How do you get the internet

[pineywoods]

I've had some problems getting on the internet if you care to read my rant here's the link
https://www.smokingmeatforums.com/threads/forced-hiatus.318126/
It's gotten me wondering how do you get the internet? Phone line? Cable tv line? Use your cell phone? Cellular modem? Satellite?
How do you get it I've heard about Starlink do any of you actually have it? Hughes net? If you have a Cellular modem what company and how well does it work?
We live in a very rural area and don't have a lot of choices so it's got me wondering how others get service

 

[tbern]

Through Frontier with their phone line, but dropped the phone line so just getting the Internet now.

 

[Kvgsqtii]

We live in town now and have cable internet. But, we used to live on a farm about 10 miles past bfe. There was no cable, fiber, or dsl within 15 miles. Hughes Net was an option, but with kids that like to game online, the latency would have ruined that. There was a wireless isp that was moving into the area, but they couldn't get to where we were in the valley without building a tower on our property and I didn't want to live next to a tower. So we settled on a 4g based solution.

I installed a 4g modem with 2 yagi directional antennas on a mast on top of one of the silos. Ran Cat5e down the silo, across the barn, across the barnyard and into the house. We had 20-30mbps most of the time, but it got slower in the evenings. Service was provided by OTR Mobile. Service was affordable when we had it, but it has gone up alot since then. Equipment and installation was also expensive, I had ~$2000 wrapped up in the equipment and supplies to do the install.

I have heard good things about starlink from the lady that bought the farm from us as it's available there now, but I've never used it myself. We have t-mobile home internet for our rentals and haven't had any real issues with it.

 

[civilsmoker]

Lucky to have gig fiber (up and down) to the house……very spoiled……

When we lived in the sticks we had a little remote wireless dish….. not so good, however, one of my remote employees has star link. He lives in the sticks…..cell coverage is even spotty. But his connection is very good! He moves a TON of data…..10s of gigs a day!

 

[MiamiSmoker305]

I use Xfinity over coax. No issues, unless Xfinity is working in the neighborhood. Living in a rual area, satellite is your only choice if wireless 5g or fiber/coax is not available. The packets have to traverse to space and back, so there will be latency. There is better compression now-a-days, but the experience will always be slower than traditional internet.

Your best bet is to get Verizon or T-Mobile to provide 5G to your house.

 

[Brokenhandle]

Local phone company ran fiber optics 2 years ago I think. Works good!

Ryan

 

[pineywoods]

Local phone company ran fiber optics 2 years ago I think. Works good!

Ryan

I'm not going to hold my breath for fiber optic there are only a few houses on our road. Unless they get some grant to run fiber optic for rural internet I think the chances of fiber optic here are about 0% Even if they decided to upgrade the phone lines if the same dummies put them in they will be cut constantly (see other thread)

 

[civilsmoker]

Piney, just go on the star link web page and they have a map of the coverage when you put your location in. You have to buy some equipment for your termination point but it works very well for my employee! He does full 3d roadway modeling and has a very (very) large data transfer footprint!

FYI his only other choice was dsl phone line……no good for the data transfer requirements.

 

[indaswamp]

fiber optic....

 

[SmokinAl]

Gig speed cable here, just lucky I guess.
Al

 

[schlotz]

Go figure.... lived in town and had service but not perky. Built our house out in the country and voila, there was fiber, 1G up and down.

 

[gmc2003]

Rural State, even more rural town, and we have cable. When the wife and I moved here in the late eighties we had cable tv before we had a private phone line. Double ring was for us, single ring was for someone else in our town. Cell phone service in my neighborhood is basically non-existent. We got better tv reception growing up in the 60s and 70s on our tv using aluminum foil on the rabbit ears then we get bars on a cell phone here now.

Chris

 

[smokerjim]

We live in a rural area,our only choice is frontier and it's not good, lots of buffering and slow they claim we can't even pay for better internet because it's not available in our our area unless they do upgrades on they're end heck I can't even get cable TV here.

 

[Nate52]

No one except the electric company has run anything up the mountain yet. So our only option for internet is a hot spot through AT&T. We first got our cell plan through them in 2009, so we're grandfathered into a ridiculously good unlimited plan that we are able to keep upgrading.

Works good enough. With three small kids, something is getting streamed to the tv at all waking hours and it seems to keep up.

 

[radioguy]

My brother in law lives in a very rural area in Ohio. He cannot get decent cell service. He used and tolerated Hughes net for years. High latency, which means useless for phone VOIP, and they would reduce his speed when he reached some limit. He got Starlink about a year ago, about $600 up front for equipment and then $110 /month. He loves it, a lot faster than Hughes. VOIP is usable. Check on TMobile or other wireless carriers first, they will be cheaper than Starlink.


RG

 

[rjob]

Rural area, have used Hughes for over 10 years. Only option. Recently added Starlink, better option, costs more. Just not sure of longevity of Starlink. Cell company was touting 5g but could not provide sufficient information if modem would work through concrete or metal walls.

 

[SmokinEdge]

We are rural as well and on a dead end road to boot. So our options are very limited, heck even our cellular service is iffy here at the house. We had the hughes net for a while and didn’t care for it, had another internet connection from a satellite tv provider but was pretty slow and expensive. Then we discovered that a couple different local companies offered “point to point” internet service. It’s basically wireless broadband. We live in hilly to mountainous country so the towers they put up cover a lot of country, in flat land this may not work well, but for us the connection is great, speed is great and we can use Wi-Fi calling now on our phones so our cellular service is much better.

 

[thirdeye]

I have fixed wireless internet connection. The provider basically has a number of towers in the county and if your home or business has a direct line-of-sight to a tower, they install a radio antenna which connects to your router.

 

[Colin1230]

Google fiber w/ multiple WiFi routers. By far the best option in our neighborhood.

 

[sandyut]

I am up in the mountains. Luckily we do have cable internet at about as fast as you want to buy. Its pretty cheap IMO.

BUT-while we looked for a house to buy - many areas close by didnt have wired cable. I did look into several dish and satellite options. Starlink seemed pretty good, except is snows alot here and that messes it up. there were some claims of snow melting technology, but I fear its too cold here for that to work. Hughs, and other dish services are common up here, they are spendy but if thats all you can get then you gotta pay.