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.