xEV-DO card (KPC650) installed in it. We used the external antenna port located on the card to connect it up to the yagi antenna we mounted on the roof of the trailer they met in every morning before scattering out to the field sites for the day. Once we installed the router and everything was working, I found out Telus had just turned on the EVDO service just the week before to the area and had not advertised it yet to anyone or even told their reps it was available in the area. It was great being the only EVDO connection on the whole tower for a couple of months. Razz

Species8472 · Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2007 7:46 pm Post subject:

I also use the Telus and a 650 in a KR1. They now have unlimited Canada for 75 and unlimited US/Canada for 100. Yagi? How far are you from the tower?

BlkAdder · Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2007 12:53 am Post subject:

I think we are paying $200 a month unlimited data as that was the deal for large corporate customers at the time and it was for 3 years. But hey, not my money so why not... Not sure exact distance ( 40km? ), but it is far enough away from anywhere ( 45 minutes down a dirt path road ) that cell phones are no use. The area is also rather hilly which doesn't help any. Apparently a 3 watt cell booster kit can get a minimal 1 bar signal if you go to the top of a hill in the area. The Yagi antenna is mounted on a 6 meter poll attached to the roof and then gets a moderate signal to the EVDO card. Had to go back after they built it all because they forgot details like lightning arrestors and such which is not good at a gas plant.