Rural Internet

[hoffman1]

We are possibly moving to a rural area.
What is the best source for internet? (I know it will vary by area, but what has been your personal experience?)
I do know there is no cell phone reception at the house.
This is going to be a BIG adjustment for us. We currently live in town and have fast, reasonably priced service. All our movies are digital. We watch Netflix a lot. Most of the internet services for rural areas we have looked at are not really compatible with streaming (they are either not fast enough or to watch one movie would use your entire allotment for the month).

 

[DisneyMandC]

The best luck I have had has been with a Sprint MiFi hotspot. We get 30 GB each month for $112/mo. Internet services through Directv/Dish/Hughesnet have all been slower with lower data caps. With my husband using his phone on wifi at home and normal internet usage between two of us, we can usually watch about 4-5 one hour shows on Netflix each month before we're out of internet. If you don't have cell service though, you might be out of luck with Sprint.

Good luck. It's no fun, I can tell you that.

 

[mommajo143]

We have dial up through AT&T. The bright spot is that even though it's dial up we can still stream Netflix most days with no problem ... on certain (expectable) high internet volume days (super bowl, Black Friday, cyber Monday, etc) we usually have terrible performance. Generally we have been most impacted in these two ways: My husband had to give up his online gaming habit & my kids have to shleck their xbox1 over to my parents to download games.

We use our cellphones / data plans / iPad for general internet browsing because it's so much faster but if you won't have a signal at all that won't be an option I suppose.

We do t have cable where we live & tried satellite based internet but that was a disaster for us...

 

[loves to dive]

When we first moved into our house, which is in a subdivision out in the country in the middle of what used to be a cow pasture, we had no internet. My honey is a computer consultant and works from home so no internet was not an option. We used Direct TV until enough people in the neighborhood wanted internet and AT&T was able to run a line from the main road. I can tell you satellite was painful, not as bad a dial up but pretty close but it was better than nothing.

 

[DisBud]

We have done the best going through the phone company, do you have a land line to the new place? We don't have a landline phone in the house, but use the local company for internet. It was the best solution we found for our family. Pros and Cons to having space!

 

[tvguy]

Most landline providers offer DSL Internet service. You might check on that.

 

[tvguy]

The best luck I have had has been with a Sprint MiFi hotspot. We get 30 GB each month for $112/mo. Internet services through Directv/Dish/Hughesnet have all been slower with lower data caps. With my husband using his phone on wifi at home and normal internet usage between two of us, we can usually watch about 4-5 one hour shows on Netflix each month before we're out of internet. If you don't have cell service though, you might be out of luck with Sprint.

Good luck. It's no fun, I can tell you that.

MiFi is just cellular, so with OP not having cellular reception, that isn't an option.

 

[DisneyMandC]

MiFi is just cellular, so with OP not having cellular reception, that isn't an option.

Good to know, was not aware of that. Cell phone service is not an issue in our area, just internet.

 

[bjscheel]

We have DSL from our tiny local mutual telephone company.

 

[GaSleepingBeautyFan]

My sister who lives in the middle of nowhere uses Hughes net and hates it - streaming is horrible. Basically they can't use any streaming and the internet is very slow. They buy movies - where they live there aren't any rental options either like Redbox.
Cell phones only work in one specific spot on her property and it's nowhere near a building. She actually put a bench in the spot so if she wanted, she could walk there and chat on the cell phone in good weather.

If the move is optional, I would not do it. I stayed at my sisters place for a week and about went nuts with the internet access and lack of cell phone access.

 

[emma'smom]

We didn't have internet at our summer house in the Adirondack Mountains for years.....finally we got cable that included Hughes net...which was very slow and frustrating, but at least I could check my email a few times a day. I would have to type messages off-line though and then drive 22 miles to a McDonalds in the nearest "big town" to send documents or any longer messages. There was a hot spot at the community center---which was still tricky, but I could download documents usually.

Finally, they put a cell tower up on a mountain and we can use AT&T cell service (but nothing else...and some family have Verizon, so they are still stuck). There is a spot on the beach on the other side of the lake where you can get other cell service if the weather is clear. So sometimes you see people standing on the beach making calls.

Finally, the cable service started providing a faster service (after some sort of federal initiative that helped fund the start up). We still can't stream too many things at once....and sometimes it takes times for things to load...but at least it is pretty functional.

 

[jedijill]

Check to see if anyone provides microwave internet service. YOu may have to put up your own pole/dish but its much faster than satellite.

Jill in CO

 

[Twende]

We are in the same boat. We are very rural and also mountainous, a very bad combination. We also have no cell service. Our choice of internet was very limited but at least the one we do have is good enough to stream (WindStream). We added a "home" phone by getting a Magic JackGo. It works fairly well as long as the internet is up and the electricity is working.

We use a Roku to stream television and recently added SlingTV. This was why do not need Direct TV or any of those services.

 

[rnorwo1]

We have hughesnet. It's not as slow as it used to be, for surfing and typical use, but you can't stream anything. You really can't even watch a 3 min YouTube video. And it's expensive.

 

[scrapquitler]

We are possibly moving to a rural area.
What is the best source for internet? (I know it will vary by area, but what has been your personal experience?)
I do know there is no cell phone reception at the house.
This is going to be a BIG adjustment for us. We currently live in town and have fast, reasonably priced service. All our movies are digital. We watch Netflix a lot. Most of the internet services for rural areas we have looked at are not really compatible with streaming (they are either not fast enough or to watch one movie would use your entire allotment for the month).

We had exactly one viable option: Hughes Net Satellite. It's not a great option, but when its your only option, you live with it. We get 15Gig/month for $60. We also get an additional 50 GIG of off peak data (2am-8am). Streaming video is not an option for us. Luckily, Netflix recently started allowing you to download content to save for later, so my husband has been going to our local library (which has a super fast internet connection) and downloading movies onto a USB stick for us to watch.

 

[barkley]

no matter what anyone tells you-even if they live in the 'neighborhood' you are moving to CONFIRM IT BEFORE YOU RELY ON IT.

we supposedly have 4 options where I live-

direct tv-bad service w/bad weather,
local land line phone company-they have upwards of a year long waiting list for internet,
little indie company-you have to have a clear view of their tower which most of us don't,
cell phone-but I've yet to find any provider that we can get decent coverage with (and it costs a fortune).