Options for high speed internet in rural N. AL (Somerville: house, living)

[boomer]

I am currently building a house in the Lacey Springs/Somerville area. We do not have any providers for DSL or cable where we are living. What options do I have for high speed internet? I have heard that Satellite (Dish/Directv) offers some type of service that provide faster internet speed than dial-up. Is this true and does anyone have any experience with this type of service?

[Charles]

Originally Posted by boomer

I am currently building a house in the Lacey Springs/Somerville area. We do not have any providers for DSL or cable where we are living. What options do I have for high speed internet? I have heard that Satellite (Dish/Directv) offers some type of service that provide faster internet speed than dial-up. Is this true and does anyone have any experience with this type of service?

What about wireless 3G and 4G? The neat thing about these services is you take your high speed internet (just about) anywhere you go. I use 3G and it is pretty fast most of the time. The only sort of problem is reliability of the my delicate external 3G hardware card that I slip into my laptop. Once in a while (maybe 10% of the time) it requires a reset (a one minute operation). But that is for my external card; I think there are laptops with (presumably) more reliable internal 3G and 4G cards.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4G

[Southlander]

If you have a fiber optic phone line, you can get AT&T or Hiwaay. Most rural folks I know use satellite for TV.
You get few answers here. Most of the folks here are city dwellers and know very little about rural living. You'll probably get better answers by hanging out and shooting the breeze at the little store down the road. Seriously! Or one of the restaurants in Lacey's Spring.

And remember - it's not "Lacey Springs," it's Lacey's Spring (a guy named Lacey owned the Spring).

But it is Valmermoso Springs. Props for correctly spelling Somerville!

[friday13]

Originally Posted by Southlander

If you have a fiber optic phone line, you can get AT&T or Hiwaay. Most rural folks I know use satellite for TV.
You get few answers here. Most of the folks here are city dwellers and know very little about rural living. You'll probably get better answers by hanging out and shooting the breeze at the little store down the road. Seriously! Or one of the restaurants in Lacey's Spring.

And remember - it's not "Lacey Springs," it's Lacey's Spring (a guy named Lacey owned the Spring).

But it is Valmermoso Springs. Props for correctly spelling Somerville!

to be entirely correct, it is Valhermoso (Spanish hermoso-hermosa)

[harry chickpea]

Satellite is the last option you want to explore. I have it. I hate it. I hate spending the $60/mo for crappy service. I hate the up-front cost of about $500 I had to pay to get the crappy service.

[CharlotteRJ]

I'm not in rural AL, but I'm in the boonies of MD. I tether to my blackberry through verizon. I can't talk on the phone and surf at the same time, but since I already have the internet access to my phone (~$60/month) the tethering itself is only ~$15/month. Unfortunately, it's only good one one computer at a time. On our other laptop, we have the aircard (USB, actually) to which Charles refers above. It does cut out a lot - my blackberry tethering is a lot more reliable. Again, it's only good for one computer at a time.

I do love being able to drive across country, connected the whole way (until we get to rural WI, but that's another matter...).

Speeds are ok, but not as fast as cable. WAY better than dial-up, though. From what I've read, the speeds with cellular and satellite are relatively similar, for download. I believe (you'll want to research this) that with satellite, you actually upload through a phone line, making download speeds ok but upload speeds pretty awful.

So, if you only have one computer user at a time, I'd suggest the cellular (3G or 4G) aircard or tethering. If you want a wireless network for more than one user, satellite would be your best bet, assuming that upload speeds aren't critical for you.

[Southlander]

Originally Posted by friday13

to be entirely correct, it is Valhermoso (Spanish hermoso-hermosa)

You are, of course, correct - I did not realize I had spelled it wrong. Thanks for the correction!

[boomer]

My neighbor is going with Direct TV for satellite and using hughesnet services for the internet. According to hughesnet it is 15x - 50x faster than dial-up. It is pricey though, starting at $59 per month. Does anyone have any experience with hughesnet?

[milledj]

We had Verizon's card and loved it. The only reason we aren't using it today is that we usually have one pc connected at all times (servers), and we got a deal on an internet/cable bundle in town.

For email and surfing, it is a great option.

[TURFNSCAPE]

I read somewhere (or someone told me) that around Smith Lake the power company was now providing internet service through there power service. I will try to do alittle research later and find out a more definitive answer.