Fiber connected and its a whole other thing now

TJ4Jim

TJ4Jim

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Brookings, Oregon
Actually benefited from a government program here in the sticks of Oregon when our local electric co-op picked up the rural internet challenge almost 3 years ago. I've been working off a MoFi broadband receiver from the cell tower getting a whopping 15mbps down and maybe 5 up but they finally lit us up this week and its welcome back to the land of internet. We're getting about 760 up and down on wireless and about 990 on Ethernet and it' amazing, especially nice having proper location services that actually know where I am.
 
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Damn government screwing everything up by getting involved in a market where private industry should dictate available service...
 
That's awesome. I don't know if government was involved or not but I currently live in the most remote place I've ever lived and have the best Internet service I've ever had. They offer fiber up to 5Gbps but I only pay for 300M because that's plenty fast for our use.
 
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I spent many years in telecommunications.
Fiber is being laid all over the country the past many years. They want everyone wired.

My buddies wife is in her 30s but is a VP for an insurance company & lives in a beautiful estate in nowhereville Amish country Wisconsin an hour away from the Dells

During COVIDiocy, they had their company pay $40,000 for a fiber line to their estate the last mile from a junction point. They only got it paid for because the higher up got it for video conferencing needs remotely before her

They are so remote I was surprised to see they even had internet.
 
I work in IT support and used to have small businesses as clients. You'd be surprised at how many calls we would get from clients that had problems caused by slow Internet.

"I know the last 3 times you called, I said it was because you have SHIT Internet. Guess what! This is # 4..."

When I was signing papers for my current house, I almost canceled because they said the Internet is AT&T. Previous house had shitty AT&T. They confirmed it was fiber and Gbit was available, so signed the papers.

Figure your Internet speed is less like comparing MPH, better compared to a tunnel. Slow speed is easily bottlenecked. Fast speed allows more to travel.
 
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My place in rural ND has fiber but shitty cell reception. I have a device that hooks up to the internet and gives me cell service. Thank God the government stepped in and subsidized fiber. Dial up sucks .
 
bucky said:
My place in rural ND has fiber but shitty cell reception. I have a device that hooks up to the internet and gives me cell service. Thank God the government stepped in and subsidized fiber. Dial up sucks .
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Tell me about this device. We have the same situation. I usually have one bar, have to step out to the porch to conduct a successful call.
 
I’m in Ca now so I do not have access to it. I got it through Verizon 7or 8 yrs ago. No charge at the time because I’m in a dead zone. The funny thing is I can look to the south and see a cell tower 10 mis away. The down side is that it is open to any Verizon customer, it has limited range and does not seem to affect my internet speed. Works great when I’m anywhere on my property.
 
bucky said:
I’m in Ca now so I do not have access to it. I got it through Verizon 7or 8 yrs ago. No charge at the time because I’m in a dead zone. The funny thing is I can look to the south and see a cell tower 10 mis away. The down side is that it is open to any Verizon customer, it has limited range and does not seem to affect my internet speed. Works great when I’m anywhere on my property.
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Thanks. I was just looking at it online. We also have a cell tower very close, but seem to only get about 3 bars of service. We don't use land lines anymore.
 
I only had 1 bar and 3G. That was only if I was outside and turned the phone off and back on. If I drove a mile in any direction there was no signal. This is ND and is very flat country and not many homes.
I did a quick online search and everything is 5G now. Mine is 4G If you have a weak signal you can get a booster that has a hi-gain antenna that you point towards the tower and does not use the internet. For my system I had to go through Verizon and set up permission to use it.
 
bucky said:
I only had 1 bar and 3G. That was only if I was outside and turned the phone off and back on. If I drove a mile in any direction there was no signal. This is ND and is very flat country and not many homes.
I did a quick online search and everything is 5G now. Mine is 4G If you have a weak signal you can get a booster that has a hi-gain antenna that you point towards the tower and does not use the internet. For my system I had to go through Verizon and set up permission to use it.
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Where I'm sitting in my living room I get one bar. When I'm sitting at our breakfast counter, I get maybe 3 bars. We have Cox Internet and really only use the phones for talk and text like most people. We don't get any dropped calls, so maybe the cell coverage is good enough. We live kinda on the edge of our little town of about 43,000 people. When we do drive around the cell coverage does get better. Obviously something to think about.
 
freedom_in_4low said:
Tell me about this device. We have the same situation. I usually have one bar, have to step out to the porch to conduct a successful call.
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Most current Android phones have a feature available that will automatically place calls over the net if activated. My new Moto G does and I've been using it.
 
TJ4Jim said:
Most current Android phones have a feature available that will automatically place calls over the net if activated. My new Moto G does and I've been using it.
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I've had that on phones before but our current Google Pixels don't. Maybe that's a carrier or manufacturer thing, since Pixels run vanilla Android?

I've been shopping for signal boosters but as usual Amazon is filled with 400 billion generic products with meaningless and unrecognizable brand names. Wifi would be preferable, since we have fiber, and I'm not sure how well a booster will work in the attic with my foil-backed radiant barrier roof decking, nor am I interested in putting an antenna outside on my roof.
 
freedom_in_4low said:
I've had that on phones before but our current Google Pixels don't. Maybe that's a carrier or manufacturer thing, since Pixels run vanilla Android?

I've been shopping for signal boosters but as usual Amazon is filled with 400 billion generic products with meaningless and unrecognizable brand names. Wifi would be preferable, since we have fiber, and I'm not sure how well a booster will work in the attic with my foil-backed radiant barrier roof decking, nor am I interested in putting an antenna outside on my roof.
Click to expand...

Probably cheaper to just replace the phone lol.
 
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