Anybody Use Wireless Internet for Home Internet Service

[Bruce Wrenn]

For years, AT&T has had their Mobley, and Verizon their Jet Port. These were primarily for use in RV's. Last night saw a T-Mobile ad for 5g home internet service for $50 a month. With my super slow service this seems to be an answer. Because we live in a forest, satilitte internet isn't an option either

[Paul F Franklin]

We don't have full time wireless internet, but we used our phones as wireless hot spots for about a week when our cable from the house to the pole failed and we were without hardline internet for about a week. We have a marginal cell signal at the house (2-3 bars at best) but it worked fine. We didn't try to stream a movie or the like, but my wife had numerous zoom meetings and it all worked fine.

If you have a good cell signal it should be fine. Why don't you set up your phone as a hot spot and give it a try? A dedicated cell router should perform even better than a phone hot spot, but it will give you an idea. Be sure to test it at various times of day, especially in the evening. Just make sure to check if there are data limits and what the overage charges are, if any.

[David Jurincie]

I tried the T-Mobile service for about 3 weeks and returned it. I was having to reset the box about every 3 days which tech support told me was not unusual and they would not replace it. The connection speed was about 50 MB which I was happy with.

[Roger Feeley]

My son-in-law is frequently a talking head on the news channels (mostly Fox). Lately, a mobile studio has been showing up. Instead of connecting from his home office, he goes into the van. I asked the guy about how they connect. He said they have 11 cell phone accounts spanning all carrier networks and they use proprietary software and hardware to connect and move packets of video.

[Jim Becker]

I think it would be worthy to try the new TMo service if you have decent signal in your home's physical location. This is likely the way that many folks in more out of the way areas will get their Internet going forward, honestly.

[Dwayne Watt]

Wireless service via cell tower is typically much better than simply using your phone as a hot spot. The phone tech installs a receiver antenna aimed directly at the best tower plus it can be mounted higher on a structure or pole if need be. Depending on your location, there may be true wireless internet providers; however those folks seem to never advertise very much and it takes some research to find them.
Satellite internet is the worst! Better than nothing but not much. The new Starlink service has some potential over traditional satellite internet but is not rolled out everywhere, yet.

[Jim Becker]

Some of the new cellular home Internet offerings do not use separate, external antennas, which is why the cost can be kept low. I have not yet seen mention if they can have them attached if need be.

[Thomas McCurnin]

I understand that the infrastructure bill passed this year will strive to put up more cell towers, especially in rural locations. I'm not sure whether that money is a subsidy to internet providers (At&T, TMobile, Verizon) or goes to local governments to separately contract for those towers.

[Bruce Wrenn]

I have a couple problems. First, I don't have, nor want a smart phone. We are at the end of AT&T's service area, and on copper. It's over 13,000 feet to closest switch. But we are less than a quarter mile from next town over's city limits, where they have Ting (blazing fast fiber,) Spectrum, and Century Link. But we aren't in any of their service areas. We are less than two miles from at least four cell towers, so signal shouldn't be a problem, except for AT&T. When our kids are here, they use our ISL for internet on their phones (AT&T.) AT&T's service at best, SUCKS and they have no desire to upgrade it. It's a take it or leave it proposition. That's why I'm asking about wireless internet service. Even though we are "rural," we live within ten miles of over 50K people. An internet provider only has to serve ONE CUSTOMER in a census block to count as having high speed service in that area. That means our area just "falls thru the cracks."

[Steve Demuth]

I have used wireless ethernet (from a tower about 5 miles distant) for internet service for 20 years. It works fine, with outages being very rare. In the last 6 months, Verizon has activated 5g (actually, the transitional wide band that they call 5g, but not true 5g) here. I get about 5X the speed that my ethernet based wireless delivers using my cell phone as a bridge. I have not switched to Verizon as my ISP for two reasons: one, they don't actually offer a plan here, despite the service being available and reliable; two, I'm reluctant to be dependent on Verizon. My locally owned wireless ISP has good customer service, and have been responsive to my needs, albeit very expensive. So, when I need the extra bandwidth, I bridge to Verizon with my cell phone, and stick with the ethernet for most things.

[Alex Zeller]

I was using Verizon's 4G service as my only internet (until just recently I added Starlink) for a decade. They recently changed their plans and for $60/m they offered 100gb of data. Unless you use a lot of data chances are it's enough. They offer their fake 5G service around here but it's not much, if any, better than their 4G. The 4G service works and I'm able to pretty much everything including streaming but that eats up data so I don't do it too often. I switched to Starlink so I could steam and dump Dish network. The nice thing about using cell service is if the power goes out usually the service still works. So if you have a laptop you can still get on-line.