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Internet in the Country

2,954 Views | 21 Replies | Last: 6 yr ago by shaynew1
RMC91
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techno-ag
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You want a WISP, wireless Internet service provider. Typically you pay for a pole or tower beside your house pointed at their broadcast tower (often on a nearby water tower). DSL speeds, more or less, but no caps.
TwoMarksHand
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techno-ag said:

You want a WISP, wireless Internet service provider. Typically you pay for a pole or tower beside your house pointed at their broadcast tower (often on a nearby water tower). DSL speeds, more or less, but no caps.
This is what I have. Not the best internet I've ever had, but it gets the job done. My only other option is the local broadband internet and I didn't want to pay for the required home phone.
jbeaman88
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How does WISP compare th HughesNet? They seem to have more flexibility and better prices now but not sure about bandwidth. HughesNet is what the Walker County rural neighbors have so strongly considering that when we move there full time.
HarleySpoon
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Lordy....do anything but Hughes Net. Had them for two years....often out and always slow....and zero responsiveness or concern from Hughes Net.
2468
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I have Windstream DSL near Gibbon's Creek. Its not the fastest but it works. I can stream a movie on netflix and run two phones on wifi simultaneously with no problems. It will get bogged down if someone leaves a tablet on in addition to what I just mentioned. Amazon Video runs fine on it but it tends to lag more than amazon does.
lexofer
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Do not get any kind of satellite internet especially HughesNet. Wireless ISP is going to be your best option if DSL isn't available, some are better than others. I use Rise Broadband which is pretty decent considering, they cover a fairly large area, but will have to call and ask if they get you. If they don't cover your area there may be a local option, there are quite a few companies that just do wireless internet in a small region.

You do need line of sight for wireless internet to work. The internet company will install a pole or even small tower to get your dish high enough for LOS but if you've got tall trees in the way you might be screwed.
f burg ag
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Do you have good cell reception? I have a wireless jetpack at camp that can give up to 15 devices wireless Internet. It is nearly as fast as my home wired computer. I have had 2 tvs, 3 phones and my laptop connected to it without a hitch.
agfan2013
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Pretty much been covered. Go with DSL or a WISP if you can, those will be uncapped data amounts. Satellite will have faster speeds but the latency of communicating from your house, up to the satellite in space, back to the ground, and then along wires can make it seem slower than it is. Plus satellite is usually capped at 10 to 20 gigs of data per month, if you stream tv, watch youtube, play online games, or whatever that will eat your data up fast.

I have Rise broadband as Im between Caldwell and Cooks point, they are ok, not perfect but could be worse from some of the horror stories I've read.

Search or post on the Aggieland board, I've seen several threads about rural internet and you'll be reaching people who actually live in the area.
txyaloo
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f burg ag said:

Do you have good cell reception? I have a wireless jetpack at camp that can give up to 15 devices wireless Internet. It is nearly as fast as my home wired computer. I have had 2 tvs, 3 phones and my laptop connected to it without a hitch.
This. I live on my hotspot when I'm not at home.

Regularly use 100+ GB per month between my personal laptop, streaming stick, and work PC. On Verizon, I usually get 20-40mbps down and 5-20 up.

My parents, whose only other option is dial-up or satellite, also use a hotspot as their main internet and have for over 5 years. It's been very reliable on a lightly used rural tower
jtp01
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I use a WISP. Tried hughesnet and it was a train wreck. Slow, inconsistent and storms crippled it. Since we went wireless, we've had 1 outage (about 45 minutes) and they lowered our bill the next month for "downtime".
sawemoffshort07
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jtp01 said:

I use a WISP. Tried hughesnet and it was a train wreck. Slow, inconsistent and storms crippled it. Since we went wireless, we've had 1 outage (about 45 minutes) and they lowered our bill the next month for "downtime".
+100 to all these. Hughes Net is terrible. Use your local WISP
shaynew1
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We're out of the for everything. LTE hotspot is good enough to get by for us. Avg download is 5m and upload is 3m.
agfan2013
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Also forgot to mention no matter what provider you choose to go with, dont forget to buy some anti-eye roll glasses. You'll be rolling your eyes at people in the cities complaining about having to pay $40 a month for 100+mb internet speeds that your eyes are liable to roll right out of your head...Dont get me wrong, it doesnt bother me in the least as I love it out in the country and gladly sacrifice internet speed for a lot of space, but I'd love to see their little heads explode if they had to pay $75 a month for 3mb like I do.
RMC91
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dustin999
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We had Internet America, which became Rise Broadband, for our house in the country. As another poster described, it's just a transmitter that needs line of sight to the tower, which in our case was a water tower.

It worked, but the price was a little high compared to the speed you get. We ended up cancelling it when cell service improved to the point that it was faster than the line of sight internet.

I also read that the line of sight stuff gets really bad when there's rain or other conditions that disrupt the line of sight.

Just be certain you've exhausted options with cell service before taking the plunge. That means walking the house/property and verifying you don't get a good signal somewhere. We are currently getting 10-15Mbps with a 1-2 bar LTE signal we get from one side of the house.
HarleySpoon
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RMC91 said:

I may be screwed because I'm in the woods with no line of sight. I think I'd need a 60' tower or something. I'll explore though. I'm on Highway 30 by Gibbons Creek so maybe Windstream can service my place. I'll check. Thanks for replies.


Not a problem....they offer stationary blimps (about the size of a medicine ball) that can be auto reeled in and out that is only slightly more than the cost of a tower.
RMC91
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schmellba99
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I have a WISP. Meh. Not great, not horrible. They have gotten better about reliability in the last 6 months, but it's still on the lower end of speed and I just don't have much faith in it to be honest. Using my Amazon Fire is generally OK, but there are times when the picture gets pixelated or blurry and I know its because the internet speeds are slowing down. Generally doesn't last too long. One of the downfalls of living away from the modern conveniences of a master planned community.
MouthBQ98
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Ditto WISP. I'm in the NE corner of Bastrop county and use Zochnet. The previous owner of my house installed a 30 foot tall Rohn 25G tower for a TV antenna. I took the antenna aerial down and added 2 more sections plus guys to extend to 50 feet and had them put an antenna on that, and they can see 2 different towers from mine. It's not very fast, just 3-4mb down and 1-2 up, but it has been reliable and is even tolerable for some light online gaming if you don't mind lag spikes causing you to get fragged now and then.

I use it in storms and rain no problem. It helps my antenna is done really well and keeps a good line of sight to the ISP relay tower.
MouthBQ98
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You can also use LTE cellular hotspots, but watch the data caps. They will be fast and generally reliable though.
techno-ag
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MouthBQ98 said:

You can also use LTE cellular hotspots, but watch the data caps. They will be fast and generally reliable though.
You can get "unlimited" plans now, like with AT&T if you're a DirecTV subscriber, but they can throttle you back to 3G once you go over 30 megs or so.
shaynew1
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techno-ag said:

MouthBQ98 said:

You can also use LTE cellular hotspots, but watch the data caps. They will be fast and generally reliable though.
You can get "unlimited" plans now, like with AT&T if you're a DirecTV subscriber, but they can throttle you back to 3G once you go over 30 megs or so.

I've got AT&T and as I understood it, its 'de-prioritized' rather than throttled...meaning with no other traffic the data doesn't change.

I'm not sure how many other users it takes to get priority bumped, but I don't think where I am it happens too often.
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