Taking the bad with a good, but ranting about it

[LegatoRedrivers]

The little lady and I are finally moving out of the big city (well, small town) that we've been in, to a beautiful plot way out in the country! Huzzah for all!

There are always downsides, though. While I knew that this was going to be a problem going in, I would rather be out in the country than the alternative.

Internet.

Internet service in the US is a joke at the best of times. I joke that makes you want to grab the comedian by the nipples and sweep his feet out from under him. Service providers do as little maintenance and improvement as possible, have crappy speeds (compared to the rest of the developed world), sport the worst rated customer service in the country, and they charge as though the bandwidth was irregularly farted by unicorns. And that's in the city.

In the country, I have very few alternatives, and the more I head about Dish service the more I hate it. Usage caps? Daily allowances? I spoke with a guy at dish today, and he told me "If you told me you watched a lot of Netflix and Hulu, I wouldn't even sell you this service." While I appreciate him being candid, I don't have to be happy about it.

I'm still looking into what alternatives I have, if any. Maybe there's a local WISP service in the area. I can dream.

What do all you rural people use for internets?

 

[lovemachine]

My parents, who live in a very rural area, used dial up and a verizon "air" card for years.
They just recently were able to get high speed internet, but at a slower speed that's still faster than dial up.

Living in the rural area, surfing the net sucks. So you just have to find other ways to keep yourself entertained. Shooting, riding ATVs, racing tractors in the front yard, peeing outside, ramping snowmobiles off a hill in the summer time....

And yes, I have done all those things.

 

[GodFearinGunTotin]

Rots o' Ruck!

Out my way, everything is data limited, if you can even get decent reception. I'm on Dish and for me, it was the best alternative. Yeah, forget watching much streaming anything. The data limit will kill you. At least with Dish, when the data limit kicks in, you can still get service for no extra cost--but at a far slower speed.

 

[hoosierdoc]

Not sure where you are located, but Scottsburg utilities has a tower-based solution for mid-southern indiana, and "Internet communications" out of Franklin has one as well.

you can use satellite through Hughes but their ping times suck. No gaming, VPNs, VOIP, etc.

 

[tetsujin79]

Lemme tell you 'bout a story called Comcast...

We move from south suburban crook county to the doorstep of town in southern Lake county (we are technically county, so no city sewer/water - the southern border of our property touches city limits).

This town has ATT and Comcast, along with the satellites, and good cell coverage (t-mobile shows 4G).

We move in, and I call Comcast the first week of January. They set up the first appointment two weeks later, I pick my services, and they send an invoice that isn't a bill but looks like a bill.


They come out, and say where's the wires? I say, what wires? They say, the wires to hook your house up? I say, isn't that you're department? They'll get back to us.


So a different tech comes out next week, we do the same dance, but he figures out there's no connection anywhere near our property.



Another couple weeks go waiting for survey crews to come out. We find out the second guy was wrong, but they can't do anything without getting permits for a road bore to get the line to our property. We are told we will receive a call.

Two more weeks go by, I call. Nobody's coming until the weather changes, so they'll be there April.



In April, they come out and ask where the line to hook up the house is.



This guy knows his stuff though. He explains they need permits for the road bore. It'll take one to three weeks to get the permits.



This week, they did the bore, ran the line, buried the line, and I'm assuming when I get home tonight, they'll be a box hanging off my house... During the week, I called Comcast and it appears my account for services was deleted.



However, me sons don't even ask to watch TV anymore, so I consider this a total win.


Of course, why am I even getting Comcast again???

 

[GodFearinGunTotin]

The little lady and I are finally moving out of the big city (well, small town) that we've been in, to a beautiful plot way out in the country! Huzzah for all!

There are always downsides, though. While I knew that this was going to be a problem going in, I would rather be out in the country than the alternative.

Internet.

Internet service in the US is a joke at the best of times. I joke that makes you want to grab the comedian by the nipples and sweep his feet out from under him. Service providers do as little maintenance and improvement as possible, have crappy speeds (compared to the rest of the developed world), sport the worst rated customer service in the country, and they charge as though the bandwidth was irregularly farted by unicorns. And that's in the city.

In the country, I have very few alternatives, and the more I head about Dish service the more I hate it. Usage caps? Daily allowances? I spoke with a guy at dish today, and he told me "If you told me you watched a lot of Netflix and Hulu, I wouldn't even sell you this service." While I appreciate him being candid, I don't have to be happy about it.

I'm still looking into what alternatives I have, if any. Maybe there's a local WISP service in the area. I can dream.

What do all you rural people use for internets?

Lemme tell you 'bout a story called Comcast...

We move from south suburban crook county to the doorstep of town in southern Lake county (we are technically county, so no city sewer/water - the southern border of our property touches city limits).

This town has ATT and Comcast, along with the satellites, and good cell coverage (t-mobile shows 4G).

We move in, and I call Comcast the first week of January. They set up the first appointment two weeks later, I pick my services, and they send an invoice that isn't a bill but looks like a bill.


They come out, and say where's the wires? I say, what wires? They say, the wires to hook your house up? I say, isn't that you're department? They'll get back to us.


So a different tech comes out next week, we do the same dance, but he figures out there's no connection anywhere near our property.



Another couple weeks go waiting for survey crews to come out. We find out the second guy was wrong, but they can't do anything without getting permits for a road bore to get the line to our property. We are told we will receive a call.

Two more weeks go by, I call. Nobody's coming until the weather changes, so they'll be there April.



In April, they come out and ask where the line to hook up the house is.



This guy knows his stuff though. He explains they need permits for the road bore. It'll take one to three weeks to get the permits.



This week, they did the bore, ran the line, buried the line, and I'm assuming when I get home tonight, they'll be a box hanging off my house... During the week, I called Comcast and it appears my account for services was deleted.



However, me sons don't even ask to watch TV anymore, so I consider this a total win.


Of course, why am I even getting Comcast again???

You gotta wonder about an entire industry that seemingly, either by design or by willful incompetence, goes out of their way to ****-off vast majorities of their customer base.

 

[johntheplinker]

Out here in BFE we actually have fairly decent dsl from Perry-Spencer RTC, and its fixing to get a whole lot better! Can't recall off hand what our speed is, but both of us can be online with no slowdown, and we also get out tv service over the phone lines. We've had dsl here for over ten years, and could have had it earlier if we'd asked for it. Very soon we'll have fiber instead of copper, they've got the cables buried and just need to get the box installed. I have to hand it to PSC, they've been great. I guess that's one of the advantages of a co-op.

 

[GodFearinGunTotin]

Out here in BFE we actually have fairly decent dsl from Perry-Spencer RTC, and its fixing to get a whole lot better! Can't recall off hand what our speed is, but both of us can be online with no slowdown, and we also get out tv service over the phone lines. We've had dsl here for over ten years, and could have had it earlier if we'd asked for it. Very soon we'll have fiber instead of copper, they've got the cables buried and just need to get the box installed. I have to hand it to PSC, they've been great. I guess that's one of the advantages of a co-op.

Man, that would be nice. What is your cost/month?

 

[pute62]

Cut the cord and enjoy country life for what it was ment to be. Quality of life doesn't depend on download speed.

 

[LegatoRedrivers]

Not sure where you are located, but Scottsburg utilities has a tower-based solution for mid-southern indiana, and "Internet communications" out of Franklin has one as well.

I'll be out and abouts the Yorktown area.

Cut the cord and enjoy country life for what it was meant to be. Quality of life doesn't depend on download speed.

Agreed. Being able to work from home on the weekends does depend on upload speed and latency though, since it requires a VPN connection.

I made the choice going into it, though. I'd rather drive into work on the rare weekends I have to.

 

[LegatoRedrivers]

You gotta wonder about an entire industry that seemingly, either by design or by willful incompetence, goes out of their way to ****-off vast majorities of their customer base.

It's because in most cases they're pretty much the only game in town, even in the city. You've usually got a choice between one or two service providers in a good situation. Instead of spending money to improve their networks and service area, they have lobbyists that make it difficult for any upstarts to introduce any real competition. That's what they've been trying to do to Google Fiber, anyway.

 

[hornadylnl]

I'm fortunate that I have fiber running down my gravel road. I have 5 mb and have no issues streaming.

 

[Giddaltti]

At our TX ranch house we use a Sprint Air Card....Lots of companies offer them and are reliable.

 

[LegatoRedrivers]

At our TX ranch house we use a Sprint Air Card....Lots of companies offer them and are reliable.

Our company used to pay for the internet for employees who had the option to work from home, and offered air cards and the like for people who lived in more rural areas who couldn't get traditional internet. The decision was made in the past year, however, that high speed internet access has gotten to the point where it is more in the realm of a utility that everyone has anyway, and continuing to pay for high speed internet would be like paying for everyone's home electricity. Or something along those lines.

 

[RockofStrength]

I've been happy with Frontier with their 5MB plan. Few outages, and customer service that didn't make me want to stab them with a rusty nail.

 

[Leadeye]

Here in the deep southern woods we use Excede satellite, best deal in this area.

 

[johntheplinker]

Man, that would be nice. What is your cost/month?

Totals a bit over $200 for phone, tv, and net. We have the highest level tv package, ALL the channels so that's where most of the cost is.

 

[GodFearinGunTotin]

Totals a bit over $200 for phone, tv, and net. We have the highest level tv package, ALL the channels so that's where most of the cost is.

That seems on par with what we're doing with Dish (we're not doing phones through them). Thanks.