high speed internet in rural pa? (Harrisburg, Brockway: city hall, house, litigation)

[alfonseJ]

Hi All,

Where is high speed internet available in rural Pennsylvania? Are there areas where there are problems? Speeds need to be suitable for company headquarters.

[Pureblood]

I know here in rural blair county everything seems pretty good. Embarq provides DSL. It is very reliable but im only a mile out from town and they offer speeds up to 10MB. I think it would be really sketchy depending on where you want to go. I wouldn't go with satellite since they have caps and seems rather slow. Any questions let me know.

[rothbear]

A lot of places in western PA have Comcast cable internet. The house we are trying to sell is in Armstrong Co., which is pretty rural, and we have Comcast and have had it for several years. Adelphia, which was pretty strong in western PA, was bought out by Comcast (and Time Warner in other areas like NY), so it should be wherever they were.

[Bettylou22]

south central PA uses Comcast.

[ki0eh]

PA still has a lot of smaller broadband companies.

For the TV-based guys, besides Comcast and Time Warner look also for Service Electric (3 different companies, each owned by a different child of the guy who invented cable TV), Blue Ridge Communications, Armstrong Cable.

For the phone-based, in addition to Verizon look for Embarq and Frontier.

Plus there's still a lot of really little outfits out there. Such as the municipally owned cable system in Brockway Borough and Snyder Township, Jefferson County.

[PeeAye Native]

If really you want to dig deep into this, at the state level, Pennsylvania several years ago had a court litigation settlement with Verizon (any maybe Comcast, too) to bring high speed broadband to rural areas of the state. The deal was verizon agreed to do this, in return for some other consessions, I forget the exact details, but it was to be done over ten years. It's mentioned infrequently in the press every once in a while.

But I believe someone at the PA Public Utility Commission is actively monitoring this, and either that group, or your elected state representative or senator can dig up some info for you.

[Dawne]

Here in Snyder County I have Internet through the cable company, Service Electric Cablevision. The Internet provider is Penn Tele Data (PTD) Prolog.

[ferraris]

I've been seeing commercials for Hughes Net, a satellite internet provider that doesn't make you use a phone to dial in.

[RUNYYfan]

Originally Posted by iriekate

south central PA uses Comcast.

But it is spotty. For example, McConnellsburg, the county seat of Fulton County has Comcast. But other parts of the county do not. I have a place in Needmore and use Frontier Communications for both phone and DSL service. I've tried to get Comcast where I am but I'm not considered to be in their "coverage area." Whatever that means.

As an example of speed, I have three computers on a wireless network, one is streaming audio right now and the other two are accessing remote servers for work. Below is a snapshot of my current speed.



Compared to what I get when I'm in Jersey, this is nothing to write home about.

[Bettylou22]

i just came from Fairfield Co, CT so you're preaching to the choir here. but where i am right now is about 20 minutes south of Harrisburg and it's Comcast here. i'm sure there are small companies you can choose from as well, but since i came from Cablevision land, i chose to stick with who i get my cable from.

can you contact the city hall of the town you're looking to set up shop to see what options you have? small towns give that info, right?