A friend lives in an area that does not yet support cable internet or even DSL. They have a regular phone line through Verizon, but Verizon does not offer DSL or FIOS there. I thought that DSL went through the phone lines, not cable. I vaguely remember an upgrade to the phone lines before DSL became available, so maybe that hasn’t been done there either. Money isn’t an issue, but he’s an old-school kind of guy. Comcast said they’d dig cable to his house for $2500 and he refuses to do it based on principle. He’s simply not that far off the street and feels it’s a ridiculous price for something everyone else has for free.
Anyway, is there any other way for my friend to get non-dialup internet service?
I use HughesNet. It’s a satellite service, and performs pretty well for most purposes. Much faster than dialup. It is…considerably less than great…for playing World of Warcraft, but when the other option is not playing at all, it’s tolerable.
There’s also satellite. Speed is typically comparable to DSL. The downside is the connection has very high latency – it takes a lot of time for signals to travel to and from Earth. That means that multiplayer online gaming is right out, and there’s a marked delay in online video or voice chats.
Might be a WiMax provider in the area. That’s basically a fancier version of what cell phone use. On the note, there are also 3G USB sticks that’ll provide better than dialup internet. Both of these services suck though (even compared to Comcast).
He could try satellite internet, but it’s relatively low bandwidth and high latency.
Suggest he ask Comcast to justify that cost, especially as he’ll be a customer thereafter. You might also suggest he find out how much the lack of high-speed internet access affects the sale price of his property. I’ve been hearing quite a bit that no high-speed internet means that a buyer is not interested.
I live in a rural area that only recently got DSL. For several years I used a satelite system. They were moderately satisfactory, not so fast or reliable as DSL, but orders of magnitude better than dial-up.
SS
In my area, Cellcom (cellular provider) will sell you a $300 modem/receiver and I think the monthly charges are less than satellite. Speeds are comparable to medium cable speeds.
Some communities have installed powerline WiFi, but of course that’s not something you can undertake on your own. Each transformer has to be bypassed with a jumper or the signal stops there.
FYI: DSL is very limited as to distance from the central office or hub; the max speed you can obtain drops off rapidly, so it’e pretty much an urban service.
Also check any local ISPs. Some around here have WiFi for a price. If you can see the signal on a detector or on your computer, but can’t connect, it might be a commercial service that requires an account.
Thanks, everyone. Just to clarify, my friend is an older gentleman, who is also a business mentor to my business partner and me. He is in his 80s, sharp as a tack and very much used to being large and in charge. Comcast has ticked him off. He’s haggled with them off and on for the last several years, and they won’t budge, and neither will he. He has the disposable income, but it is purely principal. He plans to stay right where he is until he is no longer and I don’t think the property value argument would hold much weight for him. He owns plenty of property with plenty of value. And he’s not going to pay Comcast a single dime to do something for that much money that they should provide. Gavel down!
Right now they have dialup and it’s driving him crazy knowing that everyone else can get fast service. He’s mostly interested in being able to do things like Google Earth and other informational stuff. He’s much more likely to be looking at streaming financials than gaming.
I have sent the satellite info and the Wimax.
Palooka can you tell me a little more about those services you named?
A friend of mine has a cottage in the Laurentians north of Montreal. They have neither cellular, DSL or cable service, although they do have ordinary telephone. I tell him he should get together with his neighbors (40 or 50 of them) and threaten the telephone company that they will pay to put up a cellular tower and permanently disconnect from Bell Canada. I think he would be willing but cannot get his neighbors interested. They mostly use their cottages as summer retreats, while my friend lives there much of the year. Or at least his wife does and he will when he retires in a couple years. I’ve mentioned satellite to him, but it didn’t strike him as interesting. Right now, he is using a dialup service from McGill, but that will permanently end five days from today (end of exam period). I have seen the diaup era at McGill start and now am about to see it end.
The Verizon 3G aircard (USB modems) speeds are quite usable for many (maybe even most?) internet activities.
3G speeds are :
Broadband Access Rev A
Downloads — typical speeds of 600 Kbps to 1.4 Mbps Bursts up to 2000 kbps
Uploads — typical speeds of 500-800 Kbps.
That is what I am using now out in the hinterlands of AZ (Bouse AZ)
They have now rolled out 4G that is much faster than 3G. I saw some tests that showed download speeds of 12 Mbps.
There are data usage limits of 5GB per month for $50 per month and 10 GB per month for $80 per month.
3G is available pretty much all over the US but there are still some areas with little coverage.
Your friend could talk to his local cellphone provider and see what is available to see if there is coverage in his area.
Verizon says they will have their entire 3G footprint covered by 4G by the end of 2013.
For Satellite, Hughesnet looks to be quite crappy. Hughes’ basic package offers a 200 MB download limit before they start throttling your connection. That’s like watching one TV episode on Hulu. By comparison, WildBlue has 7500 MB. Not having used satellite, I can’t recommend a specific one, but do your research, including looking up where their satellites are.
I just want to nitpick and say that Verizon’s “3G” does not conform to 3G standards and their “4G” does not conform for 4G standards, either. You cannot have a voice and data call at the same on the Verizon network and their [del]4G[/del] LTE is about 80% too slow to be 4G.
My mom uses Wild Blue. They get as stable a connection as any other satellite service, and the connection is faster than dial-up. They use one dish for download and dial-up for upload, but they have packages where you can use dishes for both down and up which is a lot faster. I don’t know about any data caps though.
Watch for them to run any specials involving “free installation”. A few years back when Time Warner was running a free installation special, they dropped a line from the pole and ran it under about 75 feet of asphalt to our business, for free. I’m guessing it cost them a few grand to do that.
That’s true but all of the carriers are calling their new technology 4G so Verizon isn’t the only one with the marketing hype.
The 4G target is " A nominal data rate of 100 Mbit/s while the client physically moves at high speeds relative to the station, and 1 Gbit/s while client and station are in relatively fixed positions as defined by the ITU-R."
No carrier out there that I know of can come close to those speeds.
Like it or not I guess we are stuck with it being called 4G.
Yep. I have HughesNet, and while it’s one hell of a lot better than dial up, I don’t dare download any videos. Even a bunch of pictures can be a problem.
They do have a new thing now where if you do go over your limit (which is very easy to do even accidentally), you will be ‘forgiven’. It’s called ‘Restore Tokens’. You get one a month.
For basic surfing and news and such, it’s fine. You’ll never watch a movie on it though.