I sure would have to think hard about moving to an area without broadband. We have relatives that just bought a house a year ago and they are forced to use Hughes satellite. We call that area dial up country.
The house would absolutely positively have to be serviced by Comcast or Verizon FiOS. I would not settle for DSL of any flavor.
And please send my condolences to your relatives. (I used to suffer with Hughes.) :-(
I debated Hughes then heard from people who had it.
I did get broadband through century link - hah! The promies 5 meg. Tech stepped otu of truck an said: "I don't care what they promised you, you ain't gonna get 5 megs, mayby 1 meg". He tuned up every junction box from my house to town and got me 640k on a good day. Still beat dial-up by a mile. Neighber down the road from my 1/4 mile tried for broadband. Tech: No way!
Harry K
Umm... An "area without broadband" is one which is too far away from the population center where the central facilities for various services are located...
The cable or phone company is not going to string
10 miles of cables to serve two houses, if those homes really want the services they have to pay to build them out from the closest network access point to the premises they wish to be connected...It is just like getting electrical service to a remote location.
The cost is what makes an area devoid of broadband.....
~~ Evan
Hi, Where my cabin is located we have gas. electricity and no land line phone but cell phone works. We created a co-op for net access using WiFi with an antenna tower and AP. We pulled the money for initial investment and now cost is ~50.00/month per family as subscribers increase there is possibility the cost may go down further.
At home I have full featured TV, two phone lines, 50/5 net access as a bundle. 150.00 a month. Real time video streaming for home theater is never a problem day or night.
I have DSL in this house. There was no cable service when I moved here but I could get DSL (the house is well inside the city limits but is in a new subdivision). The best I could buy was 1.5MB but after some problems (that turned out to be the modem) they said I shouldn't have more than 768Kb service, due to the distance to the CO, so downgraded me. OK, so I never got above that, anyway and saved a little money. They ran cable by here a year or so ago but I didn't see any point in changing since we were planning on moving, somewhere. Our new house is in a very new subdivision (read: far from completely built out) and it's DSL or Hughes, there too. I went with 6Mb DSL (but get 3-4Mb). I'd rather have more (6Mb seems to be a good tradeoff) but it seems "good enough".
The problem with Hughes is the download limit 1/4GB/mo, IIRC. Ick. My cell phone is 6GB, though my data reception (only 3G) isn't great at the new place. I lived with it for a couple of months, though.
No, shit? I'm sure no one here knew any of that. Thank you for enlightening us, Evan.
When I moved about 6 years ago, that was one of the first questions I had about the area. If they did not have cable internet it would have been a no sale.
A friend of mine has a house about 1500 feet off the road. The cable line runs right by the main road.. He had to pay about 2 to 4 thousand to get the cable internet to his house. In his case it was necessary as he did a lot of internet work and his wife has a business doing things over the internet such as designing web pages. They were able to use it as a business expense.
DSL would be fine. Hughesnet, not so much. We have a rental in Hughsnet land. The tenants use 4g verizon.
That cost was common a few years back. Our local cable company had a
200' limit for free, then it was $x per foot. With competition from DSL and SAT TV, they started doing some free hookups.
When I signed up with CL, the promotional flyer said speeds up to 7Mb, but the CSR said I could only get 1Mb in my area, but within a few months it would improve.
After three months I called them, and they bumped it up to 3Mb.
It's a lot slower than the 12Mb cable I was getting from comcrap, but the price is a lot better.
Jon
Most of the replies were bitching about satellite internet as if there were zero other options besides dial--up connections...
That is clearly not factual and has been for some time now, customers are just unwilling to pay to build out the networks to where they can be connected -- so it is all about the money...
No shit? Wow! You're smart, Evan.
Good grief!
Maybe not. The Rural Utilities Service of the USDA might foot some or all of the expense.
The Rural Electrification Administration helped got power to farms. A bit here about that: >
I don't see an entry for broadband on the MLS style sheets. But if a realtor doesn't mention it, she should.
I would think you should be okay in most metropolitan areas. I'm in Houston and
Ping: 11msec Down: 24.89Mbps Up: 3.45Mbps
Over a Comcast cable residential service.
Agree about the condolences ... but COMfrigginCAST? .... spit!!
I wouldn't buy the property way out there (wherever it is), but I know a heap of people who could care less. In fact as long as (at least) wired phone service was available they would be just fine.
Sorry about your DSL problems. Usenet and surfing is pretty much instantaneous on DSL here (Verizon in SW PA) and WIFI works great. I can get TV broadcasts as well, but as expected, it isn't as fast as cable (tho pretty close), so I use DirecTV for TV, works a treat and is way less expensive than cable. DirecTV has no problems with the DSL driven home WIFI here, record from any of 5 TVs and watch on any of them simultaneously, no problem.
As far as cable is concerned, unfortunately only Comcast here abouts... spit!
When I signed up for satellite a while back I returned Comcast's equipment in a kitty liter bucket and told them to keep the bucket.
John
DSL has a definite distance limit from the "central station" which can NOT be exceded and still give you any kind of service - at ANY price. Cable can be extended beyond the normal limit with the installation of a digital bi-amp. For a price.
That is the annoying part here. A huge fiber optic line runs right past my house just 100 " away. It is the major feed between towns, no resisdential connections.
Harry K
You think they can tap that just for you?
I had ComCast for six months, recently. The service was pretty good, actually.
I certainly wouldn't be happy with dial-up.
Wired phone DSL. It takes a very good, short, line to get DSL at all.
I'd certainly take it over either DSL service I have now. It was twice as fast as my other line and ten times faster than this line.
Whatever.
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