Rural Internet

[TheMan419]

Unless SWMBO changes her mind we are ordering Ubifi tonight when I get home. I'll start a new thread to document the process. In the house on my iphone I usually get 2 bars. So with the increased power of a non-mobile unit I should get better reception. Outside with the phone I have seen 10MBPS or even up to 60. So if I can get 10 out of the unit that will be way better than my current 2 from the DSL..... it would mean I could actually stream TV/Movies.

 

[oosik]

Interesting - - My HugheNet plan is $60/mo - theirs lists at $90 per month. My HughesNet is definitely restricted but has always been sufficient for my needs. I think my location would be a limiting factor. There are those times when I get ZERO bars on my cell phone both inside the house and outside. My phone service it thru AT&T.

There have been times - like the last two weeks - when I could not contact HughesNet due to smoke, ash and crud in the air - PNW wildfires.

I have sent Ubifi an email. Interesting to see what they say.

 

[tractorshopper]

They don't send a tech to do the install, they just send hardware. Since you know the direction of the antenna, I would put one of these on a pole as high as you can get it pointed in that direction - Wilson Outside Yagi Directional Antenna (5 Ohm) | 314411

I don't really see a signal booster helping much with the Mofi because they've already got the cell modem power maxed out, an antenna is going to give you the best bang.

This is good to know. They sent an email back recommending a Surecall $300 unit. That would $600 just to get started. I researched some stuff on the Internet and downloaded an app to see what strength and what towers hook up. On my phone, even though there is a tower a mile or so South of me, the phone connects to one several miles North of me. I had to drive around with the phone on to see that my hill is blocking me from the closest tower. I also saw someone on YouTube with the Wilson you recommended. I may just give this a try first.

 

[BigBlue1]

This is good to know. They sent an email back recommending a Surecall $300 unit. That would $600 just to get started. I researched some stuff on the Internet and downloaded an app to see what strength and what towers hook up. On my phone, even though there is a tower a mile or so South of me, the phone connects to one several miles North of me. I had to drive around with the phone on to see that my hill is blocking me from the closest tower. I also saw someone on YouTube with the Wilson you recommended. I may just give this a try first.

What app did you use that shows you tower locations and which you are connected to?

Thanks,
Rob

 

[TractorGuy]

Unless SWMBO changes her mind we are ordering Ubifi tonight when I get home. I'll start a new thread to document the process. In the house on my iphone I usually get 2 bars. So with the increased power of a non-mobile unit I should get better reception. Outside with the phone I have seen 10MBPS or even up to 60. So if I can get 10 out of the unit that will be way better than my current 2 from the DSL..... it would mean I could actually stream TV/Movies.

I never had a problem streaming movies at 1.5 Mbps on my DSL.

90 bucks a month is not making me want a change.

 

[ning]

I see people have mentioned 5g as the savior for rural internets... 5g is very high frequency, won't bounce off of much of anything or go through anything - I can see it working great in the flats, but I'm in the hills and pretty doubtful. At best I'm hoping 5g will provide the transport for other wireless systems that handle hills and trees better.

 

[tractorshopper]

What app did you use that shows you tower locations and which you are connected to?

Thanks,
Rob

Network Cell Info Lite. I am on AT&T with this phone, but the rest of my family is on Verizon. I don't think it matters which carrier you use, the app shows you which towers you are connecting to on your phone. It will show multiple towers at a time some times and the dba of them and which is primary, etc. Has a lot of info with graphs and stuff and a map that you can zoom in our out. If you drive it tracks your signal strength along your route and which tower you're on at a time. It's pretty cool. My best signal anywhere is like -97 at home and usually like -111.

 

[BigBlue1]

Thanks

 

[buickanddeere]

If there are any copper providers available they should be offering at least 25MB via DSL for $40/ month...That's what we get out in the sticks as long as there is enough wires available...takes 2 sets of 2 pair to get 25mb over DSL/copper...

Still limited by distance from the central office . Our wire pair meggers 9 million ohm to ground and wire to wire so no problems there . We are well past the recommended distance at 2-1/2 miles but we manage 4-6Mb on a continuous download . A ping of course runs 15+ Mb but that test is just a quick reference .

 

[buickanddeere]

A few rural folk along the new natural gas pipeline will have fiber. The local medical weed grow operation is getting NG . The village one block over and the cottages along the lake will also have NG service finally. I hope they run a NG and fiber spur line the 1-1/4 mile up my road .
Ticks me off there are 12 fiber lines currently running under my driveway but they are leased to only the power plant down the road .

 

[Industrial Toys]

Are you sure the weed is medical and not for the Bruce?

 

[buickanddeere]

Are you sure the weed is medical and not for the Bruce?

"Medical" weed at the energy centre. Too bad they tore down the steam transformer units at Bruce A. Supposed to be upsizing the Douglas Point Switchyard to supply more power on the 44KV circuit.

 

[STx]

So I'm pulling this back up because I'm going to experiment a little with my Mofi. The unit that Ubifi sells is supposed to support Verizon, which is a bit faster at my place than AT&T. It looks like Verizon has an unlimited pre-paid plan for $70/mo but, it's going to be a little bit of a hassle to get it. I think I know what I need to do, buy a cheap Verizon hotspot, activate a SIM and them put it into the Mofi, so I'm going to give it a go and see what happens.

I also see an AT&T unlimited pre-paid plan for $30/mo, the only catch is it might get prioritized after 22GB. I've got a bunch of AT&T SIMs here to try that with as well. I'm not really sure whether I want faster or cheaper though. Anyway, I'm going to goof about with it and report back with my findings. It'll take a couple of months at Lea because I know I'm too cheap to waste data I've paid for. LOL

 

[ning]

I think I know what I need to do, buy a cheap Verizon hotspot, activate a SIM and them put it into the Mofi, so I'm going to give it a go and see what happens.

I'm very very interested in the outcome of this experiment!

The best internet I can get without cellular at my house is a wifi internet at 3Mbps, and last I had it the quality was poor (many outages). I don't have anything remotely line-of-sight, no fiber or cable in the ground (with service I can have - a Gigabit fiber loop was installed a couple years ago on our road but it's not for mere mortals apparently) so I dropped it and lost my static ip with it... I survive off of cell phone hotspot.

I tried VZW's hotspot service, but at the time it was a lot of money for like 20GB/month which was laughable, we burned through it in less than two weeks then, and I can't imagine it lasting even a week now.

How "unlimited" is their service now? I have the family on an "unlimited" plan which gives 22GB/month per line with no throttling, and then they may get throttled if the "local tower is congested" past 22GB but we haven't seen that.

 

[STx]

It doesn't say anything about prioritization on this one. Of course, the only way to really know sometimes is to try it.

 

[STx]

I got my $25 MiFi today so I was able to order a prepaid Verizon SIM for $65/mo unlimited with auto-pay setup, it should be here in a couple of days and I can see if it's as easy to switch the SIM into the Mofi as it looks like it will be.

Another thing I've noticed is that if I activate an AT&T SIM card on buyasession.att.com using the Mofi IMEI, my data plan options are $25/mo for 5GB or $360/yr for unlimited so, if the Verizon SIM doesn't work out, I can purchase the annual unlimited AT&T for $360 and drop from the $80/mo with Ubifi to $30/mo. There is nothing in the fine print on that one about prioritization or throttling after a certain threshold. (Plan and term screenshots below)

Verizon is 3x the speed of AT&T here though so, I'm hoping it works well, it's still $15/mo cheaper and I like fast better than cheap. That SIM will be here Monday so, I'll update then.

 

[tractorshopper]

So I'm pulling this back up because I'm going to experiment a little with my Mofi. The unit that Ubifi sells is supposed to support Verizon, which is a bit faster at my place than AT&T. It looks like Verizon has an unlimited pre-paid plan for $70/mo but, it's going to be a little bit of a hassle to get it. I think I know what I need to do, buy a cheap Verizon hotspot, activate a SIM and them put it into the Mofi, so I'm going to give it a go and see what happens.

I also see an AT&T unlimited pre-paid plan for $30/mo, the only catch is it might get prioritized after 22GB. I've got a bunch of AT&T SIMs here to try that with as well. I'm not really sure whether I want faster or cheaper though. Anyway, I'm going to goof about with it and report back with my findings. It'll take a couple of months at Lea because I know I'm too cheap to waste data I've paid for. LOL

I'm very interested in your experiment with the $70 unlimited Verizon account. I have better Verizon signal than AT&T is really the only reason, but if it saves $19/month as well, then may be well worth it. I'll be most curious to know if it has throttling or not as that would be the ultimate detractor.

 

[Xfaxman]

Here is another option for rural internet, the $20 a month Mobley plan is available again for a limited time.

The link on how to get it is in my post on the Mobley thread here: https://www.tractorbynet.com/forums...onth-stand-alone-post5325504.html#post5325504






;

 

[STx]

I got the Verizon SIM today, it took some trial and error to get it working correctly with the Mofi. Ultimately, these are the steps you need to follow:

1 - Put the SIM in the Verizon JetPack you used for an IMEI to order the SIM, power it up and connect. I think it needs this step for Verizon to verify the SIM went where it was supposed to.
2 - Insert the Verizon SIM into the Mofi and perform a factory reset on the device. When it reboots, it should detect the everything correctly and connect to the Internet. I setup a custom APN of vzwinternet. I'm posting a few images showing the signal strength, speed test result and my configuration for the Sierra card.

So now I find out if unlimited is truly UNLIMITED, I'll know within a week the way we go through data. Signal strength with from -105dBm on AT&T to -85dBm to -90dBm with Verizon and the speed test went from 8/3 to 26/21.

We're running on Verizon now, in fact I'm watching streaming TV and posting over it. I'll update in a week or so with our data usage and speed to see if we're getting prioritized.

 

[STx]

We've used 70GB since I switched to Verizon so I believe this really is UNLIMITED unlimited. I have noticed that carrier aggregation never gets assigned with Verizon but, I'm still running at 23Mbps or higher whenever I run a speed test so I don't really need it, it's faster without it than AT&T was with it.