4G LTE for internet in rural area?

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VulcaN

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Our WISP is letting me down: low speeds, high ping, and frequent disconnects for hours at a time. Looks like satellite is still a terrible idea.

Looking for decent ping times for gaming and fast speeds, I came across a few recommendations here to go with millenicom.com for Verizon service. They are offering $90/mo for 20GB. I had someone with a Verizon iPhone stand in my yard and using speedtest.net we got 100ms ping, and 10.00 down / up for 4G LTE speeds which was better than I was expecting, but if I could get a lower ping I'd love to. I've also heard that millenicom users are being throttled lately when they havent even hit their monthly usage yet, which really concerns me.

Is it possible /w LTE to get lower ping times (say 50ms) when gaming? I am also concerned 20GB is not enough for my usage as right now I use about 50GB a month, obviously I'd have to cut down on the educational references on plankton I download regularly.

*Should I consider Sprint as well? The Sprint tower is 4 times closer from looking at maps online.
*Is anyone on [H] using a Sprint reseller similar to millenicom that's reputable?
*Would a high gain directional antenna reduce ping times?

If I should stick with Verizon because of Sprint is a bad idea reasons, should I go around milliecom due to their recent throttling concerns and get "Home Fusion" service directly from Verizon as advertised here:
http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/homefusion/hf/main.do

Thanks for any input!
 
Cell towers that utilize 900mhz spectrum are not going to give you good ping times period. Unfortunately rural access is hard for ISPs to hit because of the long range necessity to get enough customers.

ISPs will generally frown on gaming and will not condone its excess usage.

Your best bet is a WISP or the phone company if gaming/low pings are important. If one of our customers allows equipment at their house, often times we will piggy back on location to re-broadcast our signal. Call your wisp and see if they are willing to work together, small town guys are really taking all possible routes to expand (at least around here).

If that is not an option, hopefully you are near a tele station. I've had great results with land line internet so long as location was good.

location location location


edit:
What do you need a directional antenna for? I'm guessing your talking about your current WISP equipment? A PTP set of yagis or a backhaul branch is really what you need from them.

http://www.ubnt.com/airmax#airMaxHardware
 
good luck on using verizon lte for gaming with out getting slammed with overage. Call up your WISP see what they can do for you.
 
There's always someone selling their grandfathered Verizon unlimited data account.

Latency is usually good on Verizon LTE at ~40-50ms. It could be the speedtest server that had higher latency.
 
MadJuggla9 said:
Cell towers that utilize 900mhz spectrum are not going to give you good ping times period.
Click to expand...

there is no 900Mhz cellular in the USA

there is cellular on 800Mhz, but I don't think Sprint does LTE on 800... they could though since they turned off iDEN

and latency has nothing to do with the band you are on, just distance to tower, service at that tower, and modulation/system type
 
FLECOM said:
there is no 900Mhz cellular in the USA

there is cellular on 800Mhz, but I don't think Sprint does LTE on 800... they could though since they turned off iDEN

and latency has nothing to do with the band you are on, just distance to tower, service at that tower, and modulation/system type
Click to expand...

Latency could be caused by being on the 900mhz band, since EVERYTHING is on that band and there are very few channels. I'd expect around 75% re-transmissions in any kind of suburban environment.

I'd like to know more about the WISP in the area. Our links add 10ms max to the latency of our fiber connection, over 3 hops. Sounds like something is wrong. The actual wireless links add no latency, the latency comes from radios on the tower having slower CPUs that have to process multiple connections. On a link with just one person on it, there is no change in latency.
 
Sprint is out, didn't realize it was only a 3G tower.

Signed up for verizon home fusion 14 day trial; 30GB max for $120 /mo is ridiculously expensive, so I plan to swap network interfaces between it and the terrible WISP when not gaming as long as I can get a decent ping on it. Going to have to religiously check the usage so I don't go over as they charge $15/gig.

The WISP connection goes from their leased tower to some guys barn (who probably gets free service for using his barn as a repeater), then it bounces to me. Its a slightly older and slower technology they say and while they do have a new higher bandwidth solution they will not upgrade me because they would have to upgrade EVERYONE on the guy with the barn's node and those people do not want to pay to upgrade at this time.
 
VulcaN said:
Sprint is out, didn't realize it was only a 3G tower.

Signed up for verizon home fusion 14 day trial; 30GB max for $120 /mo is ridiculously expensive, so I plan to swap network interfaces between it and the terrible WISP when not gaming as long as I can get a decent ping on it. Going to have to religiously check the usage so I don't go over as they charge $15/gig.

The WISP connection goes from their leased tower to some guys barn (who probably gets free service for using his barn as a repeater), then it bounces to me. Its a slightly older and slower technology they say and while they do have a new higher bandwidth solution they will not upgrade me because they would have to upgrade EVERYONE on the guy with the barn's node and those people do not want to pay to upgrade at this time.
Click to expand...

Have you checked for any other WISPs in your area? The organization that I work with would never accept 100+ms latency on a home connection, and they're on a 3 year cycle for replacing hardware. There has to be a better option. If not, maybe the barn owner would be willing to strike a deal with you (to use his location as your own dedicated repeater for a link back to civilization).

If you know someone that can also see that barn, and has access to decent broadband, you can get your bandwidth from them via your own wireless backhaul. Most companies wont let you share one connection, but they can set up a second connection at that address for you, with your billing information.
 
Yes of course I've looked for other WISPs, but they are the only one. This is a fairly small time operation, I don't think many people need the internet for anything other than occasional email and web browsing.

While I could approach the barn owner for my own dedicated repeater, that seems like quite the favor to ask of someone doesn't it (I don't even know the guy). Not to mention talking the WISP into it, who will barely lift a finger to help with issues in the past 2 years we've had them.

It sounds like you have a real ISP with good customer service as a WISP and what I have is some guy who saw an opportunity to be the only provider in town and is putting in the bare minimum to get some return on his investment. Like the comcast of WISPs.
 
I think your view of WISPs is tainted from previous experience but don't let it define them, they are generally to busy to plot subscriber point to points ... but the market today has extremely affordable ways to profit from even a single user on a PTP

The guy at the barn, if he simply allows mounting he will receive free internet (depending on what its worth to you ... maybe more, encourage him). The equipment cost is only gonna run50-100 bucks more for using him as a repeater.

I'm sure people gripe about all services, but if your willing to become part of the solution, then there's still hope.
 
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