Internet in the Country

[gsganzer]

I also have the wireless radio and I've been real happy with it. My local provider is Smartburst

 

[slow84ta]

hughesnet

 

[orezok]

Richard,
Tell your credit card company that you lost your card and they will issue you a new one with a new number. Tell your provider that you no longer have a credit card and that you will pay by check. Let them decide if they want to drop you and you shouldn't have an early termination fee.

If they agree to keep you your set.

 

[Country Geek]

Richard,
Tell your credit card company that you lost your card and they will issue you a new one with a new number. Tell your provider that you no longer have a credit card and that you will pay by check. Let them decide if they want to drop you and you shouldn't have an early termination fee.

If they agree to keep you your set.

Great plan. This has been the silver lining to all the credit card breaches of the last few years. I haven't had a credit card number that lasted more than six months, which means that all those autopays that accumulate have to be renewed, giving me an opportunity to revisit them. Or in the case of ones like this that require autopay, stop them in their tracks.

For example SiriusXM. They require autopay and when you initially sign up at a 50% off promotional rate you have to agree to let them bill you at the then-current full rate one year hence. Of course you can cancel at any time but they gamble on people not remembering to do that in a year and they get you for the next year at full price. However by the time that year is up the original card is no good so they have to contact you, at which point you can negotiate another year of the promotional rate by telling them, never mind, it's too expensive, I don't want to renew.

 

[Bigfoot62]

According to the phone company, you have to be within 3 miles of the equipment (router) to get DSL. Even though we are in a very rural area, we live 2.5 miles from the phone company building. (that building is in a town of 400 residents, and we live 2 miles outside of the city limits) We pay for a 3 gig line, but due to the degradation of the 60+ year old cables, we're lucky if we actually get 1.5 gig download speeds.
There is no TV cable here. So, the only other options that we have are dial-up (BT,DT) and satellite.

 

[RedNeckGeek]

I haven't had a credit card number that lasted more than six months, which means that all those autopays that accumulate have to be renewed, giving me an opportunity to revisit them. Or in the case of ones like this that require autopay, stop them in their tracks.

So far I've been snatched up in both the Target and Home Depot breaches, and a few others as well. Every time it happens I get a new credit card number and have to contact all the autopays (about two dozen so far) to give them the new number. It's a real PITA, but I DO want those charges to continue uninterrupted, as in many instances the company will cancel the autopay outright, reverting it back to paper billing, and it's an even bigger PITA to reestablish a new number than just change an old one.

I'm in the same boat as a lot of others here WRT Internet service: I can get dial up or satellite, period. Too far from the DSL office, no cable even close, cellular coverage is very spotty here even with an amplifying/repeating antenna setup, there's a mountain in the way of the closest WIMAX tower and the company isn't interested in installing additional intervening links even if I pay for them. I dropped HughesNet when their equipment died just outside the 2 year commitment window and they wanted more to fix it than I paid for it to begin with. The Wildblue service that replaced it was comparable, but still slow with Draconian data caps, and even worse, no night time "free zone" with unlimited data use. Exede finally became available in my area, same data caps, but now there is a "free zone" and the data speeds are much higher. I can also purchase more data in 1GB increments, very costly at $10/1Gb, but that wasn't available with Wildblue. Suffice it to say that if there is any other internet service available besides dial up or satellite, take it. Had I to do all over again I'd make good Internet service availability a much higher priority when selecting a property and avoid the problem right from the start.

 

[Beltman60]

I just put in a whole house over the air dvr for our tv
its called Tablo (4 channel)and runs off of my router
with a good antenna we get 43 stations (up to 65 miles away)
can watch anything recorded or live tv with cell phone, tablet, computer or hdmi tv's with no wires
we were getting hammered by one of the major satellite companies every year or so they would raise there price

For internet we are lucky enough to have a cell tower close with 4g LTE and we just run that though the router also
My wife has her own business and she takes care of the cell charges for the internet

And for those special occasions (movie night) we use Red Box
I will say the last movie I went to a theater was Dances With Wolves

 

[paulharvey]

Perhaps this is a good thread to share a funny story from 3 weeks ago.

We had a big meeting at the Jacksonville AT&T engineering office. Power company, 2 fiber companies, gas, FDOT... the engineer of record for the road work wanted to call in to the meeting; but AT&T couldn't get a working phone line in their own conference room. Luckily we had a Verizon cell phone we put on speaker phone.

 

[Country Geek]

Perhaps this is a good thread to share a funny story from 3 weeks ago.

We had a big meeting at the Jacksonville AT&T engineering office. Power company, 2 fiber companies, gas, FDOT... the engineer of record for the road work wanted to call in to the meeting; but AT&T couldn't get a working phone line in their own conference room. Luckily we had a Verizon cell phone we put on speaker phone.

:laughing:

 

[truckdiagnostics]

According to the phone company, you have to be within 3 miles of the equipment (router) to get DSL. Even though we are in a very rural area, we live 2.5 miles from the phone company building. (that building is in a town of 400 residents, and we live 2 miles outside of the city limits) We pay for a 3 gig line, but due to the degradation of the 60+ year old cables, we're lucky if we actually get 1.5 gig download speeds.
There is no TV cable here. So, the only other options that we have are dial-up (BT,DT) and satellite.

Don't mean to beat a dead horse, but come off friend in town's router, tower on there roof, tower on your roof, long as you can get line of site and use one of https://www.ubnt.com/these and you got it. It is almost plug and play:thumbsup: