Forced Hiatus

[pineywoods]

No Jeff didn't drop the ban hammer on me yet but the phone company and county have.
So I live in a rural area and have dirt road for about a mile either direction to a paved road. Years ago when I had our phone installed here they came out of a telephone box about a 1/2 mile away and trenched right down the middle of the road to where they were going to turn the line to come onto our land there was a fairly deep ditch and they buried the line 3 or 4" below the bottom of the ditch. The county maintains those ditches and the first time they came out to drag them deeper with the grader of course they cut the phone line.
Fast forward to a few weeks ago the county was pulling the ditches and bingo my neighbor and I both loose phone and internet. Call they phone company and they say 5 or 6 days till they can fix it. The phone tech that comes out says he knows exactly where it's cut because they have cut it there before it's not deep enough. He fixes it and tells us he's going to "start a ticket to replace that line" so we have phone and internet back for 2 days and while I'm watching an online equipment auction that I want to bid on a few things the internet goes out. Try rebooting and nothing finally pick up the phone and it's dead grrrrrr. Call the neighbor and theirs is out as well. We talk to another neighbor farther down the road and he has seen some guys putting down new cable. Several calls to the phone company and we find out the ""contractor" they used to replace the line screwed it up and in 5 or 6 days they'd have a tech out to fix it. He comes out tell us they replaced about 100' of the line buried it deeper but then hooked it up wrong.
Sorry for the long rant but it has been driving me nuts and my eyes are too old for using my cell and my fingers are way to big for that tiny cell phone keyboard.

 

[DougE]

No Jeff didn't drop the ban hammer on me yet but the phone company and county have.
So I live in a rural area and have dirt road for about a mile either direction to a paved road. Years ago when I had our phone installed here they came out of a telephone box about a 1/2 mile away and trenched right down the middle of the road to where they were going to turn the line to come onto our land there was a fairly deep ditch and they buried the line 3 or 4" below the bottom of the ditch. The county maintains those ditches and the first time they came out to drag them deeper with the grader of course they cut the phone line.
Fast forward to a few weeks ago the county was pulling the ditches and bingo my neighbor and I both loose phone and internet. Call they phone company and they say 5 or 6 days till they can fix it. The phone tech that comes out says he knows exactly where it's cut because they have cut it there before it's not deep enough. He fixes it and tells us he's going to "start a ticket to replace that line" so we have phone and internet back for 2 days and while I'm watching an online equipment auction that I want to bid on a few things the internet goes out. Try rebooting and nothing finally pick up the phone and it's dead grrrrrr. Call the neighbor and theirs is out as well. We talk to another neighbor farther down the road and he has seen some guys putting down new cable. Several calls to the phone company and we find out the ""contractor" they used to replace the line screwed it up and in 5 or 6 days they'd have a tech out to fix it. He comes out tell us they replaced about 100' of the line buried it deeper but then hooked it up wrong.
Sorry for the long rant but it has been driving me nuts and my eyes are too old for using my cell and my fingers are way to big for that tiny cell phone keyboard.

Man, I feel for you knowing how rural life is. One thing you may be able to do is use your phone as a hot spot for your PC, or laptop for internet access, provided your cell plan allows it. Mine does, and I've had to do it a number of times. Matter of fact, before I ran a CAT5 cable out to my barn for internet, my phone was the only way I could get internet on my PC out there.

 

[pineywoods]

Man, I feel for you knowing how rural life is. One thing you may be able to do is use your phone as a hot spot for your PC, or laptop for internet access, provided your cell plan allows it. Mine does, and I've had to do it a number of times. Matter of fact, before I ran a CAT5 cable out to my barn for internet, my phone was the only way I could get internet on my PC out there.

Doug I actually went to the Verizion store and they have wireless service in some areas which of course I was not in at this time. However they offer it to businesses everywhere I was told so we used the farm name with a tax id to get the modem. It was a pain to get hooked up but I finally got it, signal is not great and drops at times and it runs decent a lot of the time but bogs way down at night and on weekends when usage is high on the network. A couple other things we found was that residential and business are the same price but residential is unlimited and business is 300 gigs a month. We have 30 days to decide if we want to keep the business service or not if not we return the router and they charge us 50 bucks for the use of it. I'm still playing with it trying to decide but i think we'll end up canceling the service and hope that eventually somebody offers decent service that works here

 

[negolien]

LOL that's messed up man lol.... maybe Elon will save you with his miracle satellites lol

 

[DougE]

Doug I actually went to the Verizion store and they have wireless service in some areas which of course I was not in at this time. However they offer it to businesses everywhere I was told so we used the farm name with a tax id to get the modem. It was a pain to get hooked up but I finally got it, signal is not great and drops at times and it runs decent a lot of the time but bogs way down at night and on weekends when usage is high on the network. A couple other things we found was that residential and business are the same price but residential is unlimited and business is 300 gigs a month. We have 30 days to decide if we want to keep the business service or not if not we return the router and they charge us 50 bucks for the use of it. I'm still playing with it trying to decide but i think we'll end up canceling the service and hope that eventually somebody offers decent service that works here

I just hot spot my verizon phone and use that for PC internet when I have to. Nothing needed but the phone and a PC with wifi. It's not ideal speed wise, and data usage applies, but it works when I have to.

 

[SmokinEdge]

I’m very rural here and have almost no cell service, so out solution was a point to point style service for internet. They have small towers that can receive your signal and then are connected to fiber line for a broadband style experience. Might look into a point to point supplier.

 

[DougE]

Not every verizon plan includes the ability to use your phone as a hot spot, or for tethering (where you use your charge cable to provide internet access to your PC from your phone through USB), but mine does allow both.

 

[SmokinEdge]

Btw, our cell signal also now works off the point to point. “Internet calling” they call it. It’s fantastic. So both internet connection and cellular connection off the same service.

 

[bauchjw]

That’s a bummer, but glad it’s getting worked out! I suppose the upside to not having internet is that you don’t have the option to see what’s going on in the world!

 

[pineywoods]

Here's another thread I made kind of related
https://www.smokingmeatforums.com/threads/how-do-you-get-the-internet.318127/

 

[pineywoods]

I’m very rural here and have almost no cell service, so out solution was a point to point style service for internet. They have small towers that can receive your signal and then are connected to fiber line for a broadband style experience. Might look into a point to point supplier.

What company do you have the point to point with?

 

[DougE]

Wifi calling is mainly how I can make and receive calls in my barn with the doors shut. Metal pole barn = Faraday cage. Back when I did need to use my phone as a hotspot for internet access in the barn, I had to keep the phone where it had direct access outside the barn for a signal. Since I ran internet directly from my main router in the house out to the barn, I can keep everything shut up since I have a wired access point for wifi out there.

 

[DougE]

What company do you have the point to point with?

Check to see if AT&T has fixed wireless available where you are at. We have had spectrum fiber since it became available this past spring, but I had at&t fixed wireless for several years before that, and satellite internet prior to that. At&t fixed wireless is point to point service like Edge is talking about.

 

[pineywoods]

Wifi calling is mainly how I can make and receive calls in my barn with the doors shut. Metal pole barn = Faraday cage. Back when I did need to use my phone as a hotspot for internet access in the barn, I had to keep the phone where it had direct access outside the barn for a signal. Since I ran internet directly from my main router in the house out to the barn, I can keep everything shut up since I have a wired access point for wifi out there.

Doug you should be able to use a pair of wires in the cat 5 cable for a phone line out to the barn. Since our cookshed was built first my phone line comes in there and I ran a cat 5 cable to the house and hooked up my phone and internet in the house

 

[DougE]

I might could if I actually had a house phone

 

[DougE]

Since we all have cell phones, we don't have an actual land line.

 

[DougE]

My cat5 line from the house to barn just comes off my router in the house and goes to a router set in access point mode in the barn. That way I have wifi available in the barn for my PC out there, my phone can do wifi calling, my pellet grill and SV cooker have wifi access .......... We are just too damn connected in this day and age.

 

[DougE]

I may be just an old tree trimmer and farmer, but I've learned a thing or two about networking out of necessity over the years.

 

[pineywoods]

I hear that Doug. I have to have phone service in order to have internet right now till I find something different. AT&T says they don't have fixed wireless in my area

 

[DougE]

I hear that Doug. I have to have phone service in order to have internet right now till I find something different. AT&T says they don't have fixed wireless in my area

The feds have grant money to bring access to rural America and that's how I have fiber access now. Just a matter of time. Shame that AT&T fixed wireless isn't an option. It was dang near as good as the fiber I have now, for my needs. The fiber is definitely faster and has a ton more bandwidth, with no data caps, but the fixed wireless honestly did everything I needed. I only switched for no data caps, and my bill is less between the fixed wireless and direct tv. We get all our tv programming through the spectrum fiber service, so I was able to ditch direct tv in the process.