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| "All Dressed Up with Nowhere to Go" Me in the painting studio, temporarily turned into a video studio, and eagerly awaiting the test. |
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| I'm using my laptop for the initial part of the interview and the slideshow. Connected to the laptop by a cable is a smartphone, pointed at the easel, where I planned to demonstrate. I'm running OBS for managing all this. OBS is Open Broadcaster Software, an open-source program for video recording and live streaming. |
“Can you try hooking up to your modem directly with an Ethernet cable?”
I'd spent hours preparing a presentation for a live, online interview that would have hundreds of viewers: a slick slide show followed by a masterful painting demonstration. I'd rearranged the furniture in my painting studio, turning it into a passable video studio. I'd spent days playing with new software that would allow me to manage multiple cameras. I'd practiced and practiced and practiced.
But then came the pre-broadcast test the day before the interview. “You're fuzzing out,” said the tech person, a thousand miles away. “Let's run a speed test to make sure you have the bandwidth we need.” She thought that connecting directly to the modem would bypass any issues with the wi-fi. I wasn't as hopeful.
I knew very well that here, in rural New Mexico, we have woefully inadequate bandwidth. On a good day, I get 10 Mbps download, 0.75 Mbps upload. But having run Zoom classes before, I thought it would be enough. Here's what Forbes recommends:
For social media, email or light video streaming: 10-25 Mbps download bandwidth. For gaming or heavy use of video, especially 4K: 50-100 Mbps download bandwidth. For most households: At least 3 Mbps upload bandwidth, or at least 10% of your download bandwidth.
I'm at the lower end of “social media, email or light video streaming.” With Zoom, I might get a “connection unstable” message, pixelated video or dropped frames, but I can usually manage. For my interview, the interviewer would be using Streamyard, a service similar to Zoom. The tech was worried that, with lots of people watching, the video would get even worse or possibly drop out altogether. This was supposed to be a professional broadcast, not just me running a Zoom class out of my studio.
So I plugged in my laptop directly to the modem with a cable. (I have lots of IT experience, so this was easy.) Here's the result of the speedtest.
After consulting with the person interviewing me, it was decided to cancel the interview.
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| "Old Juniper" 14x14 pastel - Available Here's the practice painting I made for the interview. I would have painted a second version of this "live." |
Someone asked me later, Can you pay for more bandwidth? No, not with my current provider. My phone company (CenturyLink, the only phone company in town) can't provide more than 10 Mbps, and that costs me $50/month. There is one other option—wireless internet—but only if I can get line-of-sight to the tower, which the installer, when he came out for a site visit, wasn't sure if I could. And wireless is very, very pricey. To get the same bandwidth I currently get through CenturyLink, it would $80/month. And if I wanted true broadband—the minimum bandwidth of which is a mere 25 Mbps—I'd have to pay a whopping $150/month!
Compare this with where I used to live, in a small community about 10 miles south of Sedona, Arizona. I had cable internet and paid only $50 for 150 Mbps.
Sure, there are a couple of other options. Satellite, but the latency, data caps and expense rule it out. Starlink, which doesn't have the latency, is still months if not years away. Starlink I hoped would save me, but it's not coming to my area any time soon. Originally scheduled for rollout in 2021, I'm now told it won't be until 2023. I've asked for my $100 deposit back.
But there is a solution. Fiber and broadband have been rolled out to the elementary school down the hill from me, maybe a half-mile away. I asked why the rest of our little, historic town—settled in the late 1880s—couldn't be hooked up to that and was told “it wasn't in the contract.” Meanwhile, a contractor is now digging trenches and laying fiber to the Navajo reservation a few miles from here.
My poor little town is being surrounded but bypassed by fiber. We're an internet desert, a dry island in the internet stream. (And no, I'm not moving to a city -- I love this place.)
And that's why you didn't see the interview with me this week. The good news is, I've got enough bandwidth to watch a movie and to teach a Zoom class. But not at the same time.
