Posted on 09/21/2013 6:22:35 PM PDT by rey
I live in a remote area and have difficulty with internet connection. It is so bad that I actually use dial up.
The owners of the property have a satellite dish (Hughes) which they are not very happy with. It is slow (slightly faster than dial up), does not function often, is affected by rain and fog, and, as we are next to a mountain, soemtimes has no connection at all.
We are too far out for a DSL or T3 T4, so far AT&T won't even quote a figure. I do not believe Comcast comes out here and I cannot find a human at the company to talk to. And, to top it off, cell phone service is spotty at best.
So, resident computer geeks, what are your suggestions.
Thanks in advance.
Jim
I use wild blue satellite here in Kentucky. $79 a month, but it is as fast as cable. Youtube videos, even at high resolution, don’t break up. You are limited to a certain amount of activity per month but from midnight until 5 am it doesn’t apply to your usage. I use Utorrent to download stuff and you can schedule it to run during that time.
They actually launched a new satellite a month or two before I signed up. I think that is why it’s so good.
Do you have cell phone 3G or perhaps 4G?
When I moved here from Seattle, I figured I’d just use my Galaxy S as my wifi hotspot in my home. It worked great even with just “edge” data service. BTW, I was a T-Mobile employee and quit to move out here.
Anyway, after a few weeks and six gig of usage, they shut me down. It’s been almost two years and the tower near my home will not even let me send text messages with pictures. It took several phone calls and I finally gave up. I use a tower next to a major highway and they have shut me off, personally, from that tower for data usage.
It is not relevant because a few months after we moved here they changed the plan. No more unlimited data. I had to go satellite regardless.
mark
Or move to a low income and minority neighborhood. Broad band communication 52 billion is still being passed out to the left ones.
Anything less than unlimited could get expensive. I've never had sat, and don't know much about it except others, who do have it, complain about the lag. The speeds you've mention that you're getting is pretty darn good.
My home connection now is 15Mb over cable. Love it and would really miss it, if I relocate.
It is not as fast as cable. I have it on the farm, and it’s about 12 Mbps down and 3 Mbps up. In my home office in town, I am on Comcast’s middle tier — so it’s not even the fastest available — and I get 57.9 Mbps down and 12.7 Mbps up.
Multiple dial ups.
If the satllite connection is that crappy, maybe get a qualified tech out to check antenna alignment and amplifier performance. Something may be out of whack (engineering term).
I have Hughes out at the ‘gulch’. While it is far from Cable or DSL in terms of speed, and has a few irritating quirks, I’m happy with it overall.
I CAN watch you-tube videos , with the occasional ‘stuttering’ during peak times, no problems late at night or mid day.
It is a completely self installed system, with the larger 1 meter dish and the 2 watt transmitter. I’ve only had one weather outage in 4 years with my system, and that is with a lot of pretty bad storms.
I do have a cellular modem that works out there... But the hughes dish is faster and more reliable.... I’m in direct sight of the cell tower, a mile away, but ever since AT&T took over the tower it has been neglected and only about half the performance as when Alltel operated the system.
Hughes is worth a look if you are at all handy, and willing to learn a bit. A few days on the internet, and you can be more competent with the system than most of the ‘professional’ installers.
Oh, and unless that mountain is moving around, or erupting plumes of volcanic ash, it is not responsible for intermittent connection problems. If you can lock on to the satellite at all, the mountain is not the problem.
LOL!
Thanks for making it clickable!
I’m going to miss having FiOS, I just know it.
21MBps upload and 20MBps download speeds were awesome. Also no limit on download amounts on our old plan.
Now I am in a smaller town, I just know it won’t be as good.
Just don't use Sprint's hot spot.
“I’m going to miss having FiOS, I just know it.”
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Yes, cable internet is by far the best.
Cable is working its way to my town, now in the municipality to my north. I do not know if I will need it. 99 channels of TV is a bit overwhelming. I have satellite TV with about 30. Streaming my talk radio programs is as fast as I need, and my DSL does that OK. Some of my programs are on when I am asleep, so I use DAR.fm to save them for me. I can play them whenever I like...Great service.
I am in a pretty remote are in the Northern California mountains; had a wireless setup for a few years and the service was really bad, just got a satellite hookup this summer and it seems to be working great,
Got the sat hookup through Dish Network and some company called LinkUs out of Anderson, Ca. The system is working fine and as fast as my computer was at work before I retired.
Now if I could just get them to come back and mount the dish on a post like they said they would; right now it is on a ground mount and I had to put a short fence around it to keep my dogs from pissing on it.
I can’t even add channels to Rhapsody online radio player, stinks. lol
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