Life Beyond Internet
I chose to live 56 miles from the nearest town in the middle of the wilderness. When I made that decision there was not a Wide World of Web. Our marketing consisted of word of mouth and attending Sport and Travel Shows for the majority of the winter. From January to April we traveled from show to show marketing our business along with hundreds of other resort owners.
Over the years the internet has evolved and we no longer attend Sport Shows. We do all of our marketing on the web via our website, blog, facebook, Twitter and word buys. We started out with dial up which was painfully slow and eventually moved to satellite which is much better but still doesn’t compare to high speed internet. I don’t complain too much when there are web acceleration errors, rainstorms, snowstorms, high winds or any other thing that causes my internet to go out intermittently.
I am going to complain that I’ve been without my own satellite signal since the 2nd of November! This is more than painful for me it’s like cutting off a limb. The guys are working on the roof and something got bumped, relatively easy fix. We called the satellite company who said they would call their tech guy who would then call us to set up an appointment. We still haven’t heard from him.
In Cook County we recently had the oppotrunity to pass a referendum to support broadband. Unfortunately it didn’t pass. I’m hopeful we’ll have another opportunity to pass it because then I know my internet needs would be taken care of. A group of local people would be working to provide our internet and I know these people would take way better care of me than any other business. They know me and my business and how important the internet is to me. They would never let me be without internet for this many days.
We have called a local guy to come and help us with our problem(Jeremy, everyone in Cook County knows who I’m talking about). He came up to check out the situation and ordered a necessary part. Last night he called just to tell me he hadn’t forgotten about us and as soon as he could he would get up here and take care of it. He didn’t need to call because I already knew he would be here just as soon as he possibly could. He’s just that kind of guy. That caring attitude is what I would expect in Cook County if we had our own Broadband.
Until then I will attempt to get a signal from my neighbor’s house so I can work. Please have patience with us since we are unable to respond to e-mails quickly. And I will try to have patience too.