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In case it's of interest, some parts of the High Country have fiber optic internet direct to the house. We're getting settled in Beech Mountain and have been pleasantly astonished at the speed and stability.
Our provider is Skyline Membership Corporation, service may be branded as SkyBest. I'm not sure how far their fiber network extends, but they've received nice grants for FTTP (fiber to the premises) and certainly every house we've looked at in Beech Mtn has it available -- not always hooked up to the house -- but certainly available. It wasn't hooked up at the house we're renting and it was like $43 to initially turn it on.
We're relocating from central NC and depend on good Internet access for our work. What we have here in Beech kicks the pants right off of what we could get back there!
I too hope to be moving to the Franklin area next year and the internet concerns me. I am use to Comcast which has been very reliable in TN but very expensive. I hope to buy just south of town which does not have CATV. Does Dish offer internet? If so, how expensive and reliable is it?
A link with possible net offerings for you, none of which are as fast as they promote, (a neighbor has had both HughesNet and DISH internet before tossing both), and the intro price/fine print/equip lease and bs will drive you crazy:
Don't know what Comcast internet you had, but it is reasonable and very fast by most comparisons, in my experience.
We use Skyrunner at our western NC mtn home, which may be available to you. It isn't inexpensive either, and is not close to even basic Comcast speeds. Google Skyrunner and give them a call for availability 'outside of Franklin', as their wireless internet requires line of sight to a repeater dish on a nearby mountain or tower.
GL, mD
I'm in Franklin and have run my business from home for the past 10 years. I use two ISPs, Frontier and WestNet. I have two in the event one goes out, which does happen, I can just switch to the other. WestNet (used to be Dnet) is a wireless provider, with Frontier over a land line. When both ISPs are running, which is most of the time, I use one for business and the other for streaming.
When I first moved to our place in Cruso a couple of years ago, we started with one of the satellite internet services (Excede). It was better than the DSL option and Cellular, but satellite was a real step down from our cable service in Florida in a number of important ways.
First and most important, the data caps on satellite meant that I had to keep careful watch on cumulative downstream usage outside of an open period from 12-5am. Even with the highest cap (~25GB/month) I had to schedule large downloads (e.g., patches, video, etc.) during the open hours and ended up close or going over my cap each month ($). This is a complete pita when you're not used to it, especially when friends come over with their ipads, iphones, webex, skype and facebook activities. Ugh. The second problem with satellite service is the higher latency with satellite would create problems for certain activities/applications. The third problem with satellite service is that services that inferred your geographic location from your internet entry point (e.g., google shopping) were always wrong. I'd search for some do-dad and it was always a real pain to figure out a way around the POP location (TX). I know, more an app design problem than satellite provider problem, but still a pita.
Then, about a year into the 2-year satellite contract our satellite provider changed their plan eliminating the free period. This was permitted under their contract because I had "paused" the service while we were in Florida for the winter. I re-started my internet provider search anew and got very lucky. I convinced (?) the "local" cable company to run a cable up the mountain to my cabin - even paid extra to bury the thing the last ~400 feet so I wouldn't have to look at it. I gladly paid the early termination fee on the satellite and pulled that satellite dish out of the ground.
^ As I posted, we have similar situ with Skyrunner: cost, 'speed', latency, occasional outages, etc.
We are ~ 1 mile above/up the road from the termination of old Charter cable line. Every year several of us 'up here' ask and cajole Charter, (now Spectrum), to run the cable up to our mountain ridge(s) and peak. They 'thank us for our interest' but say it is only in their long range planning...we've been here since Sept 2001, so I guess their planning is a longer span than most of us will live.
We even had our knucklehead builders shoot a cable through our buried utility pipe to house, in the event we ever got cable to 'our curb'...we won't live long enough, I suspect. Glad you got it, and envious.
I am considering relocating to western NC and am curious to see if anyone has anything positive or negative to say about internet quality and vendors. I work from home using internet at all times in work.
I have Morris Broadband and literally there is not a week that doesn't go by without me losing service sometimes for a few minutes last week for 3 hours for about 2 different days. I had Frontier before and it was expensive and horrible. I wish I could get AT&T out here.
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Internet in western NC
