Rural internet

[Rick Flair]

Does satellite still suck? What are you using and what are the options?


Many of the places I’m looking at are far removed from any services. Right now we have super fast internet (450 mbps) and I have zero illusions of getting anything of that speed in the country.

My wife works remotely and my oldest plays games online and we stream TV.

Basically if I can get a good and consistent 50 mbps, this will at least allow her to work and we could do some TV, although gamer boy will hate me for it.



Any advice from you more tech guys or those who live rural?

 

[toximus]

super fast internet (450 mbps)

Amateur!

I have a few users on satellite at work. It sucks for them.

They provide it themselves so I can't force the change, but I got them a few beta invites to Starlink a few months ago and the reviews and stats have been really good: https://www.starlink.com/

The issue is the ping time is going to be high so FPS type online games aren't going to be good.

 

[freedom_in_4low]

I had satellite from Viasat for a while back in 2013. Speeds were ok when the weather was clear, but they had monthly data caps like a cell phone, after which your speed would slow down to dial-up equivalent. I also had DirecTV at the time, and one time set one of the 4-hour long HD extended versions of one of the Lord of the Rings films to record. Only I wasn't paying attention and it was on-demand, which downloads over the internet connection. So it killed my whole month of data overnight and I had to buy more GB.

If it was raining, it was hard to even load a web page, let alone stream anything. Latency was terrible too, so I wouldn't consider it a possibility for gaming.

From there I went to wireless from Rise Broadband, which also seems to be fairly common in rural areas. It usually worked ok and didn't cap me, but the max speed offered is 25Mbps. They place a radio on your house with (hopefully) line of sight to a tower. No line of sight, no worky. I had to have mine moved higher up on my roof when someone built a house across the street and got in between. Sometimes it would cut out in the wind, I think there were trees somewhere getting blown around in the signal path. Hard to tell 'cause the tower was about 2 miles away. But overall MUCH more reliable than satellite. I don't think I'd go back to satellite unless it was my only option or I was somewhere in the desert where it never rains.

Since 2016 I've lived closer to town so I'm not sure how much tech has improved since then. We have 40Mbps cable and it's plenty for us.

 

[TJ4Jim]

Everyone I talk to locally (we have crap internet here) who has current sat service generally have a poor opinion and continually look to upgrade, service sounds worse then the DSL I dumped last year. There is a lot coming though with Starlink becoming operational soon and that will hopefully rewrite the rules.

Here on the south coast they have cable in town that reaches the close in residences but not me, my property is only about 100 yards from the main and they will gladly run it in for about 8K so I started with Frontier DSL which was horrid. Swapped over to wireless broadband last spring with a direct line of site antenna to cell tower and although speeds are limited to about 25mbps max it is dependable.

The 2 upcoming options will be Starlink when operational and the big news here is our local Electric Coop received a Federal grant bringing Fiber to every hardwired customer in their system. They plan on having their first phase up by late 2021 and speeds in excess of 500 mbps, that's for me and I prepaid to lock in rates.

 

[Zorba]

I had terrestrial wireless for a number of years, it was a microwave link to a cell tower about 8 miles away. It was fairly affordable, gave us 5 megabaud which was - and is - all we need, but higher speeds were available for more. Now that I'm in town, I'm paying too much for 40,50,60 (not sure), which is way more than we need, but is the new "low" tier.

 

[freedom_in_4low]

I had terrestrial wireless for a number of years, it was a microwave link to a cell tower about 8 miles away. It was fairly affordable, gave us 5 megabaud which was - and is - all we need, but higher speeds were available for more. Now that I'm in town, I'm paying too much for 40,50,60 (not sure), which is way more than we need, but is the new "low" tier.

same. We had 20 at our last place, and that was fine for download. Upload speeds were pretty terrible though, such that coming home and having my phone automatically start uploading videos to the cloud would pretty much shut it down for hours. That was DSL, and our current 40 service is the bottom tier with Comcast. I think I could have gotten 1000Mbps if I was willing to pay for it, but I'm not.

 

[Rick Flair]

Thanks all so far. Doesn’t give me much hope.


I guess when we start to narrow down a few places I’ll get of nails of the local companies and see what my options are. Seems things haven’t changed much in the last ten years from speaking to friends in rural areas.


Plan for my wife to retire in 6-12 months IF Ashe can bring her job with her (we don’t know yet) and honestly, I could go back to stupid slow internet but my kids might hate that part some.

 

[freedom_in_4low]

Yeah, online multi-player video games just don't rank highly as a pastime in rural areas. It's a lot more fun to shoot real guns, ride a 4 wheeler, or bombing down dirt backroads way too fast. They'll adjust.

 

[Moab]

Another endorsement for starlink. Its owned by elon musk apparently. Review is very very good.

His experience leads me to believe that i can actually move further out than i thought. Without losing internet.

Ive been watching this for years. This is the first solution ive read positive reviews about. And at $100 per month seems worth it.

 

[TJ4Jim]

Thanks all so far. Doesn’t give me much hope.


I guess when we start to narrow down a few places I’ll get of nails of the local companies and see what my options are. Seems things haven’t changed much in the last ten years from speaking to friends in rural areas.


Plan for my wife to retire in 6-12 months IF Ashe can bring her job with her (we don’t know yet) and honestly, I could go back to stupid slow internet but my kids might hate that part some.

When you do narrow down the location don't take anyone's word that they can provide service, verify any way you can. I went thru Spectrum when moving here via their website and verbal communication only to hear sorry. Had to enable the mobil hotspot and get unlimited internet thru the phone for several months.

 

[Zorba]

And at $100 per month seems worth it.

YOWZA! That's what I call "Taking it in the shorts!". Ya gotta do whatcha gotta do, but man that's pricey!

 

[ejay]

Used to have HughesNet when I worked offshore for unfiltered internet. Everybody pooled in. Sucked ass. Capped at something like 2 gig of traffic in a 24 hour period and would drop you down to 14k speed after that until it reset in the following 24 hour period.

Basically, you get one or two guys watching porn or YouTube and it was gone before breakfast.

I hear StarLink it cable internet speeds for just over $100 a month. Lots of videos on the internet testing that network.

 

[Rick Flair]

Another endorsement for starlink. Its owned by elon musk apparently. Review is very very good.

His experience leads me to believe that i can actually move further out than i thought. Without losing internet.

Ive been watching this for years. This is the first solution ive read positive reviews about. And at $100 per month seems worth it.

Thanks for the video! That’s very promising!!!!!


Starlink sounds like a great solution and meets our needs!!! I feel much better about this now and yes, kids are going to have dirt bikes and can shoot and hunt which I love the thought of. Thanks all!!!

 

[Rick Flair]

YOWZA! That's what I call "Taking it in the shorts!". Ya gotta do whatcha gotta do, but man that's pricey!

I pay that now.

 

[TJ4Jim]

I pay that now.

Yeah $100 a month for rural internet is probably close to average, Frontier was in that range but the wireless I have now is a flat $85.

 

[Zorba]

Ouch! I'm paying $40 now (suburban), and consider that to be 2X what I should be paying - but I'm a cheap SOB...

 

[Modoc Guy]

We’re pretty much in the boonies here and suffer through DSL for costs sake.

The family tried satellite but it had crappy reception.

The old lady uses a hotspot through AT&T and it works well. Her employer pays for it and that’s good cuz it ain’t cheap.

We’ve been debating trying Dish network to try and get more than DSL but still keep the cost down. Ain’t no way I’m paying a hundred a month for TV!

 

[Rick Flair]

Well maybe we need to start a new thread about internet and cell costs! Lol, $100 for the net and $300 for cells (7 lines).

 

[TJ4Jim]

Well maybe we need to start a new thread about internet and cell costs! Lol, $100 for the net and $300 for cells (7 lines).

Well then we use Cricket wireless and our monthly cost is about $70 for the 2 of us.

 

[Zorba]

I pay $15/mo plus taxes for Cell. It used to be $17.50, but I dumped texting as I seldom used it and "suddenly" I was getting SPAM texts. No thank you, goodbye!