Internet in rural areas (Klamath Falls, Prineville, Oakridge, DSL, Cable) (houses, movies)

[opossum1]

I'm considering moving onto a 5-10 acre out-of-town property anywhere in the area that covers Klamath Falls - Oakridge - Prineville or around. The catch is that my work (which happens over VPN/special extra-secure connection and sometimes requres video and Voice-over-IP meetings over said VPN) requires good speed internet, with no latency, which leaves out Satellite (such as Hughesnet) and 4G wireless, pretty much.

So, I'm stuck with needing either DSL, fiber or cable internet over wire. Can you recommend any areas where I'd be likely to get such? It's hard to tell from property ads, as they never seem to menton anything about internet. Sometimes I see a phone line listed, but this doesn't mean that the provider offers DSL service. I wonder what are the existing experiences for getting DSL/cable?

[PNW-type-gal]

You can usually go online, put in an address and Centurylink (or whatever telecomm) will tell you what service that address has available. It really does vary by area - in our last house we had what was supposed to be 2mip DSL, although we rarely got anything better than .5. Had we lived 4 miles away, on the other side of Hwy 97, we'd have gotten much better service.

If it is Centurylink and the max speed is less than 10mpbs, then it is junk. In most cases, it is the last couple miles of line out to the individual houses, which would be massively expensive for the company to upgrade.

[opossum1]

I see--thanks. Looks like the speeds run below advertised sometimes and coverage can be spotty/mile-by-mile...I found "broadbandmap" government website that allows to search for providers mapped by the address (this was linked from "Oregon Broadband Project"). Some of the providers, though, don't allow easy service lookup and ask to initiate "sign up" process.

Any more feedback with specific areas/spots/communities where DSL or cable internet are known to be good is welcome.

[KaaBoom]

Originally Posted by opossum1

I see--thanks. Looks like the speeds run below advertised sometimes and coverage can be spotty/mile-by-mile...I found "broadbandmap" government website that allows to search for providers mapped by the address (this was linked from "Oregon Broadband Project"). Some of the providers, though, don't allow easy service lookup and ask to initiate "sign up" process.

Click on "Show Wired". That will cut the results down to the major local broadband providers. Also keep in mind that if they don't have a easy service look up and sign up, then their service may not be ready. If they are actually providing the service, they will make it easy to sign up.

[Larry Caldwell]

Rural Oregon internet varies from adequate to nonexistent. The average is wretched. I have a wretched DSL service that gets me 1 megabit down and 56k up on a good day. The server has been down 3 times this week, but only for an hour or so each time. I tried to download a movie from Amazon last month, and it took over 3 hours to download a 1 hour and 40 minute movie at low rez. Amazon was so apologetic they gave me the movie for free. No way could I do video conferencing.

[oregonwoodsmoke]

Some of the other areas, I know nothing about. They might have good internet, or maybe they don't.

Prineville has Crestview Cable. That's a TV provider that also gives internet service to some of it's areas. That's cable internet.

Prineville also has PrineTime, which is strictly internet. That's wireless, but unless you really need blistering speeds, the service is quite good.

[Hawk J]

I live in the mountains of southwest Oregon, on the south side of the mountain here. For about the last 3 years we've had Frontier Internet service. We can stream/watch movies from Amazon Prime immediately, with NO Problem........ We watch a lot of movies from Amazon Prime.

Residential Service Packages | TV | Internet | Phone

[Wartrace]

Don't rule out 4G service. It is very expensive if you use a lot of data but there are no issues with speed. I have Sprint 4G service at my house with only a 60% signal strength and I get 10mbps down/6mbps up. If I were closer to the tower I would be seeing close to 20mbps/10mbps. My latency is 48ms.

You could also look at local WISP providers in the area.

http://www.wispdirectory.com/index.p...cats&cat_id=35

[opossum1]

Thanks a lot for the responses. It seems that DSL may not be too reliable and sticking to the cable internet is a better bet. 4G likely wouldn't work for me, I've been warned by the company I work for that certain device I'm using may not work with 4G: I'll consider it for back up. (also, my personal experience with wireless in rural area in the past was that it just stopped working in my place, and they could not determine what was wrong/didn't bother to do anything for a week--while I was billed for that time. At that point I mailed the modem back)

[opossum1]

I wonder if T1 lines are avaialble and anyone has experience with these. I heard that they can be available in rural areas where one can not have DSL or Cable.