Internet options in rural Eagle (Boise, Nampa: renting, new house, buyer)

[showson1]

Hi all,
My wife and I just bought a house in the rural North-West area of Eagle.. North of Beacon Light.

Where we are renting, we have CableOne for our Internet, but it is not available at the new house.
I'm having a lot of trouble finding options for our area.. no DSL providers (not surprising) or cable providers seem to service the area.

I found some Satellite options, but they seem to be only 1.5Mbps down which won't cut it for us (we download a lot and watch a LOT of online media).

Clear CLAIMS to by 6Mbps down and it appears to be good coverage at the house, but the service and customer support got HORRIBLE reviews on just about every site I've seen..

Does anyone know of any other options that I'm not seeing / considering?

I've checked Quest / Centurylink, Comcast, Verizion, AT&T, Charter, Cox, Mediacom, Earthlink and DirecTV (offer Internet through Wildblue) and they all either don't cover the area on have 1.5Mbps max.
Actually Earthlink / Hughesnet offers 2.0Mbps but it's $110 a month.. haha

Thanks for any information!

[Steamboat45]

I'd be interested it this as well.

[boiseidaho]

likewise, we are moving to eagle and possibly north of beacon light road.

as such we are most interested in what people do for fast and affordable internet access.

any insights?

thanks

[happy2beehere]

We are in Star and started out with Cable One but found that our service would just be down for awhile for no known reason. Sometimes I would call and they would tell me they were aware of the problem and they were working on it but couldn't tell me when it would be up again. After my one year contract ran out they raised my package $45 dollars... told me I would get the 50Mbps speed, limited mind you, where I had 5 speed unlimited. I looked around and decided to try DirecTv which unfortunately is connected with Century Link for internet and home phone. We are very pleased so far with DirecTv however I can't stand Century Link. I'm paying $80 mo for internet with speed somewhere between 3-7, they can't guarantee me 7 all the time but I usually get 5 speed. I have caller ID with their voice mail but have no way of knowing if I have any messages, for some reason my phone won't show any messages like it did with Cable One. To get my messages I have to call my home # with my cell phone. Their website sucks, excuse me but that's being nice I was told I could keep my old number and it took two weeks to get the old one back and then my account has been messed up since I started the service in Oct. I will consider changing back to Cable One for internet/phone even with their problems if I can deal with competent people.

So if anyone else out there knows of anything any better, I too would like to know who it is.

Thanks for listening

[MrGrumpy]

The bottom line is that it is a price you pay for living in the boonies. None of the i-net options in the treasure valley are great, but some are more tolerable than others. I am afraid that other than wireless you won't get faster than that out there. There is also Digis, which may or may not be better than clearwire:

High-Speed Broadband Internet and VoIP in Utah & Idaho

[zoso1979]

We have family in Nampa with Digis. Service has veen very unreliable, there have been days, up to a week, when their service was completely out.

Here's an interesting article on internet access in Idaho (or lack there of).

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/14/us...pagewanted=all

[benchfan]

I have a client who just closed on a property on Brookside--north of Beacon Light and east of 55. The previous owner had Bitsmart--they are a small company that services Eagle and Horseshoe Bend. I called them to get some information for my buyer and they knew the previous customer by name--very friendly customer service. Sounds like they have options for a variety of internet speeds (1mbps and up). I just wish they were in Boise. Hope this helps!! BitSmart Internet Services

[showson1]

Well, I'm having no luck.
I'm trying out Clear right now and not happy at all.. the speed is all over the place from 4Mbps to 1Mbps and now I've been throttled down to .25 Mbps which is pretty much unusable for me.
I honestly wouldn't really mind their service if they didn't throttle.. but this is ridiculous.

@benchfan - I tried BitSmart, but the emails keep getting returned saying it's a bad email address.. this is from the link on their site.
I haven't had a chance to call them yet.

Centurylink only has 1.5 Mbps and they want $40 a month for it..

Thanks for the suggestions thus far and if anyone has any other suggestions that'd be great.
Thanks.

[MrGrumpy]

Unfortunately the Boise area is behind the times on i-net and have some of the worst rates in the country. It sickens me to think that people in areas that are slightly higher in population are getting 2-3x the connection speeds we are for $40-$50 a month. I pay $50 for a 20Mb connection (nothing bundled) and that is about as good as it gets in this area for standalone i-net.

[showson1]

Originally Posted by MrGrumpy

I pay $50 for a 20Mb connection (nothing bundled) and that is about as good as it gets in this area for standalone i-net.

I'd LOVE to get 20 Mbps.. the best I get with Clear is 6 and only other options (besides wireless) are 1.5 Mbps DSL.. blah..

My Clear connection came back up to full speed this morning, apparently they only throttle until the next day.. looks like I need to time my large downloads better.