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I am currently located in Gaston County and am looking to move to the area around Asheville in the coming year (summer 2017 and onwards?). My primary concern with the move is my need for a location with a reliable & broadband+ speed internet as I work primarily from home. I am not looking to move into Asheville itself but one of the mountain cities/towns around it. My main question would be what are some of said city/towns that have this sort of provider? I understand that the further away from the centers of the locales the choices available will not longer be sustainable for me (DSL, Satellite).
Something that is secondary is being close enough to a major wholesale (Costco, Sam's Club, BJ's) place. I know that Asheville and Hendersonville have a Sam's Club available. I current drive 30 minutes into Charlotte for Costco's so anything within a reasonable drive (under an hour?) for me would suffice.
The Morganton area was one of the places I've seen that had both of what I mentioned above (Sam's club in Hickory) but was wondering if there are more places I can choose from that I am just not aware of.
Well, it sounds like you're not talking about living way out in the country so getting reliable internet access should not be a problem. In metro Asheville, Charter Communications and AT&T are widely available. Here's what I would suggest for starters.
-- go to the website of each and look at their coverage maps for Western NC.
-- I am only aware of Sam's Clubs. No Costco here but probably in Greenville, SC (1 hour away). No BJ's. Go to their websites to see locations maps.
-- Definitely spend some time here checking out surrounding areas. They are all different and you may find some too quiet or remote for your taste. When you locate a couple of promising places, be sure to check out the rental options and costs as that can be a deal-killer if the rental market is limited or too pricey.
I can't speak about Morganton but I find Hickory very dull. Good luck!
I am certainly not looking to live too far out in the country (although I wouldn't mind) strictly due to the internet availability situation. I can see that Charter has a major foothold in the general area but the actual coverage is where it gets questionable for me in terms of area's outside of Asheville.
Greenville and Spartanburg have Costco's and the 3 locations of Sam's Club are Asheville, Hendersonville and Hickory.
To clarify, this will not be a rental situation as I am looking to buy at this point. Also, me and my significant other enjoy quietness/nature which is one of the reasons the general area has been chosen.
I work from home. I have had to figure out what works best for me to complete my job and finally found the right combination. We have Hughesnet satellite internet for most of our internet needs. Once or twice a day, I need to log into my work servers through a vpn. I can do that through my Hughesnet connection, though it's very slow. So I turn on my mobile hotspot on my cell phone (we have Verizon, which is the most reliable cell service in our immediate area) and use that for my connection. It's very fast and doesn't use too much data. We are at a pretty high elevation north of the Canton area, so we have our trade offs. We have a fabulous view and lower temps (we never turned on our A/C this year) and it's only a bit over 30 minutes to either Asheville or Waynesville. However, we had to find the right internet for me to be able to do my job. It's not ideal, but it works.
We just moved to the Maggie Valley/Waynesville area and recently signed on with Skyrunner. Its a heck of a lot better than dish & DSL. They use line of sight to beam radio waves from one of their towers directly to your house. From what I understand weather has very little impact on the service unless the tower is directly struck by lighting. We purchased a plan that has 10 mbps down/3 mbps up with unlimited data. From where we are on the mountain we have the option to upgrade to a custom plan with even higher bandwidth if we ever decide to do so. I think its something like 50mbps down/11mbps up. Their customer service which is locally based in Asheville is great.
I will need to connect through a VPN as well so the potential for having hughesnet sounds scary to me. I will likely have to locate an area that can guarantee Charter service.
TY for the posts BC1960. At least I know for sure to stay away from area's that have Frontier and Morris.
Thanks for the suggestion about Skyrunner Beeavision. Unfortunately, those data limits would not work for me as I am a very high content user. It might be viable as a backup at some point down the line though.
Charter is quite prevalent in many western NC towns and areas...whether one 'likes' their TV situ or not, they do have fast internet.
I would narrow down some places you want to live and then determine Charter's availability in those areas vs pivoting around 'where is exc broad band', imo.
Even in our little town of Waynesville, Charter is available in most of the town and surrounding areas and even up some of the mtn residential areas to ~ 3700/4000 ft elevation; it doesn't get 'to us', but we are higher than that. Alas, we have Skyrunner and it is just tolerable to OK.
Do some reading for 'places' via Search This Forum Tab, upper right hand corner, plugging in some towns, place names etc.
After some reading ask some specific/area questions about areas of your interest and many will have Charter or some decent high speed 'Net service.
GL, mD
David, if you don't mind me asking, what plan do you have? You mention its tolerable to ok. I was also informed that trees could interfere with the service if there are many of them between you and the tower. From skycam it looks like you are almost completely surrounded with trees. I'm not sure what tower your connected to however for us the tower is on top of one of the highest peaks near Ghost Town. I can't remember which one however we had ours tested and our signal/line of sight appears very strong so far.
If internet speed is what you are looking for, Morris Broadband, which serves Hendersonville has expensive prices for fast internet speeds. Never impressed with their service or pricing for what you get.
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