Rural Internet suggestions please?

[Dave Johnson29]

Hi All,

Time is fast approaching where my two-year DSL contract is coming up for renewal. I called the only phone company out here and the story is not good when my contract expires with them. Well, not good for me, but very good for them. :)

I am looking at Hughes and Wild Blue satellite and a Verizon cell-phone for high speed.

Not surprisingly, being a captive audience out here in the boonies they are all expensive and all about the same price.

Anyone have other suggestions for high-speed internet access?

I guess I could go sit in the car park of the local hospital where they have free wifi. But that is a 60-mile round trip each day. <grin>

Thanks.

[Matt Meiser]

You'd be crazy to switch from DSL to satellite. Unless your DSL doesn't work you'll experience a big drop in real world performance no matter what the satellite companies tell you.

You could look for a wireless ISP. That's a good option if the provider knows what they are doing. Virtually all are mom and pop operations.

[Gene Howe]

Dave,
Check with Walmart. They have a blackberry+Verizon network+something called "berry tether" that gives you high speed access. Air time is plenty and with the berry tether, there's no internet access fees.
Monthly cost is around $70.00 total. I'm at $120.00 with Frontier phone, unlimited free LD and DSL.
I'm in Snowflake. Where are you?
Gene

[Michael Schapansky]

Ditto what Matt said about satellite. There isn't a month that goes by that I'm not looking for alternatives. You get inconsistent speed, outages when it rains or is cloudy and then there's the dreaded FAP or Fair Access Policy. That limits you to 200M of data per day on the cheapest ($60.00) per month plan. You have to avoid any but the smallest videos and be very careful about downloads to avoid exceeding the limit. If you do get fapped your speed drops to approximately 14.4kps for 24 hours remember those days? Takes about 15 minutes for an average page to load. You can pay more for faster speeds and a higher data limit but my understanding is that the folks with those more expensive plans have the same problems.

[Pat Germain]

My brother lives in rural Oklahoma. He has a line-of-site microwave connection for his internet service. It took a few days to get it dialled in. But now it works very well.

Therefore, if DSL becomes prohibitively expensive, than wireless would be the best option. There's a wireless ISP in almost every rural area. If there's not one in your area, there's an untapped market opportunity for you.

[Ben Franz]

I'd strongly suggest NOT switching to WildBlue or Hughes. I tried WB when we moved to the sticks and DSL wasn't yet available here. Lasted about 1 week before I had it removed. Latency delays when switching pages made it worse than dialup. I went to a local line-of-sight microwave service with 2-300 local customers. They were great for about 1 1/2 years, then DSL service became available here. I switched and got a lifetime price lock that is half the local service cost. I don't think you'll be happy with any satellite based service. Verizon 3G has a monthly cap on usage and it's real costly to go over - it's not intended to be a primary ISP.

[David Freed]

I have Verizon and have never gone over the 5 gig limit. If you download or send lots of pictures or videos you can go over the limit, but with normal web surfing it would take at least 7 or 8 hours every day to hit the limit. It costs me $60/mo.

[Bob Borzelleri]

I'd strongly suggest NOT switching to WildBlue or Hughes. I tried WB when we moved to the sticks and DSL wasn't yet available here. Lasted about 1 week before I had it removed. Latency delays when switching pages made it worse than dialup. I went to a local line-of-sight microwave service with 2-300 local customers. They were great for about 1 1/2 years, then DSL service became available here. I switched and got a lifetime price lock that is half the local service cost. I don't think you'll be happy with any satellite based service. Verizon 3G has a monthly cap on usage and it's real costly to go over - it's not intended to be a primary ISP.

Everything that Ben said. I had Hughes for 3 years. It was a total nightmare. Now have a local microwave line of sight arrangement. It ain't perfect (256k), but it is tons better than Hughes.

[craig greene]

Look at Clearwire and see if they are in your area. http://www.clearwire.com/

resonable rates and they have plans for home, mobile, and both. Just not sure if they are in your area.

[Dave Johnson29]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the recommendations. Research is showing that Tetherberry.com sounds interesting, which is now called just Tether.com as they are developing an Android version. I have been looking at Blackberrys for email these past few weeks and trying to justify the cost. :) Now may be the time.

I have a neighbor using Version wireless internet and it seems to work very well and I can apparently Tether to Verizon. More research will reveal all.

I'll report back what I am finding.

Thanks again to all, so far.

[Matt Meiser]

I'm actually using Verizon's 3G service but through a company that markets services to large retailers. That gets me service without the download limit which I need due to working from home. $$$. But it does work well.

I'd kill to pay what Hughesnet charges for satellite to get DSL, cable, or wireless (microwave.) We are in a very rural pocket but only 8 miles from the Toledo city limit. The cable company from Toledo comes within 1.25 miles but won't come to our house due to telephone exchange issues. The one to the north is further away and won't come down due to infrastructure cost (plus they are bankrupt last I heard.) Verizon won't fix their infrastructure problems so they can provide DSL and in fact are selling us to Frontier along with a lot of other areas they don't want. Frontier promises to make things better. There's a WISP, run by one woman who owns a computer store 50 miles away. She's totally incompetent and couldn't get my service working despite a clear line of sight to the antenna and a 4 mile distance. In the process she knocked everyone else out for days and didn't even work on it during that time. Clear advertised in the fall for network engineers in Toledo, so that might be our best shot. Barring that, T1 quotes to my house have fallen 50% in a little over a year. 50% more and it would be a cost-effective solution since we could go VOIP for one phone line and cut the other back to bare, bare, bare bones instead of the bare bones option we have now.

I had Hughesnet for 3 years and went to Sprint when they sent us an ad for 3G advertising it as a perfect solution for rural users. Then they added the 5GB cap after 1-1/2 years despite the fact we were under contract. I'm on my second year of the 3G service that uses Verizon's network. We've paid a LOT of money for Internet in that time!

[Dave Johnson29]

Hey Matt,

Very familiar story. :)

I will monitor DSL usage for the next week to get an idea of what I use.

[Gerold Griffin]

We currently have DSL thru BellSouth but are thinking about going to AT&T. Was considering Hughes Net but way to expensive. By the way AT&T is advertising DSL for $24 and change per month for the first year. Wondering what it will be after that. I will be keeping an eye on this post for my own use.

[Dave Johnson29]

By the way AT&T is advertising DSL for $24 and change per month

Ahhh, you lucky City dwellers. We have a choice between Frontier, Frontier and Frontier and their DSL is 60-bucks a month unless you buy the phone package then it is 50-bucks but the phone is another $30. {sigh}

No guesses why I am looking for alternatives. We are ducks in Frontier's barrel out here.

[Matt Meiser]

DSL for $60 is a much better option than paying $60 to tether a phone, paying $60 + startup costs for satellite, or $60 for a 3G card. By the way, you can't do VOIP on any of these options either.

[Bill Cunningham]

If you have a close neighbor, and a wireless network, you could split the costs and you both get a good deal.. Works well for sat.TV too..1 contract two receivers (not connected to the phone line):rolleyes:

[Jim Becker]

No way would I dump DSL for sat services...that would be like going back to a dial-up in many cases. Satellite is kinda a "last resort" type of access...expensive and poor performance compared to most other solutions if they are available. Wireless from a cell carrier (3G or better) is worth consideration, but there may be a very low cap on bandwidth that could get quite expensive if you exceed it.

[Karl Card]

Move.....lol

[Karl Card]

I have had dsl with att, satellite and microwave line of site and now 20mb cable. The best service I had out of all those was microwave. Very fast, same speed all the time, no latency issues. DSL the first time i had it was in the country and i loved it, ran a home network off of it and everything was great, I moved into the city got att dsl againa nd it sucked, never the same speed, couldnt get 6mb in the city but could in the country, satellite sucked worse than anything that has ever sucked before it lasted 1 week and had it taken out. Now I am using 20 mb cable and like it pretty good. I would rather have a good dsl line at 20mb though but I dont see that happening soon. Personally id rather go back to dial up rather than satelite when you look at the whole picture.

[Curt Harms]

Ahhh, you lucky City dwellers. We have a choice between Frontier, Frontier and Frontier and their DSL is 60-bucks a month unless you buy the phone package then it is 50-bucks but the phone is another $30. {sigh}

No guesses why I am looking for alternatives. We are ducks in Frontier's barrel out here.

http://www.broadbandreports.com/
http://www.internetservicelist.com/isplist/broadband_wisp_list_dsl_xl_microwave_inc_isp181540 .html

[Dave Johnson29]

Thanks Curt,

But when I say rural, I mean boonies in Northern AZ. Closest town with more than 2500 people 60-mile round trip. Closest neighbor 1/2 mile. :)

I would not move. This is nirvana here and I have been offered, no, make that badgered to sell for almost double what I paid 5 years back. I know what I have here and I love it.

A mountain lion ran past my front gate yesterday evening. The dumb dog went off to challenge but luckily came right back when I called. It would have been a one-way trip. He's not so dumb it seems. :D

Verizon cellular Internet is looking good. I set one up for a neighbor a few months back and it works well.

[Logan William]

I'm going to echo what others have said and say stay away from satellite, I also live in the boonies where my choices are dialup or satellite and I chose satellite....WildBlue in this case. Actual max dl'd speeds i've seen are about 45-60kbps, latency is in that 800-1000ms range on avg, often content heavy pages will time out and I can't play xbox live anymore...which isn't a huge loss but annoying. Its getting to the point where I'm going to consider trying the dialup access to see what type of speed I could get from it on a consistent basis, if it gets rid of the latency issue it would be worth it as I'm now off contract. And don't even get me started on the "Free Access Policy," they can cap your speed(which basically makes it unusable outside of the hours of 10pm to 6 am) instantly but it takes 3 biz days to bump up to the next tier to raise your data cap and restore your speed.....that was a rough couple of days for me. Rumors are circulating that the local telephone company is in the running for a USDA RD grant to run fiber to the home for a large number of their rural customers and I'm almost drooling at that, the parents got it to their house about a year ago through a RD grant the phone company got and the speed is insane....just wish it would've happened when I still lived there!

[Dave Johnson29]

I'm going to echo what others have said and say stay away from satellite

Thanks Logan,

After talking to the WildBlue sales person yesterday I scratched them off my list. About the hardest hard sell I have heard in a long time.

My theory is if they are using these hard sell guys then they are not a company I want to deal with. If you have a good product it does not need the hard sell. This guy was tenacious. he just would not answer my questions, but would dart off in another direction.

I'd rather resort to pen on paper and a postage stamp before I would give them any of my hard earned. :)

[David G Baker]

There was a story on the TV News about fiber coming to my county but no information if it will get to my neighborhood, sure hope so. I live in a low population density area of Mid Michigan and am totally amazed that I have cable TV, Internet and phone.

[Brian Elfert]

I've been looking to move to a more rural area (Not 30 miles from town) for a while. I have to sell my house first.

Any location without high speed Internet I rejected outright. The last time I was looking Verizon's 3G Broadband didn't even cover the entire metro area, but coverage is 10 times better now. I would still like to have a hard line for Internet.

[Dave Johnson29]

I would still like to have a hard line for Internet.

Don't sell the Verizon cell internet too short. Other than the 5GB monthly limit it is performing for the neighbor very well. She was on dial up as her house was 2,000ft too far for the max distance of 10,000ft for DSL.

I have been running a traffic monitor and my useage is not typical as I maintain several websites for companies and there is a bunch of graphics coming and going. Today has been my higest total at 151MB. For a 31 day month, that still comes in under the 5GB, but only just.

Suffice to say, I just signed again with the DSL. They have me for another 12 months. If the costs drop for the Verizon stuff though, it may not be too long before it makes sense and that's why I only signed for another 12 months. There is a lot happening with G3, Android and smart phones right now. Not the time to be too firmly locked into contracts. :)

Thanks to everyone who offered help and opinions. Much appreciated.

[Jim Becker]

Dave, over the next couple of years VZ and ATT will be starting to roll out 4G services via something called LTE (Long Term Evolution). Speeds will be two to four times faster than the current 3G wireless data and it's the intention of these carriers to leverage that to provide substantial support for rural areas that are not even close to cost effective for "wired" solutions, such as DSL, cable or fiber due to density and in the case of the first one, distance. So by the time your year is up with the DSL renewal, you just might have another attractive option...probably with the same caps as current 3G wireless, but with speeds in the 5-20mbps range.

[Matt Meiser]

probably with the same caps as current 3G wireless, but with speeds in the 5-20mbps range.

Jim are you speculating or is that what they are saying? Sprint/Clear's 4G doesn't have caps, at least now. Giving people the ability to download a movie in a few seconds doesn't do much good if that's the only one they can download all month.

I've seen that Verizon is hoping to launch 4G in a few markets before year end. I understand their technology platform is supposed to be superior, but Sprint/Clear are seriously ahead of them.

[Paul Brinkmeyer]

Dave

I'm in the sticks too, and can not even get the verizion or anything.
I used wild blue for 1 year....not good
Then I saw a service offered by my electric utility, Wi-Power offerd by TransWorld Network, and it works very good for me. It is wireless to a tower, and we are running two computers on it all the time, and send/recieve large files all the time. No limits or anything.

I do not know if it available for you, but would be worth looking into.
twncorp dot com

[Rod Torgeson]

Some of you are lucky in the sense that you have high speed INTERNET. My option is dial up. No DSL. One of my neighbors a couple of years ago went with satellite and that did not work out. The cell phone reception is not very good where I live. Some get signals, some don't. One of my neighbors checked on the wireless thing and there are no plans to put up a tower anytime soon in our area. So I guess I will just stick with dial up.

Rod<---in Appleton, WA

[Dave Johnson29]

Thanks Paul, I will check it out.

Rod, the cell phone coverage is spotty inside my house but not too bad outside. I know the spots inside where it works fine and since the cell phone version is a wifi modem I would have put it in one of the magic spots.

I tested the neighbor's unit here and it worked fine providing it was on a magic spot. If there is a Verizon network in your area give them a call and see if you can trial it. I was reading the Verizon contract online a few days back and it said you can return it all within 30 days with no loss other than the first month's service payment. After that 30 days there is a $400 early termination fee.

You would want to check that for yourself though. The contract that you sign may be different to the online version. :)

[Brian Elfert]

Don't sell the Verizon cell internet too short. Other than the 5GB monthly limit it is performing for the neighbor very well. She was on dial up as her house was 2,000ft too far for the max distance of 10,000ft for DSL.


The 5GB limit is a pretty good reason to skip cellular Internet. It is also fairly expensive compared to what I pay for DSL now. The only real advantage is the ability to take it with you. I have access as needed to a Verizon aircard from work and the throughput is not always consistent even when stationary.

I have DSL at my current location, but I'm in a very suburban location right now. It just works. Never a hiccup and speeds are very consistent.

Cellular Internet is certainly preferable to either no Internet or dial up. It is great if it is the only option. I have had Verizon 3G work deep in the woods far from any town. I was expecting 1X at best.

[Curt Harms]

just because it was a nice day and I didn't have anything else to do. T-Mobile's data plan is unlimited according to the flyer I picked up. $59.00 for 500 minutes talk, unlimited text & unlimited web access. I don't know anything about coverage in the "boonies" or how fast their network is.

[Don Bullock]

No way would I dump DSL for sat services...that would be like going back to a dial-up in many cases. Satellite is kinda a "last resort" type of access...expensive and poor performance compared to most other solutions if they are available. Wireless from a cell carrier (3G or better) is worth consideration, but there may be a very low cap on bandwidth that could get quite expensive if you exceed it.

Unfortunately I didn't have a choice when I moved last year. In the area where I live there is no cable, no DSL and cell phone access is very spotty. I checked with a friend who has used dial-up, HughsNet and Wild Blue. Using his recommendation I hooked up with Wild Blue and have been fairly pleased so far. Yes, I do lose Internet during heavy rain, but otherwise my speeds are similar to what I had with DSL (DSL speeds are dependent on distance from the "booster" and the number of users on the system at any given time. My Wild Blue is much faster than those another friend in the area experiences with her dial-up. I did recently check into 3G through Vorizon, but their limit is far too small and the "penalties" are extreme. Direct line of sight microwave was also something that I was interested in, but my area is so hilly it's not available. Until wireless companies, such as Vorizon, start offering cheaper plans with bigger caps I'm stuck with satellite. I guess that's the price I pay for living in such a beautiful place and I'll gladly pay it.