Satellite Internet

[ultrarunner]

It is also true that in this same rural area Comcast brought cable internet availability, BUT it won't get to my house, a mile from the local highway up our dirt road. I think this is because with Vtel running fiber Comcast has no incentive to string cable in the same area. Wouldn't want them anyway; used them in CT and they are USELESS.

About 90% of the people interested in renting my home in Washington change their mind when they find Satellite is the only option.

One tenant hated Satellite and wanted me to pay the 12 to 14k comcast hookup fee...

I can just see spending a bundle and something new comes along...

Now every little mountain hamlet in Austria has Fiber... even if there are just 3 farms at the top of a mountain... really amazing in that the Internet rollout was like Telephone here where it was to be brought to the far corners...

My friends in Santa Cruz mountains are 7 miles on a gravel road... they are totally off grid except they have a dial phone... cells don't even work there.

In the early 70's the phone company ran cable underground to connect the 30 or so people along this 7 mile road to nowhere...

 

[k0ua]

Is there a good simple website that explains what all these options are. Dsl, cable internet, T1, ect. It's pretty much all foreign to me.

DSL= Digital Subscriber Line. It is a digital signal superimposed over a regular copper telephone line Asymmetrical in speed. more download speed than upload speed. Upload speeds usually top out at 2Meg. Download speed up to 24Meg (for people close to the Telephone Central office or a remote DSLAM (Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer) The piece of equipment that multiplexes (superimposes) the digital signal on the copper telephone line. DSL is distance limited. Although many newer schemes have increased distance and speed. The general rule is the further out you are the slower it goes. Of course fiber fed DSLAM can be built for a subdivision that is many miles from a central office.. BUT remotes are not cheap. They can cost a million bucks.

Cable internet over the actual coax cable can have speeds over 100Meg, Also Asymmetrical (upload speed different than download speed) Fiber fed speed much higher. 1Gig common, 10 Gig possible.

T1.. Old telephone technology runs at 1.5 Megabits per second. It is symmetrical. The same 1.5Meg up as down. They can be bonded together for faster speeds. They can be run almost anywhere as long as cable pairs are available. Repeaters are placed where needed to regenerate and reshape the signal. T-1s are neither fast nor cheap by today's standards.

Also some companies are running glass fibers straight to the home now. All you can eat, and then some. IP TV, Voice, All the data you would ever want, for multiple users at the same time .. Just the best of all worlds.

I hoped this helped a little.

 

[SouthernSooner]

Has anyone tried or heard of Blaze WiFi? It's offered in my area, but significantly more expensive than Hughes Net.

 

[Country Geek]

If the customers aren't close enough together and close enough to the nearest line to connect to and get them X number of customers per mile of cable strung, it isn't worth it to them. I don't see them stringing one mile of cable for less than 100 customers locally.

With only 60-65 houses; unless they are close together AND close to a connection point I'd be shocked to find any wired connections available... If those 60-65 houses are on lots larger than the standard city lot, and there is a wired connection of any sort available, it is one of the more fortunate areas...

I don't think the question is "are 60-65 houses enough customers?" The question is, "does the telco have other locations where they think they can make more money for the same investment?". A lot goes into that too. If you already have Comcast available, they telco might prefer to wire a street with 35 houses, but no cable competition, first.

I think they will eventually get to the 60-65 houses once they have provided service to all the denser/cheaper to service areas, but as long as there are those areas without service, they will go there first.

That's what happened here. I'm in a very sparsely populated rural area. We got our DSL in 2008 after nine years of begging, lobbying, cajoling, etc. It was just a matter of when CenturyLink decided they felt like getting to us, after they had exhausted all the more attractive investment opportunities.