I’m wondering if anyone here has ideas for helping with more permanent WiFi coverage for the KT Camp in Strathcona Park?
Someone in my apartment building (I’m on East Georgia around the corner from VHS) has been helping out with a cell hot spot they can borrow from work for part of the day, but ideally there would be an access point that could remain there.
There is a spare hot spot available that needs a data SIM. What’s the best data only plan / provider right now?
I recently switched my kids’ phones to Lucky Mobile, they have cheap data-only plans but throttled to 4G speeds.
The cheapest option right now is likely Shaw Mobile… If you use them for your home internet, the mobile line is free for talk+text, and data is $10/GB PAYG or $45 for “unlimited” (throttled after 25GB/month)
Is there a tall enough building overlooking the park, with sympathetic tenants? Maybe aiming a large antenna at the tents could provide solid backhaul to terrestial cable?
Thanks for both of these tips. This is sort of a “we’re going to walk into a store somewhere and pay some money to get a data only SIM” to use with the existing spare hotspot. Probably Lucky is a better bet.
No, the park is sort of at the edge of light industrial. The East Van Cross probably has some line of sight if someone wants to macgyver up some pringles cans!
If a nearby business or residence with line of sight would share their Internet and be the backhaul, then a pair of Ubiquiti Nano M5 radios could make a very nice point-to-point connection to the park, at which point a regular access point could re-broadcast it as a new wifi network for the park. I’ve used these Nano devices with great success to connect buildings on a 10acre farm.
Along the same lines, but more professional and more expensive: get a “fixed wireless” ISP such as TeraGo, WiBand, Skyway, etc. to shoot internet to the location, and then again you could use any regular access point to rebroadcast it as a wifi network for the park.
Both assume there is power in the park and a good spot to mount this stuff up high.
