I’ve submitted the application more than 3 and a half years ago! Yes, years – it was on February 17th, 2005. I’ve given up any hope that such a technological advance would ever reach my doorstep. As the dial-up connection was far too slow for my work, no wireless access points anywhere in sight, no cable company interested in providing internet access, I’ve decided to go for a satellite connection. It was faster than the dial-up (up to 2Mbit/s downlink with OpenSky’s SatSurf subscription), but it was a one-way connection and there was the uplink problem. I used the old dial-up for a few months, but finally decided to try a GRPS/EDGE subscription from my mobile phone company. And it worked OK… It had its downsides (satellite round-trip delay, configuration issues both on Windows and Linux and it simply involved a lot of hardware), but it was far better than the alternative.

Now it all feels like a bad dream I had a very long time ago. I’ve also added a wireless router to the mix – all computers can access the internet, nice and easy. I simply love happy endings