Rural Internet Services (acre, well, city, school)

[Submariner]

In my town, the primary option is our local landline phone company.

Verizon wireless has a cellphone tower in our town, so you could use them if you wanted to pay extra. But none of the other cell phone companies are compatible.

The final option is to go to satellite.

[Nonesuch]

"Midwest" is vague. as is "rural". I'm pretty much in the middle of nowhere, but we have cable lines and the cable provider offers high speed broadband (not cheap, but generally reliable).

There will be some new Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite internet services coming online soon, with vastly improved bandwidth and latency compared to HughesNet et al. Using thousands of smaller satellites in LEO orbits (210-850 miles above earth's surface) should give much lower ping times than using a small number of traditional satellites (orbiting at +22,000 miles).

OneWeb is planning to start offering commercial services in 2021, while SpaceX's StarLink could be online next year.

[Wartrace]

Originally Posted by harry chickpea

Viasat

Viasat might be an option but you're still hindered by high latency. My business requires low latency but this may work for people that are just streaming videos and doing normal internet things.

[kygman]

My son and DIL live in a rural area not covered even by DSL. They had Hughesnet for a while but she was doing online studying for her nursing career and couldn't watch videos on Hughes. They found out they could get a card to put in their modem from the AT&T phone centers for AT&T internet. Service is great and she no longer has to go elsewhere to study. They weren't ever able to watch movies at home until they got this card.

[Rivertowntalk]

I have been using my phone as a hot spot in the evenings over the past several days and it is quite a bit faster than Mercury Wireless. My phone is 3g. I can use Mercury Wireless at certain times of the day, when the traffic is low, but, recently, right about at dark, in the evenings, it becomes slow and disconnects and is unusable. Pretty sure it is the traffic and they don't have the infrastructure in place to support it.

[ClubMike]

I live in the middle of no-where Missouri I use a mifi set up. It is unlimited and wireless. It works like a hot spot on a cell phone but I can use my xbox onlne and watch hd on my laptop at the same time so pretty quick stuff. I get it thru verizon. I just heard about one called Visible I have not checked it out yet.


No more local rip offs for me.

[Rivertowntalk]

My phone hotspot will get up to 12 Mbps, so it really zips along. I can burn through a lot of data if I use it much though. It is a Verizon network. What does your monthly cost run on your mifi set up?. I have not heard of it before.

[ClubMike]

Originally Posted by Rivertowntalk

My phone hotspot will get up to 12 Mbps, so it really zips along. I can burn through a lot of data if I use it much though. It is a Verizon network. What does your monthly cost run on your mifi set up?. I have not heard of it before.

It costs me 65 bucks a month. I used to pay 85 for a local connection, so it is better and faster than that setup. I have tested it I get speeds around 40-50 Mbps You also have to buy a jetpack I have a Mifi 7730L I am not sure if the same thing is still available now thru verizon. I am grandfathered in, but I have had it less than 1 year. It is a hot setup that I like alot.

[Rivertowntalk]

Wow. 40-50 Mbps is super fast. I would not mind paying $65 for that speed level.

[ClubMike]

I am getting 72 Mbps this morning, that is the hottest I have ever seen it. Sometimes in the evening it does get to 25-35 for a few hours. Must be the heavy load. Do a search on mifi setups, I think they are great.