On Thursday 31 October 2002 11:22, Ben Nelson wrote:
> Has anyone heard of these guys? Thoughts?
>
> http://www.superiorbroadband.com/coverage_aread.htm
>
> Ben

I've heard of them. The guy who started that is also one of the owners of the 
Browsers N'Etc Cafe on Superior street. They started the wireless stuff in 
1999 with some APs & antennas in the downtown area and Canal Park. The guy 
who ran the Twin Ports LUG, Todd Ide, was one of their network engineers for 
a long time. When I last ran into him he had left Superior Broadband for 
something else. 

They were positioning themselves to serve those sections of Duluth that 
weren't going to get DSL service due to the difficulty and cost of putting in 
adequate equipment in the older CO's "on the hill". The only choice for 
residential broadband in that area was Charter Pipeline (cable). As far as 
business high-speed internet you had T1 and Frame Relay via Qwest and CP 
Internet (usually). When I left there in the spring of 2000 they had clients 
along Superior street and at least one of the hotels in Canal Park. They 
struck a deal to put an antenna system on the top of the hotel. They were 
doing the same kind of thing to move up Superior Street and the London Road 
commercial district. They'd trade service for "real estate" and get what I 
guess are repeater type antenna systems on taller buildings.

Note: All of this is vague memories of discussions with Todd and Dave 
Anderson, the owner.

-- 
Jack Ungerleider
jack at jacku.com