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Petitioning for broadband

Anyone live in a remote area have any success in convincing the cable company into their area?

I ask for my sister. I get the feeling she will be the last house on the planet with dialup.

Reply to
Terry
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My local cable company actual stopped offering internet cable on its old cable service because there were too many problems , and the cost of implementing digital cable was too high.

If your local phone company doesnt offer DSL , your only other choice is satelite .

Reply to
marks542004

My state rep got cable TV to our area several years ago by threatening the cable company that he would introduce a law that they had to give it to everyone. As it was, they would only give to areas that there had so many houses per linear mile. They had actually come to our neighborhood where the older houses had power lines above ground but newer, like mine, were underground. They would not give me cable while neighbors down the hill had it. Rather than face a restrictive new law, cable company came in and put in underground lines.

Reverse has been true for FIOS. Verizon is putting lines in for more affluent neighborhoods first. Guess they figure they are more apt to buy.

Frank

Reply to
Frank

We live in a rural area and I didn't think we would ever get broadband out here. The Verizon phone technicians told me DSL wasn't even in the works downtown, let alone out here. I considered satellite, but we have too many trees to get a clear signal. I had hopes when a couple of wireless companies started offering service in our area, but when they came out to test for a signal the hills and trees prevented us from getting wireless too. It looked like dial-up was my only option.

Then, out of sheer coincidence, Comcast cable ran their lines out to our area. According to the technician that hooked us up, one of the Comcast executives moved into a wealthy gated community up the road from us, and used his influence to get cable brought out to our area. I was one of the first to sign up, probably before the Comcast exec even had his service. :)

Anthony

Reply to
HerHusband

Same here..........before I even purchased this home I looked into this with Verizon to see if they offered it. They said that broadband would be available in this area within 4 months........and I even enlisted ahead of time for service...................well the freakin service never came.........it is now 3 years later...still no service. Satellite is quoting 100/month for a year contract. Thats alot of mula to dish out for a faster line. But still.....I used to like online gaming, particular nascar racing online. Satellite, though fast, has too much lag to enjoy online gaming.....so dial up I still am........and waiting patiently for cable. I dont believe that day will ever come.

Anyone know exactly how many people per mile these cable companies require? New homes are being put up everywhere!

Reply to
avid_hiker

That's what happened to us. Salesman signed us up and installers came around but company (not Comcast at the time) would not put in underground service. Took a couple of months just to get deposit back. That's when I took problem to state rep and he said others had same complaint and he fixed it but it took a year or two. This was several years ago.

Verizon FIOS is at this stage now with salesmen selling service that is not available yet. If any thing like the rest of Verizon, they have lousy customer phone line service, and when I go high speed it will probably be with Comcast who is now much better to deal with.

Regional rules probably vary but I believe ours was lots with 100 ft frontage, i.e. ~53 houses per mile.

Frank

Reply to
Frank

Hmmm.........if it is something like that around where I am.........guess Ill never get it then. I live in a farming town out in the boonies. The farms take up most of the square miles.

Another thought........would anyone know how fast webtv is compared to

56k dial up? It takes a good 40 minutes right now just to download my email........Im getting sick and tired of it. Another hour to download any MS updates.....and another hour to download any Mccafee updates. Grrrrrrrrrrrrr!!

Dean

Reply to
avid_hiker

They are probably the same.

You must get a LOT of email or you receive large attachments regularly.

You should (try to) do what we did in the old days when 2400 (2.4k) was max: Wait until right before leaving the house or retiring for the night to start the download. Then, when it is finished, the connection will simply time-out and release the phone line.

A lot of folks that do NOT have access to wired broadband forget that their situation is just another aspect of living in a sparsely populated area: You use a well, a pressure system in the house and a septic system. These are the "prices" you pay for owning/occupying a little piece of God's green acre.

Reply to
Jim Redelfs

How much are you willing to pay for it?

Reply to
Goedjn

I had Hughes satellite for two months, upload speed is barely faster than dial-up. Download speeds were decent early on Sunday morning, in the evenings it wasn't much faster (shared service) and was inconsistent as hell. Sometimes a page would download fast, sometimes the same page would take a minute, sometimes it would take so long it would lock up. Then there was the installer who rejected the two poles I already had in the backyard so he could charge an extra $100 for installing his pole. Also the absolute worst customer service I have ever encountered.

I'll drive the bits into town in my pickup before I'd ever use satellite for Internet access again.

Steve.

Reply to
SteveF

And from what I understand you have to sign a one year contract and buy all the equipment before you can even test the connection.

I would have tried satellite had it not been for such a big commitment up front. I have the feeling that I would not have kept it long.

I think the prices have come down some, but it was about 100$/month about 5 years ago when I was looking into it.

Reply to
Terry

My experience was similar. The Indian tech support's only remedy seemed to be "unplug it for two minutes and plug it back in". I'm not sure if that was the limits of his technical knowledge or his language skills.

I'm now on a wireless ISP. The tower is 8 miles away. Speed is good, usually 1 meg or better. Reliability is no where near their claimed

99% up time. More like 95.

--Andy Asberry--

------Texas-----

Reply to
Andy Asberry

Were do you live that you are closer to a tower and still out of reach of cable service?

If the tower just for internet?

Reply to
Terry

South of Fort Worth. There are cable lines along the road out front; analog not digital. I'm 12 miles from T1, $600 month. Wisp is $42.50. Just checked my speed; 1050 kbps down and 463 kbps up. Wee hours of the morning are about 1450 up and down.

The antenna for the 2.4 wisp is on a rural water tank. From there it is a point to point backhaul to Comcast in south Fort Worth.

--Andy Asberry--

------Texas-----

Reply to
Andy Asberry

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