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A heartwarming story

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<URL: http://yle.fi/uutiset/3-9511768>

Kari and Ritva Partanen were in dire straits four years ago. A little
less than ten years ago, the phone company of the neighboring town
closed its Wimax network, which had become legacy technology.

THe couple who work in corporate management was getting isolated. If you
needed to take care of urgent business, you had to travel twenty
kilometers in person to the Sulkava town center.

They were barely able to join a 3G network with an antenna hung on the
living room ceiling. The band was sliced whenever a neighbor or a
passing truck driver talked over the same operator's network.

– It was a painful time when the net was getting dimmer and dimmer. Me
and the missus had to agree on turns to avoid rows. Whenever we lost the
signal, I wondered which one of our neighbors had just connected to the
network.

Then an antenna was erected on the roof of the Partanens' house; it
would probe the different operators' networks and choose the one with
most bandwidth available.

– We could reach one-meg, maybe three and sometimes even ten-meg speeds.
Video quality was so-and-so. Ping times were lousy.

In the beginning of the current year, a day of rejoicing arrived for the
Partanens. A new 4G station began operation four kilometers away. The
Partanens bought a new, light desktop router that distributes access
around the house and its vicinity.

– We're all smiles now. A 50-meg speed is available at all times, brags
Kari Partanen as soon as we enter his home. To prove his point, he
launches a speed test on his laptop: the downstream speed is over 50
megabits per second, and the upstream speed is a hair lower.

– Now our children and grandchildren can come and there'll be enough for
everybody. During the summer we can be over twenty people altogether. A
passing truck makes no difference anymore, muses Partanen.

The 4G access is provided by Suomen Yhteisverkko Oy [Joint Network of
Finland Inc]. It got a special permit from the regulators to build a
shared network for two operators in northern and eastern parts of the
country, where sparse population would make separate networks
enonomically nonviable.

Suomen Yhteisverkko finished construction at the end of 2016. The
network covers 50 per cent of Finland's area and 15 per cent of its
population. The Yhteisverkko CEO Antti Jokinen is not surprised by the
speeds measured by the Partanens.

– It does sound good. Population centers should reach a hundred and the
sparsely populated areas are served with 50-meg speeds, says Jokinen.

Kari Partanen wants to remind you that good rural connectivity cannot
be taken for granted.

– Surprisingly many details had to be just correct, but now we have no
complaints about network access. I'm still wondering, though, why they
didn't tell us, the customers, anything about the service; they should
be sales pros, after all. They should have sent us a text or an email.

– We had to resort to the method of elimination to find the best access.
Being engineers, we could do it, but for many ordinary folks that might
be too much to ask.

Yhteisverkko began construction in Lapland and descended through Kainuu
to Northern Karelia, Northern Savonia, Southern Savonia and on to
Southern Karelia. All of the old base stations were dismantled and
replaced with new ones.

– Sure we mostly used old masts, but all new ones are needed as well.
This year we will build twenty new base stations.

Antti Jokisen says the new network will be able to take an increase of
traffic and subscriber load but only to a point. There will be problems
when a large group of people arrives at an event or spends a skiing
vacation at the same place.

– More capacity has been built at the ski centers in Lapland. As for
eastern Finland, the network capacity won't be put to test before the
summer. I believe it will be able to handle the increased load, but if
problems arise, we will build more capacity, promises Antti Jokinen.

Kari Partanen is grateful for the new network, which the family uses not
only for work but to follow international media as well.

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A heartwarming story Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2017-03-18 10:06 +0200
  Re: A heartwarming story RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2017-03-19 20:36 -0400
    Re: A heartwarming story "Dirk T. Verbeek" <dverbeek@xs4all.nl> - 2017-03-28 23:16 +0200

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