Internet Options

[tgray96]

I Hate to do this. I have already asked a bit of this forum and i really appreciate it and i feel i am stepping out of line here but i am at the last straw... Our internet Provider is awful i ahve heard many great reviews of them, but not in this area. I am looking for Some preferbaly 10 down 5 up,
A fiber line would be great I am Located in rising sun indiana and am in the country so comcast is not an option, our local utilities provides wireless internet http://orvcomm.com/ provides biz. speeds up to 1.5 lol i did talk to them at one time about the 1.5 and they wanted close to $80 a month....WOW Like i said i feel not right asking this, but in our household we have 1 who monitors proccess for a plastics company 24/7 via a work provided computer , 1 in college with some online classes and large files and me with my schoolwork and server work! Thansk Again Guys!

 

[mattjw916]

I hate to say it but you need to move to a metropolitan area if you want decent broadband. No ISP is going to run fibre out into rural areas, there simply is no incentive (money) in it for them.

Generally people I know who lived in rural areas either went with "stretch" DSL which was like ~384-768k if it was even available or wireless of some sort.

Nowadays if you are lucky enough to be in an LTE, 4G or 3G coverage area you could go with a pc card modem or tethering but that's pretty expensive if you plan to use it a lot.

Bottom line is if you want to live the "high-tech" life, you need to live in a city.

 

[Blue Fox]

You pretty much either have to put up with slow internet or move to somewhere that isn't in the middle of nowhere.

 

[Macco]

I hate to say it but you need to move to a metropolitan area if you want decent broadband. No ISP is going to run fibre out into rural areas, there simply is no incentive (money) in it for them.

Generally people I know who lived in rural areas either went with "stretch" DSL which was like ~384-768k if it was even available or wireless of some sort.

Nowadays if you are lucky enough to be in an LTE, 4G or 3G coverage area you could go with a pc card modem or tethering but that's pretty expensive if you plan to use it a lot.

Bottom line is if you want to live the "high-tech" life, you need to live in a city.

As someone who works for a fairly small rural telco I'll agree to this to an extent, however many rural telco's are applying for RUS loans to build out FTTH networks. We just started a build out in 2 of our exchanges that should be done by May with work on 4 more starting after that. While we aren't big by any means (total population of ~4,000 across 6 exchanges, slightly below average income) we are able to offer 5d/1u ADSL2+ to customers located within 4 load points (3.5 miles) of the DSLAM, using remote cabinets we can extend coverage to just about anywhere.

The FTTH network we're building out is a full active system that will supports speeds of 100 meg per customer with the current CO equipment and ONT's.

While rural area's are getting better they still have their issues. While we provide some 'advanced' services to business customers such as TLS we aren't able to offer MPLS or a lot of other managed services. Also bandwidth is an issue for us as well. Not from CO to Customer but on our back bone. Customers want bandwidth, they just don't want to pay for it.

 

[InvisiBill]

Who provides phone service in your area? I live in a smaller town than you (1.2 sq mi vs. 1.5 sq mi | population 1,326 vs. 2,470 | density 1,142.1/sq mi vs. 1,664.4/sq mi) and I'm able to get 6.0/768 DSL from AT&T. One nice thing about small towns is that you're pretty much guaranteed to be in range of the CO for DSL if you're actually in town.

If you can't get cable or DSL, you're pretty much limited to dialup, satellite, WiFi, or cellular. Dialup is obviously not broadband.

Satellite has high latency simply because of the time it takes the signal to travel the 22,500 mi between the satellite and earth. They use some proxy trickery to hide that delay, so regular surfing and email will be faster. However, small packets (like the ones used for gaming) and encrypted connections (VPN) don't benefit from this, and will usually be slower than dialup (700ms+ ping times). Plus it's expensive.

Around here, the WiFi ISPs seem to be semi-technical people who see dollar signs from all the people who aren't in cable/DSL range. The service is generally ok, but it's sort of like renting from your neighbor as opposed to a real rental management company. Sometimes you get good "small town" service rather than cookie-cutter corporate support which is nice, but you also have to deal with the fact that it's two guys rather than a real company. At one point, our WiFi went out because there was an AP on a silo, and the farmer unplugged the extension cord in his barn that was powering it.

Cellular can be somewhat expensive and usually has traffic limits. You may or may not have good network coverage in your area to actually get those high speeds. It is nice in that it works anywhere you do have cell coverage though. Depending on how you connect to the cell network, you may be limited on how you can set things up. You may need to buy a special router that supports using a WWAN USB/card for internet access. If you get a MiFi device, you're limited to WiFi for your LAN (no wired clients without a bridge).

 

[tgray96]

I hate to say it but you need to move to a metropolitan area if you want decent broadband. No ISP is going to run fibre out into rural areas, there simply is no incentive (money) in it for them.

Generally people I know who lived in rural areas either went with "stretch" DSL which was like ~384-768k if it was even available or wireless of some sort.

Nowadays if you are lucky enough to be in an LTE, 4G or 3G coverage area you could go with a pc card modem or tethering but that's pretty expensive if you plan to use it a lot.

Bottom line is if you want to live the "high-tech" life, you need to live in a city.

Haha If I wanted to live in the city i would Too Big A Population For ME!

You pretty much either have to put up with slow internet or move to somewhere that isn't in the middle of nowhere.

As someone who works for a fairly small rural telco I'll agree to this to an extent, however many rural telco's are applying for RUS loans to build out FTTH networks. We just started a build out in 2 of our exchanges that should be done by May with work on 4 more starting after that. While we aren't big by any means (total population of ~4,000 across 6 exchanges, slightly below average income) we are able to offer 5d/1u ADSL2+ to customers located within 4 load points (3.5 miles) of the DSLAM, using remote cabinets we can extend coverage to just about anywhere.

The FTTH network we're building out is a full active system that will supports speeds of 100 meg per customer with the current CO equipment and ONT's.

While rural area's are getting better they still have their issues. While we provide some 'advanced' services to business customers such as TLS we aren't able to offer MPLS or a lot of other managed services. Also bandwidth is an issue for us as well. Not from CO to Customer but on our back bone. Customers want bandwidth, they just don't want to pay for it.

Who provides phone service in your area? I live in a smaller town than you (1.2 sq mi vs. 1.5 sq mi | population 1,326 vs. 2,470 | density 1,142.1/sq mi vs. 1,664.4/sq mi) and I'm able to get 6.0/768 DSL from AT&T. One nice thing about small towns is that you're pretty much guaranteed to be in range of the CO for DSL if you're actually in town.

If you can't get cable or DSL, you're pretty much limited to dialup, satellite, WiFi, or cellular. Dialup is obviously not broadband.

Satellite has high latency simply because of the time it takes the signal to travel the 22,500 mi between the satellite and earth. They use some proxy trickery to hide that delay, so regular surfing and email will be faster. However, small packets (like the ones used for gaming) and encrypted connections (VPN) don't benefit from this, and will usually be slower than dialup (700ms+ ping times). Plus it's expensive.

Around here, the WiFi ISPs seem to be semi-technical people who see dollar signs from all the people who aren't in cable/DSL range. The service is generally ok, but it's sort of like renting from your neighbor as opposed to a real rental management company. Sometimes you get good "small town" service rather than cookie-cutter corporate support which is nice, but you also have to deal with the fact that it's two guys rather than a real company. At one point, our WiFi went out because there was an AP on a silo, and the farmer unplugged the extension cord in his barn that was powering it.

Cellular can be somewhat expensive and usually has traffic limits. You may or may not have good network coverage in your area to actually get those high speeds. It is nice in that it works anywhere you do have cell coverage though. Depending on how you connect to the cell network, you may be limited on how you can set things up. You may need to buy a special router that supports using a WWAN USB/card for internet access. If you get a MiFi device, you're limited to WiFi for your LAN (no wired clients without a bridge).

Centurylink, thats who i have now, but i have went through 4 of their modems, 5th on the way , i pay for the 3mb down, 678kb up and it is slow, i normaly have about 768k down and 153ish up also due to 2 of their modems having a power issue? thats what they said,i have lost 2 wifi routers, their are times my ping is flipping huge, i would be ok with cable or like Fios, as i said i am in a rural-ish area but i am only 3/4 of a mile from the center of town and about 1.5 from a slightly larger town aurora