[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Rural internet (Page 1 of 2)
Posted: 4/2/2017 4:43:21 PM EDT
| So Weve got about a month till we move out to our new digs and it appears that the only options Ill have for tv are Satellite. No big deal, we dont watch a ton of TV anyways. It also seems that there are no wired internet providers. So our options appear to be either satellite,possibly dsl or a wireless hotspot through a cell provider. Anyone have any experience with the satellite internet, or any other ideas? |
| My only internet option was also a satellite service, Xplornet. It's FAR from the best and was a bit of an adjustment coming from the city, but it's good enough to stream netflix/amazon fire tv and everything else I need out of my internet. I guess we lucked out because the tech was able to get a (weak) signal from a nearby tower they own rather than having to receive the signal from an actual satellite which would have been a much worse scenario in terms of speed for us. |
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Ask your new neighbors what they use.
My provider does not advertise so who would know they are there? However, I am very happy with their service. It is a line of sight antenna, looks like a sat dish but is pointed at a tower. It's pretty popular in mid west rural areas. |
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Ask your new neighbors what they use. My provider does not advertise so who would know they are there? However, I am very happy with their service. It is a line of sight antenna, looks like a sat dish but is pointed at a tower. It's pretty popular in mid west rural areas. Had sat before that. It sucked. Slow latencies and a data cap. Now it's quick and unlimited. The con is the network has a lot of weak points. Power outage or tech troubled anywhere in the network and your internet is down. Luckily, they only have significant issues after major storms or rarely a massive tech issue. I will not switch until there is cable ran. However, if you have DSL available, go for that. Faster, cheaper, more reliable. |
as in town they still have copper junk that hardly ever works. I love living outside of town.
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So Weve got about a month till we move out to our new digs and it appears that the only options Ill have for tv are Satellite. No big deal, we dont watch a ton of TV anyways. It also seems that there are no wired internet providers. So our options appear to be either satellite,possibly dsl or a wireless hotspot through a cell provider. Anyone have any experience with the satellite internet, or any other ideas? What do you use internet for? If primarily downloads, then satellite is passable. If you ever need uploads (think facetime/skype, or high res picture uploads), satellite is the the last choice. Excede (from Viasat) is ok, probably the best sat option, but has caps and the latency will drive you bananas. DSL has benefits for reliability (as a hard line), but performance suffers with distance from the CO in speed. I'd guess if you have DSL it will be really slow (768 or lower). Cellular 4G LTE would be fastest, 4G lite (HSPA+), then 3G (EDGE or EVDO). Have you tested with your phone what you can get there? Upgrade to unlimited plan. As some of the others have mentioned, some local providers have Wifi, microwave, or the old school Wimax. If you get poor Cell, you can purchase a good yagi if your phone has an input and just point to the tower. Almost all hot spots and USB modems have a micro COAX input for these. And I've had great success with them. Yagis are directional and if you have good clear line of sight can overcome much. You can also get an omni directional antenna with much lower signal gain, but don't have to point at the antenna. You didn't say broadband access, so ... If you are really off net and don't need extreme speeds, you can lookup packet radio over HAM. Data rates are slow, typical modem rates and you have to bounce through someone who has a internet connection. The relay point may want some free beer from you. That said, And of course, if you have land line service, you have good old modem. |
| I use a T-Mobile hotspot. I get 14GB for $60 with the Binge On program. Binge On allows you to use certain streaming video services (Netflix, Amazon Prime, Youtube, etc) without affecting your allotted data. The only downside is that whenever you go over your allotted data, it slows everything down even the sites that work with Binge On. You can buy data passes though. |
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I imagine well end up with satellite for tv so most likely just usual web browsing, social media,occasional facetime with family.
We dont do any online gaming. If we could get enough I would just use my roku for netflix,hulu etc.. but it sounds like it would use up all the data in a hurry |
| Where abouts in oh are you? We are in the northern part of oh. We just moved in october and havent had any internet either. They are just starting to install some fiber optics where we are up. We looked into all the satelittle providers around and they all had caps on the data and were pretty slow fer what they were charging. One place said simce we were so far off the road that we would need to build a tower that wemt 20ft above the trees to use their service. They said a tower would be close to 10k. Anyways, if you have a good phone prrovider with plenty of data that might be the way to go. It actually hasnt been too bad living without internet. It keeps the kids from sitting around and wanting to play video games and watching tv all the time. Its also been pretty busy moving from a suburb to the country, there always seems to be something that needs to get done and not enough time to do it. So you might not even need it right away and find that being witout it isnt all that bad. |
| We have found its much easier to cut cable (dish) tv than to cut internet. The $70 PER MONTH that we paid for satellite TV goes to buying entire seasons of the shows we actually want to watch on Amazon (typically about $15/season) and a Netflix subscription. Between those, a regular broadcast antennae, and youtube, we can watch what we want to watch. |
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Ask your new neighbors what they use. My provider does not advertise so who would know they are there? However, I am very happy with their service. It is a line of sight antenna, looks like a sat dish but is pointed at a tower. It's pretty popular in mid west rural areas. From my provider's website: "TekWav is a Wireless Internet Service Provider (WISP) located in Grayson County, Texas. A WISP is an alternative to cable, satellite, and DSL Internet service that is often found in smaller or rural communities. Outside of Dallas/Fort Worth, your options for high-speed Internet access are fairly limited. That’s where we come in. We offer fast, reliable, truly wireless Internet access with large data allowances and unlimited options." |
| Were 10 miles out of town, in a slight valley. Very very poor to no cell coverage, and went with Direct TV and went with Exede Sat Internet. Direct TV, no complaints, got a signal booster for Verizon so can get some limited calls dependent on weather. Exede, well its fine. Some problems with signal lose depending on weather. When you bust your limits they slow you down. We cant stream anything, no nexflix, videos buffer and stutter. We dont game so thats not a problem. And its taken a long time for my wife/kids to under stand the difference between data / wifi and cellular data and wifi when at home. |
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Take a look https://4gantennashop.com/ unlimited high speed internet.
Refered by another member here. I been using them for a little over a week with no complaints. Runs about the same speed as my old cellular plan without the 6gig data cap. Streams Youtube and Netflix just fine. |
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Take a look https://4gantennashop.com/ unlimited high speed internet. Refered by another member here. I been using them for a little over a week with no complaints. Runs about the same speed as my old cellular plan without the 6gig data cap. Streams Youtube and Netflix just fine. |
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Going back a decade or so I had a verizon plug in modem, just a cell phone without the phone I guess. It worked fine for a site like arfcom but you had to let youtube or something load and it was usually easier to just download it to skip the buffering.
After that I got an actual blackberry and used it as a phone and for all internet stuff. Did not handle being both at the same time. Worked same as verizon plug in modem. I was in a place where I got an ok connection in the yard but the house killed the bars on the phone so I bought a cell phone booster from wilson and it worked and I was happy. I have since moved and while I dislike being by a busy rural highway I have fiber optic, was dsl a year ago or so but they just upgraded everything. To some extent I am closer and closer to moving further out and going back to probably just the cell phone tethered for internet. I will kill amazon prime about then cause right now I stream a lot of shows and music and I doubt the tethering will do it. Well, tethering may do it but you also have your data limits. Read up on hotspots and tethering and what not, depending on contracts some say you can and some say you can't and some people don't care what the contract has to say. What I liked the most about tethering with the cell phone was that I could be anywhere and use the net. I really dislike having fiberoptic at the house but if out driving around I need to drop down to the level my phone will do or find a free hotspot or something. I had an aunt who had the old satellite internet, drawing a blank on the name. They wanted her to pay to upgrade her satellite to get better service and she did not want the increased cost. She and her husband got fancy smart phones and are set up to use them for internet now. To some extent you can read up on a lot of this if you run a search on recreational vehicle internet stuff, those folks travel and have gone through a lot of options. |
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So Weve got about a month till we move out to our new digs and it appears that the only options Ill have for tv are Satellite. No big deal, we dont watch a ton of TV anyways. It also seems that there are no wired internet providers. So our options appear to be either satellite,possibly dsl or a wireless hotspot through a cell provider. Anyone have any experience with the satellite internet, or any other ideas? if you can get a landline phone, you can get DSL, which is what I have. The satellite offerings where I am (and I'm not that rural) are not better than DSL for speed (so far) and so I keep the DSL even though I harbor deep dissatisfaction when it comes to AT&T and the company's practices. We don't watch TV at all. We have a big flat screen we use for movie nights, and otherwise it's a huge monitor for choosing streaming music. 
I do okay where I am, and my job is mostly online. |
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I imagine well end up with satellite for tv so most likely just usual web browsing, social media,occasional facetime with family. We dont do any online gaming. If we could get enough I would just use my roku for netflix,hulu etc.. but it sounds like it would use up all the data in a hurry I'm not even pretending to understand it, not even a little bit. 
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| We have point to point wireless provided by the local rural telephone cooperative. It is 2 gig and handles our internet traffic and Netflix well... for the most part. Every once in a while it gets laggy because we are sharing the connection with a lot of the community. It is rather expensive and we had to buy the wireless router that is on the pole outside. |
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Our setup is similar to WISP I suppose, put up a access point antenna at a relatives office a couple of miles away that has DSL access, and put up a bridge antenna at our house. We're getting identical speeds at the house as he is at the office, with good line of sight. 6-7 mbps at both ends, which is the dsl package he's paying for. Now we split the bill and both of us are happy. Cool thing too is that all of the property between us is our deer hunting land and the access point radio sprays some good wifi to all my deer stands. I could actually use some security camera live feeds for game cameras on the same connection with these radios.
If you are within a few miles and good line of sight with someone who has good service, they might go for splitting the bill also and setting up the same type deal. I don't know. I'm the farthest thing from IT knowledgeable, but I was surprised how easy the setup was, with youtube help of course. Funny thing is once we put up our radio all the random wifi signals popup on the control software, we could actually pull in a good wifi connection from a distant truck stop that wasn't protected. By the way passwording the setup is pretty important our you might end up with a pretty large community of freeloaders. I guess the same radios (ours is an engenius variety, about 80$ for each) are what is used for WISP service? |
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if you can get a landline phone, you can get DSL, which is what I have. ~ SNIP Due to my distance I can get a max of 8Mb down and 1Mb up. My neighbor about 6 miles down the road farther from the CO can only get 880Kb down and 212Kb up. The telco technician said if they were about 3/4 mile farther the DSL equipment would not be able to connect at all. I have been working with POTS type telco service since the early 80's but I was never officially cross trained for DSL service. Voice (and dialup modem) service can go though amplifiers to extend dialup service distances. Only DSL that I know of that can be extended like that is iDSL which uses an ISDN circuit. Almost every provider out there is trying to eliminate ISDN services as they have a higher cost / lower profit and more maintenance. |
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Um - Sorry but That is totally incorrect. DSL is limited by the distance to the CO or switching center. Due to my distance I can get a max of 8Mb down and 1Mb up. My neighbor about 6 miles down the road farther from the CO can only get 880Kb down and 212Kb up. The telco technician said if they were about 3/4 mile farther the DSL equipment would not be able to connect at all. I have been working with POTS type telco service since the early 80's but I was never officially cross trained for DSL service. Voice (and dialup modem) service can go though amplifiers to extend dialup service distances. Only DSL that I know of that can be extended like that is iDSL which uses an ISDN circuit. Almost every provider out there is trying to eliminate ISDN services as they have a higher cost / lower profit and more maintenance. So how is that totally incorrect? It may not be as fast as you want. AND...There may be areas of the country where you just can't. But AT&T offers it to everybody here, whether or not it's about the speed of dialup. Is that not enough speed for you? And on what basis do you say, "almost every provider out there is trying to eliminate ISDN services?" Perhaps you're right, but I'd like to have more than this statement as evidence. 
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do you have to have good cell reception at your house for that service? I upgraded today to the Mofi4500. Definate improvement over the huawei modem. I went from 3 down and 5 up to 25 down and 20 up without using the external antennas. |
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Take a look https://4gantennashop.com/ unlimited high speed internet. Refered by another member here. I been using them for a little over a week with no complaints. Runs about the same speed as my old cellular plan without the 6gig data cap. Streams Youtube and Netflix just fine. 
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Well, I guess the 8Mb downa nd 1Mb up is kind of what I expect from DSL, so...you CAN get it, as I said. I guarantee AT&T will sell it to you, and their "guaranteed" speed is so stupid slow itmakes you drool and twirl napkins, so there's really nothing you can do when it doesn't perform. But still...you have DSL. So how is that totally incorrect? It may not be as fast as you want. AND...There may be areas of the country where you just can't. But AT&T offers it to everybody here, whether or not it's about the speed of dialup. Is that not enough speed for you? And on what basis do you say, "almost every provider out there is trying to eliminate ISDN services?" Perhaps you're right, but I'd like to have more than this statement as evidence. Why is distance important - DSLReports.com Distance service limits by ISP - DSLReports.com While working for a small outfit you may have heard of, iHeartMedia, we commonly used audio over ISDN for studio to studio interviews where the studios were in different cities. It has been a growing problem that providers nation wide have been pushing for migration away from ISDN. If you try to request new service to be installed or additional circuits added you are often told it isn't available. |
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I didn't read all the responses yet...
What speed do you need? What is the cell-signal like? Do you need unlimited data? If you can tolerate slower speeds (Verizon 3G speed), have acceptable Verizon coverage, and want unlimited data there is a "hack" that can get you unlimited data on 3G for $5/mo. That is what I'm currently using and even on the very edge/fringe of cell-service range I'm getting enough speed to watch Netflix if you can tolerate the occasional buffering etc. |
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Well, I guess the 8Mb downa nd 1Mb up is kind of what I expect from DSL, so...you CAN get it, as I said. I guarantee AT&T will sell it to you, and their "guaranteed" speed is so stupid slow itmakes you drool and twirl napkins, so there's really nothing you can do when it doesn't perform. But still...you have DSL. So how is that totally incorrect? It may not be as fast as you want. AND...There may be areas of the country where you just can't. But AT&T offers it to everybody here, whether or not it's about the speed of dialup. Is that not enough speed for you? And on what basis do you say, "almost every provider out there is trying to eliminate ISDN services?" Perhaps you're right, but I'd like to have more than this statement as evidence. I do know satellite sucked and was too expensive, but our access point/bridge setup has solved our problems. |
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Our office can get dsl, and as the crow flies is about 1/2 mile from our house. However the phone line makes about a 3 mile loop before it gets back to our house, and the ATT tech said it was out of range from the central dsl command center or whatever its called lol. I have no idea how it works, but I harassed ATT about it quite a bit and they said there's no way that they could make it work. Fiberoptic runs in front of our house but apparently its like some sort of cross country line that you can't link off of, I have no idea how any of this stuff works. I do know satellite sucked and was too expensive, but our access point/bridge setup has solved our problems. We have too many people on this road, the signal is too slow, and yet they keep selling it. BUT...here, they are the only game in town, and they know it, and they charge a lot. |
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It is totally incorrect in that saying just because you can get a phoneline that you can also get DSL - because that is not the case. If you are beyond so many feet from a CO or switch center then DSL CAN NOT CONNECT AT ANY SPEED. So NO you DON'T have DSL, but your mother-in-law can still ring you up and bend your ear with normal voice service. Beyond 38000ft even iDSL won't help you. Why is distance important - DSLReports.com Distance service limits by ISP - DSLReports.com While working for a small outfit you may have heard of, iHeartMedia, we commonly used audio over ISDN for studio to studio interviews where the studios were in different cities. It has been a growing problem that providers nation wide have been pushing for migration away from ISDN. If you try to request new service to be installed or additional circuits added you are often told it isn't available. |
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Our setup is similar to WISP I suppose, put up a access point antenna at a relatives office a couple of miles away that has DSL access, and put up a bridge antenna at our house. We're getting identical speeds at the house as he is at the office, with good line of sight. 6-7 mbps at both ends, which is the dsl package he's paying for. Now we split the bill and both of us are happy. Cool thing too is that all of the property between us is our deer hunting land and the access point radio sprays some good wifi to all my deer stands. I could actually use some security camera live feeds for game cameras on the same connection with these radios. If you are within a few miles and good line of sight with someone who has good service, they might go for splitting the bill also and setting up the same type deal. I don't know. I'm the farthest thing from IT knowledgeable, but I was surprised how easy the setup was, with youtube help of course. Funny thing is once we put up our radio all the random wifi signals popup on the control software, we could actually pull in a good wifi connection from a distant truck stop that wasn't protected. By the way passwording the setup is pretty important our you might end up with a pretty large community of freeloaders. I guess the same radios (ours is an engenius variety, about 80$ for each) are what is used for WISP service? Just tip for the setup, make the wireless bridge "invisible" so others in the area don't know its there, and give it a name that would throw off a suspecting ISP worker that did manage to find it. IE, if I were to set one up that was in violation of TOS (the ones I've done have not been so it wasn't a worry of mine) I would use an "agricultural sounding name" for the link because I'm in a heavy agricultural area. That way, if an ISP worker found it (even if invisible/masked it can still be found) he/she would just think its just some agricultural connection and not suspect that it's a "sharing ISP services between multiple locations" sort of setup. |
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It is totally incorrect in that saying just because you can get a phoneline that you can also get DSL - because that is not the case. If you are beyond so many feet from a CO or switch center then DSL CAN NOT CONNECT AT ANY SPEED. So NO you DON'T have DSL, but your mother-in-law can still ring you up and bend your ear with normal voice service. Beyond 38000ft even iDSL won't help you. Why is distance important - DSLReports.com Distance service limits by ISP - DSLReports.com While working for a small outfit you may have heard of, iHeartMedia, we commonly used audio over ISDN for studio to studio interviews where the studios were in different cities. It has been a growing problem that providers nation wide have been pushing for migration away from ISDN. If you try to request new service to be installed or additional circuits added you are often told it isn't available. |
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if you can get a landline phone, you can get DSL, which is what I have. I had satellite, and it was kind of ok as long as you do not stream much. There was a daily limit, and one Netflix movie was too much. So, now using a fixed wireless provider, line of sight to a tower about 2 miles away. It goes down occasionally after the tower gets hit by lightning. The weather has to calm down before they send somebody up the tower (200 feet up), then sometimes it takes a day or two of downtime before they get parts. 3 Mb/s down, 300kb/s up for $55/month, unlimited data, enough for SD Netflix. |
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Any word on Frontier? Apparently thats what the sellers have for phone and internet In some of those communities (read towns, not rural county roads), they may be rolling out fiber-based services. If you're at the end of a dead-end gravel road, you're odds of getting something good are almost nil, from frontier anyway. |
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Went ahead and went with Frontier. It looks like I can get 6mb download speed, we'll see how that goes Times, they are a changin' no matter where you live. We have houses all around us but still are considered "rural" so always looking at other options. |
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I'm streaming Amazon movie through my laptop to the TV right now. DVD quality, no buffering. We are at 1.5meg download 
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