Rural internet service

tw89yj

tw89yj

Well-Known Member
Joined
Aug 15, 2005
Location
Gastonia, NC
We are moving in a month or so and need some advice on internet access providers. At our current home, we have AT&T U-verse, and we aren’t really happy with it. We have to reboot it every week or two. And tv service freezes and buffers frequently.

So I’m looking for options at the new house. So far, AT&T offers dsl, which current homeowners have. Also thought about Hughes net satellite service. We use Netflix and general surfing, and listen to Pandora most evenings and weekends. Wife works from home a few hours a week. Any recommendations?
 
Willc said:
you are fubar be glad you can get dsl.
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This.

My parents live on Lake Gaston, their on a little alcove with rural access, not one of the rich giant homes where big money buys you cable/fiber run to the house.
Their only option in DSL and that's relatively new. Maxes out around 3-4 Mbps. No cable access, cell towers are all too far away. the had Hughes Sat-based internet before that and boy was it pricey and slooooow. Remember, that shit is going into space and back.

Unfortunately in rural areas, home internet access is still pretty limited options. DSL is likely your best bet unless there's been coax cable run.
 
I have at&t dsl. It sucks, but it's pretty much our only option. If a device is downloading anything, nothing else will load a web page...

We had Hughes net at my parents house, but that was years ago. It sucked. Went out if the wind blew....

I live in the void between two towns that merged. Standing in my front yard, I can see the end of the Time Warner cable lines coming from both directions. They want $5k to run cable to my house....
 
Have you checked to see what spectrum would charge to run cable to your house? I’m guessing the lines are at the pavement?

If it gets bad you can come to the house:lol:we’re about to be 2.8 miles driveway to driveway.
 
GONOVRIT said:
Have you checked to see what spectrum would charge to run cable to your house? I’m guessing the lines are at the pavement?

If it gets bad you can come to the house:lol:we’re about to be 2.8 miles driveway to driveway.
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You're on the wrong side of the tracks.
 
Outside your jurisdiction by a long shot but the wife and I live in the sticks here in Louisiana. Closest cable line is 4 miles. We went with Dish network internet. It SUCKED!! They offered to let us out of our contract and upgrade to Hughes gen 5 Satellite. It is still crappy by standard hardline service but is leaps and bounds ahead of anything else Satellite around here. We don’t watch tv or anything but I can surf the web and listen to Spotify without any issue. My wife watches a few shows on her laptop from time to time and has no complaints.
 
Internet speeds are horrible in the area of our new place. Windstream (phone co.) is the only physical service out there. Lucky to get 1Mbps downloads, if it's not windy, raining, or whatever.

I am using an ATT 'unlimited' wireless account, thru a Netgear wifi hotspot in a cradle. Here is one of my download tests.....33.5 down, 20Mbps up.




Speedtest.png
 
I'm in the same boat, except I can't even get dsl. Cell internet is way cheaper than satellite by a long shot. At least when I looked into it a couple years ago.
 
IN the near future I am going to be moving to the mountains of VA, South Western area, Short drives to KY, NC or TN.
One thing I noticed is that all the homes have dishes. One property I looked at I talked to the home owner. His wife works from home needing a good internet connection. With her on it all the time, the kids watching movies, and their phone run through it, he said they have no issues. Not sure of the provider, but I will be finding out. He said it belongs to a friend of his, new company, new service. It's like $300 start up all equipment and install, then $112 a month for all he has. I will be talking to these people again to get the info needed.
 
Remember one thing with ANY and ALL sat services ....... You have a downlink, no uplink.
Your uploading will be by hardline ( unless this has changed in the last few years).
You do not have a sat transmitter, just a reciever.
Check into upload speeds if your wife works from home.
I looked into Hughes net several years ago and the post office was faster than uploading.


Matt
 
We live out in the boonies. Our old house the only option was DSL. Huesnet and cell signal didnt make it to the holler we lived in. Now we have Yadtel fiber optic and hol-e-smokes! compared to what we had, its good. Still not super fast but the two of us can stream and scroll FB with no issues.
 
My first house was too far out to get cable. I was use to having lightening fast internet in my apartment, and then went to DSL at my house. It absolutely SUCKED for the entire time I was there. It has been a little over 5 years since we moved out of that house. I'm not sure if the technology has improved any.
 
DSL only here and no cell service.

DSL is acceptable, barely.

I tried the Hughesnet sat service and lasted 2 weeks.
Had a job to bid and it only took 30 minutes to download the plans and specs. I had to send about 8 drawings and a 100 page pdf to a vendor to price. Overnight it got up to 83% sent.
 
All we have is our cell phones, we have no cable line ran where we live and there is no internet service through the phone line. If we absolutely have to we'll use our cell phones as hotspots seems to be the most legitimate option.
 
When we built our house, we wanted TWC Roadrunner, but it was somewhere in the neighborhood of $5k for them to run it from the main road, and more $$/month. Because AT&T was phone service, federal law required them to provide a connection for free. So we ended up with DSL. It worked fine for general internet browsing, but was sometimes lacking for streaming services. For about 4 years, they sent us flyers and telemarketing to upgrade to Uverse, and we would call and they would say that we could not be upgraded because we were too far away. I just ignored it for a while, and then last year I finally called again, planning to cuss them out for their annoying marketing, but instead was told that they would send a tech out to evaluate. He said it was a longer run than they were "supposed" to do, but he thought it would work, so we said DO IT! Went from 5Mb/s to 20Mb/s connection speed when loading a Netflix program, and our bill went from like $65/month down to $40/month. If I were in your shoes, I'd try to get Uverse through AT&T if you can, and if not, try DSL. If it works good enough, rock on. If not, and they won't do Uverse, pay the installation fee for TWC. Sometimes I wish I would have done that to begin with.
 
Time warner wanted 11 grand to run a cable to my house. I got a sprint WiFi router. With unlimited data. It works alright as long as there are only one or two devices hooked to it. About halfway through the month it throttles you back, Netflix takes a little longer to load and hd comes and goes.
 
Speaking of just past the end of the cable ..... about 25 years ago we lived 7 miles from where we are now.
The end of the line from Warner was 2 houses down. The cable provider in G-boro at the time was 1/4 mile the other way.
I called and asked about plans to keep going ...... "No" ....... can I pay to do it? ..... (literally less than 150ft) .... "Not an option".
The G-boro company required I get all other houses between them and us to sign up.


Matt
 
upnover said:
IN the near future I am going to be moving to the mountains of VA, South Western area, Short drives to KY, NC or TN.
One thing I noticed is that all the homes have dishes. One property I looked at I talked to the home owner. His wife works from home needing a good internet connection. With her on it all the time, the kids watching movies, and their phone run through it, he said they have no issues. Not sure of the provider, but I will be finding out. He said it belongs to a friend of his, new company, new service. It's like $300 start up all equipment and install, then $112 a month for all he has. I will be talking to these people again to get the info needed.
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Dishes = "Sat TV" or HughesNet... unsure which sucks worse.
Where we're heading, is only serviced by CenturyLink DSL.
Here's the kicker... currently living INSIDE the fawking city limits of W-S, the DSL available is 5downx1up for $70/month because you're required to have a phone line. (WindStream SUX)
CenturyLink is 10 downx1 up for $45/month, including POTS dial tone and the driveway (where the phone line is strung) is longer there than the W-S house is from the edge of the city limits!

Have a bud up there on a 10x1 CenturyLink circuit, where his wife works from home 100% (large insurance company), he works from home 40% (what we do ain't exactly easy on the pipe), both use VOIP soft-phones all day, and they stream 100% TV content (kids)... ZERO issues except for video conferencing (which neither have to use).
 
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