Home Forums Miscellaneous Topics Rural Living Rural high speed internet options?

I’m looking for advice for a rural property where typical high speed internet isn’t available. I’d like to stream and avoid a cable or dish contract, but maybe this isn’t realistic. I’m looking for a reliable and fast option for under $250/mo. Is that reasonable?


Best bang for the buck?

If money was no object option?

Most performance at a modest to high cost option?

I just got AT&T fixed internet with 215 GB's a month usage for $40 a month and a $99 installation. I'm about 2 miles from a cell tower, so my signal is very good. Not blazing fast, but good enough to do what I want to do. A lot of people around here are installing the AT&T hot spot, with 250 GB's a month for about the same price as I'm paying, have even heard of some who have unlimited usage.

I had HughesNet satellite, and although the reception was pretty decent, you will pay out the butt for usage. If you're not near a cell tower, Hughes may be your only option, and I'm nit sure that they are available everywhere.

The people I know that had Hughes were very dissapointed.

just tested my speed......local company.......Fiber......$86/month w/land line

Down......32.37

Up........66.43

what the hell that ever means ?

good ? bad....?

Rural Wyoming. No fiber, no towers within line of sight. Hughes Net is the only option I've found.

T-Mobile's 5G internet if anywhere near now or in the coming months might be the best option.

Here's an article:

Link


Phil

No wireless out here. No DSL.

I've been on DishNet and Verizon hotspot for years.

The reason I have both is that data is limited on both. It's limited to 15GB each.

Both work well. I have a cell booster for the cell service and hot spot.

Can not do much live streaming like watching movies, etc because it eats the data quickly.


Better than living in town though...

I look at it that way too. I don't have many options here, due to the location of my residence, and the outdated maps that the electric company and phone company go by. One side of my place borders a different service area, and the part that my house is on borders another. The north portion is next to an area that has long had DSL, and now has fiber optic, and they have even run it out into some remote places. On the other had, the service area where I live, has lines coming in from different direction, that dead end at my house. This area doesn't have anything anywhere close to modern. But, I wouldn't want to live anywhere else.

FiWi an option Brian? Sounds like what James has.

Supposed to be coming available here. Phone Co. Just replaced all phone lines down our road during a rebuild....with Cu, not fiber. 🤔

FiWi is our only option to have connectivity greater 1meg down/0.3up!

That's 10 times faster than my connection through a US Cellular phone, but there's no fiber or cable anywhere near me.

Brian,

check and see if there are any local providers with a line of sight service. Small dish, no limit where I live, $38/month vs the close to $100 we were paying Hughes before this company had enough bandwidth to take more customers. Download speeds work for us, wife watches netflix, I mostly just putter on the internet and watch some you tube stuff. I had great luck with a similar service when I lived in WA too.

Line of sight might be an issue if you're in a heavily treed area. Unless the trees in my area grow another 20 feet in the next few years I'll have no issues.

Best of luck to you in figuring it out, another one of the joys of modern living in a non-modern area!

Geno

This^^^^^^^

This, if it is available. Go cellular over satellite if you can? Cellular is typically faster and satellite has latency issues which makes going thru a vpn impossible which for the average user is no big deal. If you have a weak cell signal, you can get a repeater which should speed it up.

It looks like there's a line of sight option available. So, that's good news!

Good luck with it, I'm about a mile, and half from the tower my server uses. It is hit, and miss here. I reboot several time a day.

I have to do tbat to maintain connectivity on my damn copper connection.

At least I have a smoking 1gb down connection.

I just signed up with Ubifi, supposed to be unlimited data, they are AT&T resellers so speed will depend on how close you are to a tower. They do have external high gain antenna options for areas where the signal is week. They have a 30 day trial period so I figured I’d give it a try. My current internet comes over WiFi from a tower 5 miles away but with all the users on that tower my 20 MBPS service sometimes falls to less than 3.

Around here Electric Coops have been installing their own fiber optic lines (running them on the power poles) to offer internet, tv, and phone to their members. I was fortunate that last summer they ran the lines in my area. Paying $49/month for up to 100mbps unlimited, for $80 I can upgrade to 1gbps. The 100mbps has allowed us to stream tv and be on two additional devices all at the same time.

I know several who tried hughes net, and not one has been satisfied.

I have now had my AT&T fixed wireless internet for a little over a month, and so far have been very satisfied. It helps that I have an unobstructed view of a cell tower about 2 miles away as the crow flies. We can stream movies on Netflix, and run several different devices all at the same time. I just ran a speed test, and the download was 67.2 mbps, and upload was 23.5. That puts the Hughes we had to shame.

On the flip side, my son lives about a 1/3 of a mile across the farm from me, and he had it put it. His speed is nowhere close to mine, and they say it's because of all the trees in his yard. It's still better than the Hughes he had, but he was hoping for what I am getting.


Fiber optic lines have been put up about a mile from me, but the chances that I can get it are two............slim and none.