Internet in the Country

[Got2BTru]

I work from home, so I *must* have high speed...not DSL or dial-up, etc. The business option is interesting...

 

[ultrarunner]

I work from home, so I *must* have high speed...not DSL or dial-up, etc. The business option is interesting...

The main hospital is still run on DSL... $10 a month as part of a large package of services... the DSL does not service the imaging wing... which is subcontracted and uses Comcast.

It does help the AT&T central office for the DSL is on the same city block... it really works wells and supports the entire business office...

It drives the sales guys bonkers when they want to show how much they can save me switching to Fiber... etc., etc.

I just show them the $10 monthly DSL charge and their eyes just about pop out...

 

[k0ua]

Windstream Communications Accepts Nearly $175 Million in Annual Support from

Connect America Fund to Expand and Support Broadband for Over 800,000 Rural

Americans



It is coming guys.. it will take a bit, but it is coming...to a rural area near you!

 

[k0ua]

By the way I have sold some Business symmetrical* broadband to rural customers. It is not exactly cheap but it sure works well.


*symmetrical = same up and down speed, with guaranteed dedicated bandwidth.

 

[wcampbell47]

I work from home, so I *must* have high speed...not DSL or dial-up, etc. The business option is interesting...

I'm on the Texas coast with no reliable wired (cable, DSL, fiber) service. I used Hughes - too slow and don't like their policies. I am on Exede (satellite) now which I obtained with a bundle from DirecTV. I have known people that moved here from the big city and expect the internet here to be the same as where they came from. Ain't happening. The 12 mb download from Exede is ok, but not earth shattering. If your property is situated near a 4g tower then more power to you. That would be the fastest access and probably the most expensive. You could boost that signal with a 4g signal booster. Exede has different packages now than when I started. I have 10gb data per month - not business class. So if you are truly in the country then I don't think you are going to get the speeds and data plans available in the city. There have been a few that rented small offices in a nearby town that had the wired services available to be able to obtain high speed.

 

[RedNeckGeek]

Internet for rural America is going to change a whole lot in the not too far future.

Today, CenturyLink reconfirmed our commitment to rural America by accepting 33 statewide offers from the Federal Communications Commission to deliver fast broadband speeds to more than 1.2 million locations through the Connect America Fund (CAF). CAF is designed to accelerate the build-out of broadband to rural areas where the costs of deploying service are high through financial partnerships with broadband companies. By accepting approximately $500 million a year for seven years from CAF, CenturyLink will be able to bring Internet service with speeds of at least 10 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload to more than a million people who do not currently have the broadband access that many of us enjoy today.

There's an old adage that says "if something looks too good to be true, it probably isn't." Pardon me if I seem skeptical, but this seems like one of them. I say so because much of that money has been used to "improve" rural Internet access by subsidizing satellite internet service charges, not to build out cable or copper or fiber network infrastructure. Now satellite Internet may be better than dial up, but I can tell you from my five years of experience with three different satellite providers, if there were ANY other option available here I'd be on it. I've talked to AT&T engineers, and I'm too far from the DSL station, and there are no plans to run the miles of fiber that would be needed to reach the five or so families along the road that leads to our homes. Every year I call the WIMAX provider and offer to pay for not just an installation at my site, but a repeater if one is needed, and they just aren't interested in expanding.

If you're contemplating a move to the country, and especially if you have large data requirements (I'd say 100Gb/month is large, and would cost about $170/mo on my current Excede plan) I'd make Internet connectivity a mandatory requirement for any property I considered. As others have mentioned, just because DSL service is available in the area is no guarantee that there is capacity to add your connection. I'd make sure I had something in writing from the provider BEFORE I made an offer on the property. And I'd make darn sure there was a contingency in the offer to let me back out of the deal if service in my name couldn't be established at the address prior to closing.

 

[k0ua]

There's an old adage that says "if something looks too good to be true, it probably isn't." Pardon me if I seem skeptical, but this seems like one of them. I say so because much of that money has been used to "improve" rural Internet access by subsidizing satellite internet service charges, not to build out cable or copper or fiber network infrastructure. Now satellite Internet may be better than dial up, but I can tell you from my five years of experience with three different satellite providers, if there were ANY other option available here I'd be on it. I've talked to AT&T engineers, and I'm too far from the DSL station, and there are no plans to run the miles of fiber that would be needed to reach the five or so families along the road that leads to our homes. Every year I call the WIMAX provider and offer to pay for not just an installation at my site, but a repeater if one is needed, and they just aren't interested in expanding.

If you're contemplating a move to the country, and especially if you have large data requirements (I'd say 100Gb/month is large, and would cost about $170/mo on my current Excede plan) I'd make Internet connectivity a mandatory requirement for any property I considered. As others have mentioned, just because DSL service is available in the area is no guarantee that there is capacity to add your connection. I'd make sure I had something in writing from the provider BEFORE I made an offer on the property. And I'd make darn sure there was a contingency in the offer to let me back out of the deal if service in my name couldn't be established at the address prior to closing.

All I can tell you is we are building fiber fed DSLAMS out in the country and these funds are helping fund that. They will never pay for themselves due to the low density of subscribers at the rates that subscribers are charged. So lets be clear here, when you move to the country you expect good internet service. WHY? Why do you deserve a service that you are not paying enough for? Because we are Americans and have a God given right to broadband? Well your government agrees with you. And this is exactly what we are doing. Taking Federal money and building in areas that would never pay out otherwise. So to be clear here, the taxpayers of the nation are paying for your broadband out in the country, cause sure as heck the monthly subscriber fees are not paying for it.

 

[SimS]

Free because the medical imaging center has an exclusive contract with comcast for all it's centers so they did it... funny thing is ATT fiber is already in the building....

The two providers are a Federal requirement with the new healthcare regulations. In talking to my doctor who just set up his medical center in town; he is using a cable provider for his primary ISP and AT&T for the back up. As a side note he is using FREE over the air digital TV for the waiting rooms because the "commercial account" charges for cable TV was too high. He is a pretty tech savvy guy...

SimS

 

[Garandman]

I have a dsl line here. Not really high speed, but it only costs $30 per month.

Ditto, it's good enough for a video security camera feed, though. In NH it's a company called FairPoint.

 

[kcflhrc]

There's an old adage that says "if something looks too good to be true, it probably isn't." Pardon me if I seem skeptical, but this seems like one of them. I say so because much of that money has been used to "improve" rural Internet access by subsidizing satellite internet service charges, not to build out cable or copper or fiber network infrastructure. Now satellite Internet may be better than dial up, but I can tell you from my five years of experience with three different satellite providers, if there were ANY other option available here I'd be on it. I've talked to AT&T engineers, and I'm too far from the DSL station, and there are no plans to run the miles of fiber that would be needed to reach the five or so families along the road that leads to our homes. Every year I call the WIMAX provider and offer to pay for not just an installation at my site, but a repeater if one is needed, and they just aren't interested in expanding.

If you're contemplating a move to the country, and especially if you have large data requirements (I'd say 100Gb/month is large, and would cost about $170/mo on my current Excede plan) I'd make Internet connectivity a mandatory requirement for any property I considered. As others have mentioned, just because DSL service is available in the area is no guarantee that there is capacity to add your connection. I'd make sure I had something in writing from the provider BEFORE I made an offer on the property. And I'd make darn sure there was a contingency in the offer to let me back out of the deal if service in my name couldn't be established at the address prior to closing.

You can be skeptical, that's OK with me. The fact remains, our company is committed to doing this. Without the CAF funding it would not be a wise or profitable endeavor to build out these rural areas. Granted, some of the funds will be used to upgrade the current infrastructure, but you have to to bring these new subscribers online. But when I say infrastructure I'm not talking about putting a bird in space. I'm talking about putting miles and miles of fiber in the ground. I for one think it's a good move. The technology is getting better and cheaper, but it still takes lots of man hours to bury the cable.