Internet At Grand Canyon Village (living, dating, cellular)

[infocyde]

So I did some research and testing for internet access at Grand Canyon Village (if you live there).

You have two options (as far as I can tell).

Option 1: CenturyLink. There is about a 5% chance it will be available where you are living at. If so it will probably be a 5 meg connection. Not blazing but fast enough to do what you need including streaming.

Option 2: Verizon Wireless Account: Verizon is pretty much the only 4G LTE game in town from what I understand, though other providers might provide 3G via piggy backing arrangements with Verizon. Verizon's "unlimited" data plan gives you 15 gigs of data at high speeds. You can get their "jet pack" little cellular router and get another 15 gigs for 30 gigs a month. In testing working for a full day I burned through 3 gigs of data in one day though I am a heavy user. Now Verizon will only start capping you after your 15/30 gig "unlimited" use if there is network congestion...then you are stuck at .5 or .6 megs of 3G speeds. Even with that you can still do most stuff on the internet except obviously slower. Rumor has it that Verizon's Northern Arizona networks rarely reach peak congestion, so if you have an unlimited plan you should be good to go. Speeds for my testing ranged from 3 megs to 20 megs a second (not bad) with upload speeds topping at almost 5 megs. My wife talked to a resident that burned through 80 gigs a month without ever being capped. But...this could change so be wary of that.

I just thought I would share my experience. I was able to do conference calls, screen sharing, Netflix (though just watched for a few minutes as a test),basic web development task like pulling and updating code repositories and googling answers using Verizon's network with only one or two drops due to my phone shutting off the wireless hot spot randomly.

From my research these two options (really just one) seem like about all that is available up here in the park. I guess using a wireless network sparingly you can get by remote working here full time.

I hope my experience is helpful.