Current Events > Rural internet really sucks sometimes.

(+) Yeah! (+)

I can really only get internet from one local company at my house.
I have a little satellite dish on my roof and basically the company bounces internet signals off of grain elevators and corn silos, and eventually it bounces to me.
When it works, it works and it is fine.
However sometimes it does not. For the past day or so my internet keeps going out for about 5 minutes every hour, sometimes more often than that. And since it is a local company I have to wait until the offices open Monday morning to actually talk to someone about it. At least I am relatively close to a cell phone tower.

Can you not just get internet via said tower?

Trumble posted...

Can you not just get internet via said tower?

The little dish I get my internet from is on a big antenna tower attached to my house, but it's really only good for TV signals.

I could get satellite, but the latency would probably annoy me too much.

try starlink. its legit

when i went from ADSL to starlink, my average latency jumped from 20 to 35ish. but my speed jumped from 25mb to 150-300mb (it varies)

billcom6 posted...

I could get satellite, but the latency would probably annoy me too much.

Satellite Internet is the worst fucking shit on Earth. 600-700ms ping at least, so games are unplayable online. Data caps so low you can download one, two, or maybe even three modern games in a month and nothing else. And it costs a fucking fortune too.

I grew up in a rural area and didn't have high speed internet until I went to college. It was not a fantastic experience.

I remember working a couple of shifts from my in-laws place in rural Alberta, it was painful. Never doing that again.

billcom6 posted...

The little dish I get my internet from is on a big antenna tower attached to my house, but it's really only good for TV signals.

I could get satellite, but the latency would probably annoy me too much.

No, I mean as in get internet from the cell tower. Either officially (some ISPs have plans like this) or unofficially (just stick a SIM in a 4G / 5G modem).

I'm on this (4G) and it's comparable to lower-end fiber connections. Not incredible but certianly good enough, and much better than satellite or ADSL.

Trumble posted...

No, I mean as in get internet from the cell tower. Either officially (some ISPs have plans like this) or unofficially (just stick a SIM in a 4G / 5G modem).

I'm on this (4G) and it's comparable to lower-end fiber connections. Not incredible but certianly good enough, and much better than satellite or ADSL.

I second this if Starlink isn't an option. Very few people actually have to put up with traditional satellite nowadays.

I live in a rural area but our electric company was forward thinking enough to invest in fiber internet

The rural broadband bill was signed over a year ago. It seems that - like the Medicare increase under Obama - some red states are refusing to spend it. Might be something to contact your representatives about.

Trumble posted...

No, I mean as in get internet from the cell tower. Either officially (some ISPs have plans like this) or unofficially (just stick a SIM in a 4G / 5G modem).

I'm on this (4G) and it's comparable to lower-end fiber connections. Not incredible but certianly good enough, and much better than satellite or ADSL.

My parents do this.

brestugo posted...

The rural broadband bill was signed over a year ago. It seems that - like the Medicare increase under Obama - some red states are refusing to spend it. Might be something to contact your representatives about.

Do you have any idea how laughably inadequate that bill was? It's spending over $15k per household connected on average, and has still only reached about 100k homes out of something like 27 million households that need it.

And that grant money is going directly to the internet providers to build infrastructure with no state government involvement at all.

willythemailboy posted...

Do you have any idea how laughably inadequate that bill was? It's spending over $15k per household connected on average, and has still only reached about 100k homes out of something like 27 million households that need it.

It was better than doing nothing. I agree more should be done.

brestugo posted...

The rural broadband bill was signed over a year ago. It seems that - like the Medicare increase under Obama - some red states are refusing to spend it. Might be something to contact your representatives about.

Did states actually turn that money down? I thought the stance of the GOP was to vote against the bill and then take credit for it when it passed.

bobbycorwin posted...

Did states actually turn that money down? I thought the stance of the GOP was to vote against the bill and then take credit for it when it passed.

Not sure yet. In the case of the Obamacare money, they're sitting on it or like (IIRC) Louisiana, used it for prisons. We'll see what happens.

brestugo posted...

Not sure yet. In the case of the Obamacare money, they're sitting on it or like (IIRC) Louisiana, used it for prisons. We'll see what happens.

I knew about the heathcare expansion money being refused because the GOP cares more about the optics of getting help from Democrats than it cares about the citizens of the states they represent.

I just hadn't heard anything about the Broadband money.

bobbycorwin posted...

I knew about the heathcare expansion money being refused because the GOP cares more about the optics of getting help from Democrats than it cares about the citizens of the states they represent.

I just hadn't heard anything about the Broadband money.

It doesn't sound like it's getting spent.

starlink not available to you?

TC I have someone coming out in 2 weeks now that they put in fiberoptic. I've been using 5G Hotspot,it's ok for what I do but the big game updates kill me.

brestugo posted...

It doesn't sound like it's getting spent.

It's getting paid directly to the ISPs, not the states. As in, each ISP applies directly to the USDA for a grant - no state control of funds at all. The ISPs get get free money to build out their networks, which they then get to turn around and charge people to use. That's about as Republican as a business model can get.

Trumble posted...

No, I mean as in get internet from the cell tower. Either officially (some ISPs have plans like this) or unofficially (just stick a SIM in a 4G / 5G modem).

I'm on this (4G) and it's comparable to lower-end fiber connections. Not incredible but certianly good enough, and much better than satellite or ADSL.

I looked into that when I first bought my house and they said it wasn't available to me.