Monster Broadband (Franklin: how much, living, prices) - Tennessee (TN) - City-Data Forum

skinem · 08-30-2010, 10:48 AM

Anyone have any experience or know or have heard anything about Monster Broadband out of Franklin County?

They are newly offering wireless broadband in my area...apparently putting antennas on county water tanks, etc., to serve the area. We haven't had broadband available in my area so this is of interest. They are not affiliated with the job search website.

Any issues with receiving broadband this way versus cable?

hiknapster · 08-30-2010, 01:53 PM

They are brandy new. Even their website says that they filed with the FCC, so my guess is they haven't been approved yet.

Anyway, they are crazy expensive. 256 kbps is $39.99, 1 Meg is 59.99. In contrast, for 12 Megs through Comcast you will pay about $43. The special is $19.99 for six months.

A better constrast is the Monster Broadband folks are offering you 1.5 Megs for $69.99 and Comcast has the same speed for $26.95, and that's not a special price.

I guess it depends on how much you need it. It's not like you have a lot of choice, other than dial-up. Can you get wireless through your cellphone company? If you can, I'd do that. I have Comcast and Sprint and my Sprint wireless for the internet is sometimes as fast as Comcast broadband.

It also looks like you have to pay $300 if you don't want a contract and $150 if you agree to a two-year plan. Yikes.

skinem · 08-31-2010, 07:19 AM

Thanks! It seemed crazy high to me as well.

Unfortunately, other than dial-up, it is about the only option I have--very poor to no cell reception here.

The only other option I have is satellite and that's the same ballpark price-wise.

So I think I'll continue to blaze along here at 26.4 kps...

hiknapster · 08-31-2010, 11:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by skinem

Thanks! It seemed crazy high to me as well.

Unfortunately, other than dial-up, it is about the only option I have--very poor to no cell reception here.

The only other option I have is satellite and that's the same ballpark price-wise.

So I think I'll continue to blaze along here at 26.4 kps...

Gee. Are you far away from the phone company, too?

skinem · 08-31-2010, 03:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hiknapster

Gee. Are you far away from the phone company, too?

No. Wonder how I manage dial up then?

They were the first ones called when we moved out here. They are the ones who keep telling me to check back to see when there is availability in our area. They are the ones that I check with about every couple of months. For some reason they, the one cable company that serves the area and the local utility company all say the same thing--it isn't available here, nor in much of the rural county. I'm sure someone who knows about what it takes for broadband availability but isn't here. I know there are people roughly two miles away with it...

The joys of country life?

hiknapster · 08-31-2010, 09:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by skinem

No. Wonder how I manage dial up then?

They were the first ones called when we moved out here. They are the ones who keep telling me to check back to see when there is availability in our area. They are the ones that I check with about every couple of months. For some reason they, the one cable company that serves the area and the local utility company all say the same thing--it isn't available here, nor in much of the rural county. I'm sure someone who knows about what it takes for broadband availability but isn't here. I know there are people roughly two miles away with it...

The joys of country life?

Yep. I've been there before. It's expensive to get that equipment out to you and they do the caluclations to see if it will pay off. If it doesn't, you don't get broadband.

There's ways to tweak your dial-up settings to make them better. I did it for a living quite awhile ago. I'll be darned if I can remember how, though. But if I poke around there internet, a bit, I'm sure it will come back to me.

It won't be blazing but it will make it a bit better.

What kind of cell service do you have? I have Sprint and I am very pleased with my wireless card. $50 a month, but worth it. And you can take it everywhere with you. I used it in the car all the way to swFlorida and it was almost perfect except through Ocala where it slowed down a bit. Still...

skinem · 09-01-2010, 07:24 AM

I have a "web accelerator" on the computer from my ISP.

I have Verizon, as it and ATT are the only guys with offices around, but where I live is kind of in a black hole. I sometimes can get poor reception on my cell at home, sometimes not. The other cell companies (T-Mobile, Sprint) around get reception chiefly only along a narrow corridor along the couple of main highways that bisect our county.

The place I worked used to use Verizon wireless cards for our laptops. In most of the little rural communities here in Tennessee that I used to have to travel, we didn't get reception. After a while, we'd find little islands along the highways where we could get reception, so your car became your office alongside the highway.

When I bought this place some years ago I never thought about cell reception here...nor broadband availability then. But then again, no one did then.

That's why I was interested in Monster....but not at those prices their website quotes. Maybe in time they'll come down.

hiknapster · 09-01-2010, 11:04 AM

On a side note, a web accelerator doesn't actually push up your speed. What it does is use your cached pages. Every time you surf the web, your browser takes a "picture" of the pages you frequent. And it keeps a list of the ones you are on most. An accelerator loads a cached page while it waits for the real deal to load so it seems like it is going faster when it actually isn't.