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just moved to emmett recently and was sad to see we had 3mbps from centurylink or 100mbps from cableone which is what we went with but the pricing and limits are big draw backs
Idaho definitely has by far THE worst internet of every other place we have either traveled to or visited in the entire world and that's saying a lot because we have been world travelers for some time..LOL
Idaho definitely has by far THE worst internet of every other place we have either traveled to or visited in the entire world and that's saying a lot because we have been world travelers for some time..LOL
I doubt it will ever improve much. After all, 1/3 of our state is nothing but mountains, and they're tall, steep, mountains with narrow canyons and few large valleys. There are not enough people living in them to ever make it profitable as an internet business investment. Running telephone lines through that 1/3, wherever they now exist, came from a time when the telephone was a monopoly, the last national monopoly to exist in the U.S.
Running the phone lines was a total money-loser for Ma Bell, but as a monopoly, the company realized that in order to keep their monopoly, phone lines needed to be run in places that would never make them money, ever. It was just part of being responsible to both their customers and to the government. There are other similar places in the United States where the Bell companies never turned a profit, but none are as large as here, and few presented more difficulty.
Bell could do it because they knew by doing so, they kept their monopoly and made more money that what Idaho cost them in other states, where populations were growing and industries flourishing.
The only way Idaho will ever get all the technology required for high-speed net, landline or from space, is through government. Either the state or the federal government. Neither the state of Idaho nor the federal government will foot that bill until there is a national will for the net to become nationalized.
Like the telephone, there are other places in the country that have the same problems finding high speed internet, and all those places have similar conditions to here in Idaho. When they get theirs, Idaho will get ours.
Nationally, the days of monopoly are gone. The very last remnants of the past, when monopolies built most of our nation in the 19th and 20th centuries, the big financial conglomerates, flew apart in the Great Recession, and its only a matter of time now before they're broken up.
Facts are facts. If someone is looking to move here, and is considering a place where high speed internet does not exist, hoping there is a work-around is only wishful thinking. If a person relies on having high speed, they must go where it exists, because it won't be coming to them. There is no work-around, period.
Right now, anyone can get high speed; all they have to do is spend the money to get it. It's just like running a power line to a piece of remote property; if you want electricity, you can get it, but it could cost up to $7,000 a mile to get it.
If you are living 20 miles from the nearest line, having the convenience of continual electricity in any amount needed is going to cost a lot of money up front. You either pay for it now or pay for it later in the expenses of owning your own generator. And electricity generation is a much simpler thing to accomplish than high speed internet.
Of course, there are many alternate solutions; there are always solutions. They all require other people, the more the better, all with the same common goal, who are all equally willing to put up money, and agree to agree until the goal is accomplished.
While Mike is correct that the rural nature and rugged terrain of Idaho present many challenges to providing widespread high quality Internet using terrestrial networks, I do think there is a reasonable chance that some emerging satellite approaches will significantly improve the coverage and quality of Internet access in rural areas outside the larger cities and towns of Idaho.
I am cautiously optimistic that one of a couple low earth orbit satellite solutions that are in the works will bring reasonable Internet service to Idaho. There is a project called OneWeb that is planning a constellation of 648 satellites that will provide service to the entire world. Because the satellites will be in low earth orbit (about 6-800 miles up in the sky vs. 23,000 miles for the satellites that provide DishNet, HughesNet, Exede etc.), they will provide much faster service with low latency. It won't be like being connected to FIOS, but it will be far better than what is available today outside the larger cities and towns in Idaho.
My judgement is OneWeb's challenge is not technology. Yes, there is a lot of technology that needs to be developed for this solution to work, but all are within the realm of the possible today. Their real challenge is whether they can make a viable business out of this venture. They do have the backing of some very prominent business partners though, including Airbus, SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, and Coca-Cola to name few. As I said, I am cautiously optimistic they will make this a success.
I know something about the antenna being developed for the ground terminals because the company I worked for before I retired last year is developing that antenna.
Besides OneWeb, there are persistent rumors that Google and Facebook have similar initiatives to develop and deploy global Internet service offerings. Both have been experimenting with technologies such as high altitude balloons and solar powered gliders, neither of which will pan out IMO, but I would not be surprised to see one or both of them turn to a low earth orbit satellite solution at the end of the day.
OneWeb is planning to begin deploying their solution in 2017. I wouldn't be surprised to see delays, but IIRC they have until sometime in 2019 to begin using the radio spectrum they have been allocated or they risk loosing that spectrum to others. This gives them a significant motivation to keep on schedule.
Idaho definitely has by far THE worst internet of every other place we have either traveled to or visited in the entire world and that's saying a lot because we have been world travelers for some time..LOL
What parts of the world do you visit?
I lived in Moab and fastest there was 20 mbps, moved to ID and via Cableone, it was 50 mbps for almost the same price. A few months ago they upped it to 100 for only 5 bucks more a month. Not complaining, in about 16 months living here, only lost service due to Cableone on a Sunday, and they dispatched a tech in a half hour and he fixed it in about twenty minutes. Can't complain. And to be fair, only had one modem problem with Emery in UT that was fixed as soon as I installed another modem/gateway.
And from what I have read, at least here in Pocatello, Cableone is running fiber optics and expect to get up or near the 1 gbps speeds sometime in the fairly near future.
As for internet, most countries in Europe/Asia (Asian industrial countries, won't discuss the ones I have lived in) have always had, on average, internet speeds similar to the USA and even here in ID. Cannot speak for reliability since I usually only passed through most European countries. Are there places with really fast service, yes. I know Chattanooga TN and Kansas City MO and even Lafayette, Louisiana (WHY?) have 1 gb service. And countries like S. Korea for one, have 1 gb service in large cities.
But Mike is correct. If you in out of the way places (i.e., boondocks) then you are restricted to what you can get. That is true even in eastern states like the hills of TN, northern MI, Castle Valley UT, etc. And also true for countries outside the USA. Try getting internet in Tha Ngon, Laos.
But I will add that many of those land lines strung out in the middle of nowhere are due to the Universal Service Charge that feeds into the Federal Universal Service Fund that is used to pay for poles and lines to be strung out into areas that AT&T would not go, or the newer companies that have spun off of AT&T.
Bravo Tango…
It's important for you to remember that Idaho is a very large state with many huge differences in terrain. A big country with big contrasts everywhere.
We are all replying with generalities here to some degree, and your responses have come from all over the state. Some of the regulars here have been Idahoans for only a short time while others have lived here for years.
The fact is there's no one answer that is going to be universally valid about the internet here. And just about everything else you could think of as well. Idaho simply is different from almost everything you may expect it to be right now. There is no way you can ever learn what living here is really like until you come out and see for yourself.
After reading all the posts in this topic, f5's reply suddenly reminded me of a little factoid that I had completely forgotten.
My family owns a ranch up in the mountains of S.E. Idaho. We have been on our land since it was open range. About 15 years ago, the telephone company ran an optic cable trunk underground next to one of the main access roads that passes through the area. The route was probably chosen because this road is ancient, and is the shortest route from southern Idaho to the upper Snake River valley and then on to the borders of Wyoming and Montana.
It never became a modern highway because the road is over nothing but high ground that's snowed in for 2-3 months longer than the valleys in parts of it, and fell out of use after motors replaced horses around 100 years ago. It was never the main route south to north, but was used as an express route during the months when the road was free of snow.
I don't own a laptop, but I have relatives who do, and we have no internet problems on the ranch because there's a new relay tower that's in our line of sight. After reading f5's post, I suddenly realized we have the possibility of tapping into a major high speed trunk line that lies less than a half-mile from our cabin.
I don't know if we could tap into it or not, but the cable is there. If we had to run a line off of it, it wouldn't be a huge expense, I would think, or using a wireless router of some kind might be a possibility as well.
This area was the last place in the United States to get telephone service. The remoteness and the very low population simply made it unprofitable until 1985. Electrification didn't happen until the 1970s, and there are still places in the area that have no electricity. One of our closest neighbors has a place in a canyon bottom, and will never enjoy public electricity or a telephone there; cell phones don't work, and running land lines is impossibly expensive.
But less than 2 miles away, we could go out with a couple of shovels and a good technician and probably lay our own optic cable and get internet service that's as fast as it gets here for next to nothing. And the road itself is still quite primitive; no paving and little gravel. It's ruts in the spring, washboard in the summer, and icy in the fall, and buried 6 feet under all winter.
This is what Idaho is like. Appearances are deceptive here. You have to come out and experience it for yourself, and it will pay off well if you get off the interstates, look the entire state over, and spend a lot of time talking to the locals wherever you may be.
Probably would not recommend just taping into a fiber optic cable.
I wouldn't ever try it myself. I just supposed that an authorized capable tech could do it.
I never did any electrical work well when I was younger and much more immortal than I am now. These days, re-setting a breaker is the extent of what I'm comfrotable doing. It's good that I have a couple of good friends who are electricians; one is a real safety nut who knows the code book by heart. He's my guy most of the time.
Hopefully Ting ends up bringing gigabit fiber to the Sandpoint area (and their $19/month plan for 5 Mbps symmetrical).
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