[SOLVED] Rural Internet

[Mstersmith80]

I bought a house on some acreage 4 years ago. I was told DSL was available, the ISP discontinued service and I was left with satellite. I'd have never bought the house had I known. I love the place so we have tolerated satellite internet as we were told fiber was coming in. It hasn't. I contacted some providers for business internet service. Well a few are willing to trench fiber to my house, 2 year contract and 20mbps speed. My wife owns her own business and with the COVID environment we need high speed internet. I also game and stream. Would this fit my needs? I'm looking at a few providers with speeds ranging from 20-300 but I may be on the hook for any construction cost. Thanks in advance

 

[punkncat]

My mothers home is in a rural area that "does" have internet via cable available in some of the surrounding areas. In order to bring the service down her road there was a number of the houses (I want to say ~75%) that had to sign an agreement to be contracted to service for a time frame. In addition to that each one of them was going to have to pay the costs for labor and material from the street to the home.
My mothers aspect of that for a roughly 50 yard or so drive was near to $10K according to their "estimate". No one in the neighborhood will agree.

Since then the cell service in the area has gotten FAR better and I can tether at a faster connection than her DSL. The issue would be data rates then.
With that said, even my cable company started doing a max data per month. Since we have been working from home I have been hitting it monthly for some time now and actually been having to curb other viewing activities for our streaming services not to be hit with large overage charges.

Looking ahead you might be able to use the satellite service they have been launching in a year or two.

 

[PrinceTexasLoaf]

I bought a house on some acreage 4 years ago. I was told DSL was available, the ISP discontinued service and I was left with satellite. I'd have never bought the house had I known. I love the place so we have tolerated satellite internet as we were told fiber was coming in. It hasn't. I contacted some providers for business internet service. Well a few are willing to trench fiber to my house, 2 year contract and 20mbps speed. My wife owns her own business and with the COVID environment we need high speed internet. I also game and stream. Would this fit my needs? I'm looking at a few providers with speeds ranging from 20-300 but I may be on the hook for any construction cost. Thanks in advance

20mbps would work. If your wife was using the internet, you'd just have to keep your streaming to 1080p or lower quality to prevent buffering. do you mean streaming as in netflix or you livestream?

 

[Mstersmith80]

20mbps would work. If your wife was using the internet, you'd just have to keep your streaming to 1080p or lower quality to prevent buffering. do you mean streaming as in netflix or you livestream?

Netflix and gaming. The satellite internet went down during the last quarantine, it was hammered by everyone being at home. I used to game regularly but I'm also an outdoorsman. Since moving I spend a lot more time outside. It would just be nice to be able to watch a movie or play some grim dawn lol. One provider will absorb the construction cost, that's the 20mbps.

 

[punkncat]

play some grim dawn lol.

I used to really enjoy the Diablo series that this takes cues from. When I found Grim Dawn I did a happy dance.

 

[SamirD]

One provider will absorb the construction cost, that's the 20mbps.

I would find out how much it would be if you wanted additional 20Mbps accounts if it would increase the construction cost or would be the same.

For your challenge I think you're going to need to use a bit of a 'shotgun' approach and pull in Internet from as many sources as you can--satellite, cellular, etc.--and then use a multi-wan router to get all that bandwidth into one network. If your neighbors have Internet, using some of ubiquiti's long haul repeaters might open up and option for you (or maybe even them) to share Internet access.

 

[bill001g]

This is where you get a bunch of neighbors who have the same problem and see if you can get enough to commit to spending some amount of money each month. You could then look for what is called a WISP provider. There maybe already one where you live if you are lucky. They put radios on some high location like a water tower and then put in directional antenna from all the peoples houses.

When the company I used to work for ran fiber to office buildings which is much cheaper it was still extremely expensive. Talking 10s of thousands for simple runs from the building to the street to about 1/2 million to run it 5 blocks under the sidewalk. But in most cases if you have the money you can get fiber. Out in the country it will be a little simpler because there are less building permits standing in your way.

Although it is outrageously expensive cell phone data plans likely are still cheaper. If you are in a good signal area you can easily get 50mbps rates. Of course that just means it is easier to burn your money up faster.