Fast Internet

[JESSE1]

My only option for years was either dial-up or Hughesnet. Hughesnet Gen5 worked pretty good until covid hit and then I was lucky to get 2 mbps and no upload. I put a deposit down on Starlink in February '21 but even now it's still not in my area. Last November I was able to get T Mobil 5G home internet with speeds over 150mbps. In June they upgraded the tower and my speeds doubled to over 300mbps. The county I live in has made a push to get fiber optic cable available to anyone who wants it and a month ago they ran a line down my road. Yesterday I had Frontier Gig service installed, 1000mbps. Never thought I'd be able to get fiber optic. Quite a difference in a year's time.

 

[mikester]

Congrats, I'm still living in the 3rd world here in Canada when it comes to internet yet I'm paying top tier first world rates for internet and cellular. Sad part is I'm on the boarder of the GTA not up north in the boonies.

 

[ultrarunner]

Good Deal... had DSL or SAT but SAT problematic as forested in Washington.

Nearly 15k to bring in Comcast a few years back.

I wish I had the cell phone hotspot option which isn't even an option at my SF Bay Area location...

Seems anyplace I like is not conducive to connectivity!

ATT fiber is coming in but I hear hardware rental required...

 

[ljjhouser]

Good for you. That is good news. I have Google fiber in the city, but rural is dsl - a lot of problems. There was a time that the service would drop, then reconnect. And that would initiate the complete install and login process. A real Pain.
I was not happy dealing with ATT. Directv was great until they bought it. Then you could call India.

Enjoy the faster speeds, especially the upload speeds.

 

[Cougsfan]

Congats. It is still very hit and miss on internet and even cell phone service in the countryside. We have good cell phone service and moderate internet (25 mbs microwave). We have neighbors living a few miles in either direction that have internet options ranging from DSL to 150mbs fiber. Starlink worked well for people who signed up early, but has been a bust for those who haven't. Hughesnet along with their competitors are not worth getting. If you indeed use high speed internet, you will run out of speed in a hurry.

 

[newbury]

I just FINALLY got fiber installed yesterday, only went for 100 up and down for $55, same for what I was paying for 7 down, .7 up.

 

[riptides]

LOL.

I am in an internet desert. 70 miles outside of our Nations Capital as the crow flies and if it lands on the cell tower, it's all over.

And let us not talk of obstructions as there are none.

Even Starlink has failed to deliver in the area and I dropped off the original offering list as the date kept getting pushed back.

 

[fatjay]

I've had fiber for decades and can't imagine living without it at this point. I'm between rural and suburbia, so i was a bit surprised that they hit us so quickly. I sometimes forget that not everyone is that lucky. I'll be moving further out in a few years but no where that doesn't have starlink or fiber. I don't think I could take the shock.

 

[Oaktree]

Both our local telco and (then) Time-Warner cable ran fiber down my road about 10 years ago, though neither offers fiber-to-the-home (it's either DSL or copper cable). Depending on which speed test I use I'm getting between 45 & 90 down and 5-11 up. Good enough for anything I need to do.
Not sure why they ran it down my relatively lightly populated road and bypassed a nearby state highway, but I'm not complaining!

 

[DieselnHooters]

To my complete surprise they ran fiber down my lead to nowhere country lane 2 years ago, I bundled TV, internet and home phone with them. I picked the lowest speed offered, 30 up 10 down and it works like a charm. Maybe I am missing something but I dont understand paying extra for blazing speed.

 

[JESSE1]

I paid about $95/month for Hughesnet. T Mobil with autopay was $50/month. The Frontier Gig plan will be $65/month.

 

[Jstpssng]

There may be federal grants to bring faster internet to rural areas, I know they've been talking about it.
My internet can be as slow as old fashioned dial up... I complained to my ISP a couple of years ago so they ran a test and I'm only running at about 10% capacity. They said they'd send someone out to look at it and gave me a date... I left the house and 3 hours later found a message stating they had been to the house, fixed it, and I was good to go. Yeah, right. Nobody had been here.

 

[amarsh64]

We bought the Starlink package a while back and couldn't be happier. It spikes up to 350 mbps but usually runs around 120-150 . 50 Mbps on a really stormy night . We can now run multiple things in 4K. Sure beats the Xplornet that we had before. . It was a 10 Mbps package that ran off cell phone towers . I was averaging 1.5 Mbps and on peak hours could barely get on the net sometimes. Kinda pricey but well worth it !

 

[Cougsfan]

To my complete surprise they ran fiber down my lead to nowhere country lane 2 years ago, I bundled TV, internet and home phone with them. I picked the lowest speed offered, 30 up 10 down and it works like a charm. Maybe I am missing something but I dont understand paying extra for blazing speed.

Most people don't need the blazing speed for regular home use, the speed you have is fine. If you get a bunch of people at your house using the internet simultaneously, things might be different.

 

[Torvy]

I paid about $95/month for Hughesnet. T Mobil with autopay was $50/month. The Frontier Gig plan will be $65/month.

I hope they move a few counties north of you! I have Frontier fiber in the city. It works pretty good.

 

[hosspuller]

I had Time Warner business class service. They were good until Spectrum took over. Final straw was telephone modem went out and they didn't get a tech out to replace it for 3 days. For a business !!! T/W service guarantee was 4 hours.

Switch to ATT fiber for less cost. Actually, much better since the service is immune to lightning storms. As for the equipment rental... Only $10 per month and includes WiFi. I'm happy with it.

 

[Torvy]

I won't touch AT&T for free. I had them for internet and landline, but had DTV for shows. We got 2X the speed from Charter (pre Spectrum) for 1/2 the price so we switched. Then DTV got bought by AT&T. Service went to heck. So we dropped them completely.

Spectrum dropped too much during C19, so we added the Frontier and had them both while 5 of us were working/in school.

 

[Oaktree]

I had Time Warner business class service. They were good until Spectrum took over. Final straw was telephone modem went out and they didn't get a tech out to replace it for 3 days. For a business !!! T/W service guarantee was 4 hours.

Just the opposite here. We had ~15 when we first signed up under TW. Since they became Spectrum they've periodically increased the speeds without upgrading our plan. Supposedly their entry level in my area offers "up to" 250. I'm paying a little more than I did back then, but I'm paying more for 'most everything else too!
No, I don't understand the need for gigabit speeds unless you're running a large business. Just me and the wife, and neither of us are online that much, all we have is a couple PCs and a couple Roku boxes.

There may be federal grants to bring faster internet to rural areas, I know they've been talking about it.

I'm pretty sure that's what paid for ours about 10 years ago, I've heard that there's another round of grants in the works to expand it further.

 

[PeteN]

A few months ago I signed up with Frontier and the only thing available was DSL with 20down 1up speed but it was easy to install since I already had a phone line installed 30 years ago. Looks like they are going to run more fiber down my road (and it seems every road in my area) so I assume there may be more options in the future. Can I assume to get higher speeds a cable would need to be run from the main line to my house? If so, Do they charge for that? My biggest issue with what I have is not speed but reliability. Not sure if the occasional outages are from them hooking more up to the system or they just have crappy service. I know their service support is poor.

 

[Oaktree]

A few months ago I signed up with Frontier and the only thing available was DSL with 20down 1up speed but it was easy to install since I already had a phone line installed 30 years ago. Looks like they are going to run more fiber down my road (and it seems every road in my area) so I assume there may be more options in the future. Can I assume to get higher speeds a cable would need to be run from the main line to my house? If so, Do they charge for that? My biggest issue with what I have is not speed but reliability. Not sure if the occasional outages are from them hooking more up to the system or they just have crappy service. I know their service support is poor.

Not familiar with Frontier...are they a phone company or a cable company? I guess how they delivered the "last mile" to your house would depend on how that company does things. While both the phone company (Fairpoint at the time) and Time-Warner ran fiber, in both cases the actual neighborhood distribution was copper. In the case of the phone company, it was DSL, I'm not sure exactly where their equipment is, but I the nearest equipment box of theirs is at the end of the road, about 2.5 mi. away so the DSL isnt' going to be all that fast.
The TW equipment is hung on the line itself, and the nearest one is only a couple poles away.

I asked the Spectrum tech once why they did it this way, and he claimed it was considerably more expensive to run fiber directly to each customer.