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Old 06-25-2020, 07:02 PM
 
313 posts, read 269,389 times
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We'll be building a home rurally where satellite internet, a landline phone, and dish tv are what's available. A repeater may not help our cell phones work. Any of you using satellite internet or only a landline phone? My kid's gaming consoles will receive a latent signal, so some games won't work. We plan on hardwiring devices to cables/wall ports (instead of using wifi) for a more solid connection. We online school, use laptops, tablets, kindle, ipad for work....We'll use old fashioned phones for power outages. No cordless handset systems. I appreciate cable type suggestions to use for these ports. It's called "ethernet" or "cat" wiring? Thanks in advance.
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Old 06-25-2020, 08:00 PM
 
9,868 posts, read 7,707,756 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Withinpines View Post
We'll be building a home rurally where satellite internet, a landline phone, and dish tv are what's available. A repeater may not help our cell phones work. Any of you using satellite internet or only a landline phone? My kid's gaming consoles will receive a latent signal, so some games won't work. We plan on hardwiring devices to cables/wall ports (instead of using wifi) for a more solid connection. We online school, use laptops, tablets, kindle, ipad for work....We'll use old fashioned phones for power outages. No cordless handset systems. I appreciate cable type suggestions to use for these ports. It's called "ethernet" or "cat" wiring? Thanks in advance.
Those were our only choices. We have satellite Internet and cell phones. My husband squawked and balked at putting in a land line when the power lines were put in (buried). I wanted one for the exact reason you stayed: a simple landline phone still works during power outages. Also when a phone of that type dies, it is easy to buy another one, plug it in, and no folderol with the phone company is necessary. I am going to hate replacing my cell phone, even though it is just a basic flip phone. So you are smart by adding in the small initial cost of the land line. You can always leave it unused later on if so desired.

The satellite Internet is OK, not great. But it is better than the dial-up modem we had in our previous CO home!
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Old 06-25-2020, 08:39 PM
 
1,664 posts, read 1,918,670 times
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1. We have the original Ma Bell Phone lines on our very rural road. That means we got rid of the land lines quite a few years back. The phones were out of order more than they worked; I couldn’t see paying for 30 days of service when the phones went down just about every time we had a good rain and/or wind storm.

2. We have had Hughes net. They were pretty darn good the first few years. Things went south when they started to slow us down with their FAP. DH was selling a lot of old car parts on EBay at the time and kept getting screen freezes during uploads. It was either losemhighesnet or the monitor——-

We got rid of hughesnet with no regrets.

3. We have had WiFi for quite a few years and are happier- notice I did not say ecstatic but it’s less of a “poke in the eye with a sharp stick” than Hughes net was.

Our WiFi is thru Verizon, which is another costly venture BUT they are the only cell service that doesn’t drop calls on our road. I can use my phone anywhere - in the barn- up on the ridge surrounded by trees, down in the holler on the road.

4. We have Directv. I have been a customer of theirs since 1998. I would switch if I could, but where I live we can only get three channels without them. One neighbor has a fancy new outdoor antenna. I asked her if she gets a lot of channels. She emphatically said “no!”.

4.1. I looked into Dish and dismissed them after reading reviews about their p-poor customer and technical service. At least the Directv customer service and technical folks (in my area) know what the hay they are doing.

Hope this helps
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Old 06-26-2020, 04:47 AM
 
14,394 posts, read 11,256,608 times
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Ethernet won’t make anything better than WiFi unless you are talking long distances. The major factor will be the latency in your satellite internet. If Elon Musk’s new venture is successful you might want to look at it as an option.

https://www.starlink.com/
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Old 06-26-2020, 06:54 AM
 
Location: Houston/Brenham
5,819 posts, read 7,236,484 times
Reputation: 12317
Quote:
Originally Posted by Withinpines View Post
We'll be building a home rurally where satellite internet, a landline phone, and dish tv are what's available. A repeater may not help our cell phones work. Any of you using satellite internet or only a landline phone? My kid's gaming consoles will receive a latent signal, so some games won't work. We plan on hardwiring devices to cables/wall ports (instead of using wifi) for a more solid connection. We online school, use laptops, tablets, kindle, ipad for work....We'll use old fashioned phones for power outages. No cordless handset systems. I appreciate cable type suggestions to use for these ports. It's called "ethernet" or "cat" wiring? Thanks in advance.
Random thoughts:

* If you have Dish available, you also have DirecTV available. I find DirecTV much, MUCH better.

* Internet: Satellite (which is Hughes) is terrible. Bad service, poor connections, expensive. I couldn't wait to get rid of them. Also the LAG (how long it takes to respond) is awful. You won't be able to game at all, and streaming is intolerable. Data caps are oppressive. And did I mention how expensive it is?

Alternatives: (1) If you can get any type of cell signal, you can turn that into a wifi (called tethering or hotspot). If used that (with Verizon), and it's okay. (2) Look into local line-of-sight tower Internet. We have a couple different companies that offer that here (I'm in rural Texas, near Brenham). One national company doing this is NextLink. They have a tower about 2 miles from me, and put an antenna at our house. I love it. Fast speed (I get 25-30Mbps), with almost no lag (12ms Ping). And best of all... NO data caps. See if NextLink (or anyone like them) has towers near you. If there is a local FB or ND group, they may know this type of info.

* Hard wiring doesn't do much if the underlying Internet signal is weak or doesn't exist. It never hurts to hard-wire (I often do), but wifi is not your problem. Internet is. (Aside: I have a combo of hard-wired, and Google Nest wifi mesh. Works great).

Good luck. I've been thru much of what you're facing, and am happy to help.
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Old 06-26-2020, 03:29 PM
 
Location: Sierra Nevada Land, CA
9,455 posts, read 12,550,968 times
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There is a device that at least Verizon supplies and no doubt other companies. A friend of mine, who lives where my phone has no signal and a pack station, no service. So this device gives you service and data within a 100 feet at both locations. I have no idea how it works, it does work and was able to place calls and do data. It is not a WiFi system. Contact your provider.
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Old 06-26-2020, 03:55 PM
 
Location: Houston/Brenham
5,819 posts, read 7,236,484 times
Reputation: 12317
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr5150 View Post
There is a device that at least Verizon supplies and no doubt other companies. A friend of mine, who lives where my phone has no signal and a pack station, no service. So this device gives you service and data within a 100 feet at both locations. I have no idea how it works, it does work and was able to place calls and do data. It is not a WiFi system. Contact your provider.
I had that, Verizon calls it LTE Internet. It grabs a signal from a cell tower, and converts it into wi-fi for the entire house. It's ok, not wonderful. It's 100% dependent on how strong a cell signal it can receive. It only works if a usable cell signal is found.

Be aware, they do not sell it with an unlimited data plan. You have to buy data. I bought 40GB, and it cost a fortune, like $150-$200/month. And even then, I would run out of data on occasion.

If you can get a cell signal, you can use this. If you can't get a signal, this does not work.
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Old 06-26-2020, 08:26 PM
 
Location: TN/NC
35,081 posts, read 31,322,562 times
Reputation: 47561
In this day and age, buying a property without essential service like cellular coverage and broadband is very shortsighted unless you have highly specific reasons for doing so.
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Old 06-26-2020, 08:57 PM
 
Location: NYC
20,550 posts, read 17,715,012 times
Reputation: 25616
5G internet is the future, I have 5G right now and also Gigabit FIOS. My 5G service can get downloads of 400-600mbits/s.
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Old 06-26-2020, 09:03 PM
 
Location: Rochester, WA
14,492 posts, read 12,128,212 times
Reputation: 39079
You'll hate satellite internet, but satellite TV is very good.

If you can get even moderately fast DSL from the phone company, take it, over satellite.

Satellite ALL has useage caps. FAPS - Fair Access Policies.

If you go over your cap, they will charge you more or slow you down.

Hughesnet had the best billing structure, but still bad. It had daily limits rather than monthly. Sounds tedious, but far better, if you run over, to deal with increasingly slow service for a night, than for a week if you run over early on a monthly quota.
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