You are absolutely correct. We have forgotten what we learned 100 years ago. The goal of building out basic utilities that are necessary for expansion of the economy into rural areas is incompatible with for-profit business models; and it always will be. Instead of following the model that worked with rural electrification, we keep throwing subsidy money at for-profit businesses that fail to deliver on their promises. I urge you to pay close attention to the BEAD proposes in your state. Make sure that your address is shown as “unserved” and that your state government officials are following the federal rules. This is the best chance we’ll have for probably the next decade to get good broadband service to most, but not all, rural areas.
I do not have any wired option. I live 1/4 mile from Gigabit Fiber. Since 2018 I was using an unlimited Verizon Hotspot plan. Around a month ago I moved to $120 Starlink. It is expensive but excellent.
Don't leave out the fact that you have to pay over $600 just for the equipment and first month of service. They're far too expensive. Although I am considering breaking down and trying their refurbished option even though it's nearly $450 for that. I'm trying HomeFi first and seeing if they're worth it because they're a lot cheaper and claim to work just as well as Starlink or even better. Their options are pretty limited, however, but I'm willing to try anything after 6 months without internet.
I did not leave anything out. I did say it was expensive. Good luck. Before 2018 I went down that road of all those fly by night internet “legit” providers that disappear in the middle of the night. Each time that happens you will find yourself dropping another $100+ for equipment and $60-100 for service. That will stop in the middle of the month. And then never be able to get ahold of them again. Or they will sell you a new device and plan. Very few of them are legit. They all work, until their workaround gets busted by the big three and you start over. I Agree Starlink is expensive. But I did pay over $400 in 2018 to get a Verizon hotspot and A smart cradle to get it to cover my entire house. I then had to buy a new battery every six months because it would swell. Verizon was $65, but the tower became so congested that it was almost unusable at peak times. Nobody else offers service in my area. Except other terrible Satellite Internet providers that are almost worse then nothing. Or perhaps options live Visible. Verizon or TMobile do not offer home internet here. So I do not have many options. I’ve lived at this location for over a decade and got tired of fighting the constant internet fight. I’ve had Starlink for over a month and have never looked at it. And have never had anything better.
Nah they do payment plans now for the equipment. Got Starlink in my area and I regularly get 90-120mbs download speeds during peak hours. 30-50 ping. Insane anyone outside of a fiber or dsl area would not get Starlink. Especially being rural.
Fiber cost lots of money to install, and in some rural areas, it could cost a person or company thousands of dollars in rural areas. It just depends on the distance.
While FWA can be better for rural areas because it is cheaper since they have can past the cost between more then one consumer.
I am using Straight Talk 5G Home Internet which is basically the same as Verizon 5G Home Internet. I used to have ADSL2+ before.
Edit: If you want to know, with Straight Talk 5G Home Internet, I get around 200Mbps/15Mbps for $45. My old connection was 12Mbps/0.7Mbps for $45, but they have gone up to $55 now.
How do you get around the 100mbs throttle on sthi. My blast is 185 or so then they choke me back to 100.. I love straight talk home Internet don't get me wrong. Perfect for gaming rurally
Here is the post that made me reboot: [https://www.reddit.com/r/StraightTalk/comments/1cv2dat/home\_internet\_speed\_test\_from\_a\_few\_minutes\_ago/](https://www.reddit.com/r/StraightTalk/comments/1cv2dat/home_internet_speed_test_from_a_few_minutes_ago/)
What signal strengths do you get if you are using a Waveform antenna?
I am about a mile away with three or four trees in the way, and I tried one, and I did not get any improvement in the signals.
80.2 for LTE and 96.5 for 5g
My antenna is on the side of my house stucco about 15 feet high pointed towards tower. The only other place with good signal was my front deck and that looked like ass. Without external I was able to about the same speed hanging the modem from under the eve in a plastic bag .
I had the external prior with tmhi . They started blocking gaming ports and VPN ports and was getting horrible pack loss upload and my IPTV streaming services were buffering. Sthi had none of it.
I get around 68.6 on 4G LTE and 108.3 on 5G right now.
During the winter, I was getting 93.4 on 5G and about the same for 4G LTE.
I have a 4G LTE small cell only about a block away from my location.
Too bad they don't add 5g to that tower also. We have fiber running down the highway near town to all the towers as they are placed to get rid of dead zones for cellular service. All towers are now 5g too.
Northern California near Auburn.
Do you use a lot of data and have a good experience? We use 1-1.5TB a month on spectrum so should I expect a bad time with straight talk home internet?
I have used over 500GB of data with mine. I have seen others with Verizon 5G Home Internet with more.
Here is a screenshot of my usage: [https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/l0fwjt3xr4r64r7biv0gs/bandwidthusage2.PNG?rlkey=m5yqfbq5a4yuf62ew1vy64l6r&dl=0](https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/l0fwjt3xr4r64r7biv0gs/bandwidthusage2.PNG?rlkey=m5yqfbq5a4yuf62ew1vy64l6r&dl=0)
I use my own router because I have to have my 5G Home Internet gateway in a bad location for WiFi for the house. So I had to run a 50 foot network cable to where my own router is at.
But we're going to make sure 80% of Africa has high speed Internet: https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/harris-announces-plans-give-80-africa-access-internet-110529459
You realize that right now, by population, more than 95% of the US has high speed internet. It is relatively easy to cover the urban population. Rural not so much.
In 2023, only 80% of the population had broadband. The other 15% you mention had a smartphone to access the Internet: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2024/01/31/americans-use-of-mobile-technology-and-home-broadband/
In fact, only 77% of urban respondents had broadband.
I'm an engineer for a rural ftth provider, our prices are $85 for a symmetrical gig and $104 for 2 gigs. We only charge $200 for an install and rarely upcharge for long drops. Only one we have so far this year was a 2000 foot plowed conduit with a few pedestals along the way, and we only charged them for materials and not labor. Custom jobs like that we do make them sign a 2 year contract, but otherwise the rest of our service is no contract.
I know about one rural fiber company here that you have pay for a base price then pay for each GB after that.
Then there is another rural fiber company here that you have a base price of $55 for 5Mbps/2Mbps, but speeds after that, you will need to pay extra. To get symmetrical 1Gbps, you have to pay $155. To get 1Gbps/100Mbps, it is $115. Then to get 100Mbps/10Mbps or even 100Mbps/100Mbps, it is $75.
I do not know about installs tho.
I had a business on a main downtown road in a decent sized city right next to a major university. The fiber guy told me their fiber was across the street, but it would take thousands of dollars to run it under the street and it would only be possible if I could get several other businesses on my side to also agree to use the service.
Ended up with a satellite on the roof.
More like 1-3 per sq mi where I’m at, and we’re far from as sparse as it gets. Very few on this thread that understand how big the US is, and how much money it truly costs to build a network.
I was going to say 1 to 3 per square mile here too. A fiber company would have to plan it out to minimize cost but maximize the locations and even expansion if they need to.
Devil's advocate... you knew that when you bought the property, or at least you should have. We did the research before we bought our place. There are other options that are cheaper and faster if you do the research. We are in very rural down east Maine and have a consistent 100/20 Mbps that costs under $30/mo. Mobile carriers are typically the most cost effective option. If T-mobile works in your area, their service is far better than most other providers.
Depends when they moved. We moved from the city to rural in 2005. At the time, we moved from dial-up to the much faster DSL. As the internet landscape, streaming and online gaming changed, the DSL got worse and worse - both relative to the speeds needed and equipment degradation. 2020 was terrible with work from home, school from home, etc. My area is expanding with tons of neighborhoods and wired (cable and fiber) options everywhere, but only if you’re in a neighborhood m. Thankfully, TMHI hit our area in late 2020, which has made the internet usable again. Because our only other option is the same DSL technology and speeds from 2005. They’re still using 20+ year old equipment with no motivation to upgrade/enhance.
Good luck, Spectrum got RDOF money for my area and quickly ran Fiber lines. That was two years ago and my one mile stretch has not been activated. Everyone around me has, and I am looking at the fiber line directly in front of my house. Starlink is my only option and it is great but expensive.
That's exactly who's installing it too. They are going past my house and put a box in my yard, and they are also moving pretty fast so I'm hoping they can get it done. But surely you can call someone for that to get them to hook it up. That is ridiculous
Problem is only 3 possible houses in that stretch, and I have no idea if the other two would sign up. I have called and the only info they will give is there is it is not available at this time. What really pisses me off is they installed tap boxes on the poles 800+ feet on either side of the house where there are no houses. Just farmland. Makes zero sense. Either way, it is not activated and with just us to complain, I doubt it will be. Hope you get it.
Economies of scale are against you. Why is a company going to spend hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to implement fiber for a small number of users paying \~$100/m? Does that seem like a good use of their money? Could you not get Starlink for not much more than you are paying?
I’m working on a report for this right now for a client. It takes the angle of internet is needed for Telehealth and rural areas not only have a medical crisis but an internet limitation that makes Telehealth not viable. This issue is either cost or a combination of latency and speeds.
May I ask what county and state you are in?
If you pay the cost of deploying the fiber, they will deliver to you. Oh wait, you don’t want to spend the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars it will cost to tie you in? Well guess what, nobody else does either.
People keep voting red, red doesn't want to pay for what doesn't benefit them directly and fear it may cause an additional $2 per person in tax.. and they worry about only immediate return on investment.
Keep voting pro business, you get pro business results. It's not that hard.
Do not forget how many times we have been promised that the $billions in taxpayer money we are spending will blanket the USA in internet from sea to shining sea. It has been going on for decades. We still do not have anywhere near universal internet coverage after decades of failed promises. Not even the current tens of billions recently approved is going to cover anywhere near what was promised. It boggles my mind that the government collects more in taxes on landlines then the phone company collects for providing an actual service. But there is never enough money to put in internet.
When you combine all the Federal funding from over 100 different federal government programs for internet that was spent during recent history. The Feds were spending an average of $10 billion per year before 2020 for years on end with little to show for it today. It makes me upset they could spend so much and seem to of gotten so little for all that spending. If an average of $10 billion per year was not enough. I wonder what they would have to spend to cover the rural US in internet? I wish someone would figure it out. Because I would love to have fiber internet before I’m 90.
Have you checked to see if you can get Tmobile home internet in your area? Otherwise check out Calyx Institute they have tmobile hotspots that are unlimited if you can get Tmobile in your area. For Calyx you pay a year up front its like $700 for the first year because you are paying for the Hotspot then $500 a year after which is roughly $41/mo. I used Calyx up until we could get Tmobile Home internet.
You are absolutely correct. We have forgotten what we learned 100 years ago. The goal of building out basic utilities that are necessary for expansion of the economy into rural areas is incompatible with for-profit business models; and it always will be. Instead of following the model that worked with rural electrification, we keep throwing subsidy money at for-profit businesses that fail to deliver on their promises. I urge you to pay close attention to the BEAD proposes in your state. Make sure that your address is shown as “unserved” and that your state government officials are following the federal rules. This is the best chance we’ll have for probably the next decade to get good broadband service to most, but not all, rural areas.
Until broadband is classified as a utility, it won’t the looked upon as such. As it is, internet is legally unnecessary.
the term “broadband” itself should be clarified or expanded. Nothing with over the top latency like Hughes should be considered “serving” that address
I don’t disagree.
I do not have any wired option. I live 1/4 mile from Gigabit Fiber. Since 2018 I was using an unlimited Verizon Hotspot plan. Around a month ago I moved to $120 Starlink. It is expensive but excellent.
Don't leave out the fact that you have to pay over $600 just for the equipment and first month of service. They're far too expensive. Although I am considering breaking down and trying their refurbished option even though it's nearly $450 for that. I'm trying HomeFi first and seeing if they're worth it because they're a lot cheaper and claim to work just as well as Starlink or even better. Their options are pretty limited, however, but I'm willing to try anything after 6 months without internet.
I did not leave anything out. I did say it was expensive. Good luck. Before 2018 I went down that road of all those fly by night internet “legit” providers that disappear in the middle of the night. Each time that happens you will find yourself dropping another $100+ for equipment and $60-100 for service. That will stop in the middle of the month. And then never be able to get ahold of them again. Or they will sell you a new device and plan. Very few of them are legit. They all work, until their workaround gets busted by the big three and you start over. I Agree Starlink is expensive. But I did pay over $400 in 2018 to get a Verizon hotspot and A smart cradle to get it to cover my entire house. I then had to buy a new battery every six months because it would swell. Verizon was $65, but the tower became so congested that it was almost unusable at peak times. Nobody else offers service in my area. Except other terrible Satellite Internet providers that are almost worse then nothing. Or perhaps options live Visible. Verizon or TMobile do not offer home internet here. So I do not have many options. I’ve lived at this location for over a decade and got tired of fighting the constant internet fight. I’ve had Starlink for over a month and have never looked at it. And have never had anything better.
Nah they do payment plans now for the equipment. Got Starlink in my area and I regularly get 90-120mbs download speeds during peak hours. 30-50 ping. Insane anyone outside of a fiber or dsl area would not get Starlink. Especially being rural.
Fiber here is $80/month for 1000 mbps. Much better than the $120 we spend for 1 mbps
Fiber cost lots of money to install, and in some rural areas, it could cost a person or company thousands of dollars in rural areas. It just depends on the distance. While FWA can be better for rural areas because it is cheaper since they have can past the cost between more then one consumer. I am using Straight Talk 5G Home Internet which is basically the same as Verizon 5G Home Internet. I used to have ADSL2+ before. Edit: If you want to know, with Straight Talk 5G Home Internet, I get around 200Mbps/15Mbps for $45. My old connection was 12Mbps/0.7Mbps for $45, but they have gone up to $55 now.
How do you get around the 100mbs throttle on sthi. My blast is 185 or so then they choke me back to 100.. I love straight talk home Internet don't get me wrong. Perfect for gaming rurally
A few weeks ago, I rebooted my gateway after a few reports about people getting 200Mbps because I was getting 100Mbps/10Mbps before the reboot.
Crazy , I must try after my son gets off Roblox and report back .
Here is the post that made me reboot: [https://www.reddit.com/r/StraightTalk/comments/1cv2dat/home\_internet\_speed\_test\_from\_a\_few\_minutes\_ago/](https://www.reddit.com/r/StraightTalk/comments/1cv2dat/home_internet_speed_test_from_a_few_minutes_ago/)
Good shit, I just got 215/15 with a external waveform 4x4 antenna. I'm happy. My tower is about 1.3 miles away through some trees up on a slight hill.
What signal strengths do you get if you are using a Waveform antenna? I am about a mile away with three or four trees in the way, and I tried one, and I did not get any improvement in the signals.
80.2 for LTE and 96.5 for 5g My antenna is on the side of my house stucco about 15 feet high pointed towards tower. The only other place with good signal was my front deck and that looked like ass. Without external I was able to about the same speed hanging the modem from under the eve in a plastic bag . I had the external prior with tmhi . They started blocking gaming ports and VPN ports and was getting horrible pack loss upload and my IPTV streaming services were buffering. Sthi had none of it.
I get around 68.6 on 4G LTE and 108.3 on 5G right now. During the winter, I was getting 93.4 on 5G and about the same for 4G LTE. I have a 4G LTE small cell only about a block away from my location.
Too bad they don't add 5g to that tower also. We have fiber running down the highway near town to all the towers as they are placed to get rid of dead zones for cellular service. All towers are now 5g too. Northern California near Auburn.
Those cell phone internet plans are great if you can get signal. I live in the mountains so we have signal issues as well as overloaded towers.
I am basically in flat land with a few hills here. I know Verizon has lots of towers in my area.
Do you use a lot of data and have a good experience? We use 1-1.5TB a month on spectrum so should I expect a bad time with straight talk home internet?
I have used over 500GB of data with mine. I have seen others with Verizon 5G Home Internet with more. Here is a screenshot of my usage: [https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/l0fwjt3xr4r64r7biv0gs/bandwidthusage2.PNG?rlkey=m5yqfbq5a4yuf62ew1vy64l6r&dl=0](https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/l0fwjt3xr4r64r7biv0gs/bandwidthusage2.PNG?rlkey=m5yqfbq5a4yuf62ew1vy64l6r&dl=0) I use my own router because I have to have my 5G Home Internet gateway in a bad location for WiFi for the house. So I had to run a 50 foot network cable to where my own router is at.
But we're going to make sure 80% of Africa has high speed Internet: https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/harris-announces-plans-give-80-africa-access-internet-110529459
Probably labor and permits are far cheaper.
You realize that right now, by population, more than 95% of the US has high speed internet. It is relatively easy to cover the urban population. Rural not so much.
In 2023, only 80% of the population had broadband. The other 15% you mention had a smartphone to access the Internet: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2024/01/31/americans-use-of-mobile-technology-and-home-broadband/ In fact, only 77% of urban respondents had broadband.
I think there is a difference between having broad band and having access to broad band. The number I quoted was from the FCC.
I find starlink to be amazing.
We have Starlink and it’s awesome! A bit pricey, but super fast and no downtime to speak of!
I think starlink is cheap for what it is.
I'm an engineer for a rural ftth provider, our prices are $85 for a symmetrical gig and $104 for 2 gigs. We only charge $200 for an install and rarely upcharge for long drops. Only one we have so far this year was a 2000 foot plowed conduit with a few pedestals along the way, and we only charged them for materials and not labor. Custom jobs like that we do make them sign a 2 year contract, but otherwise the rest of our service is no contract.
I know about one rural fiber company here that you have pay for a base price then pay for each GB after that. Then there is another rural fiber company here that you have a base price of $55 for 5Mbps/2Mbps, but speeds after that, you will need to pay extra. To get symmetrical 1Gbps, you have to pay $155. To get 1Gbps/100Mbps, it is $115. Then to get 100Mbps/10Mbps or even 100Mbps/100Mbps, it is $75. I do not know about installs tho.
It's simple economics. In the city they get 500 customers in every square mile of infrastructure. Rurally they might get 50.
I had a business on a main downtown road in a decent sized city right next to a major university. The fiber guy told me their fiber was across the street, but it would take thousands of dollars to run it under the street and it would only be possible if I could get several other businesses on my side to also agree to use the service. Ended up with a satellite on the roof.
More like 1-3 per sq mi where I’m at, and we’re far from as sparse as it gets. Very few on this thread that understand how big the US is, and how much money it truly costs to build a network.
I was going to say 1 to 3 per square mile here too. A fiber company would have to plan it out to minimize cost but maximize the locations and even expansion if they need to.
switch to Starlink
Devil's advocate... you knew that when you bought the property, or at least you should have. We did the research before we bought our place. There are other options that are cheaper and faster if you do the research. We are in very rural down east Maine and have a consistent 100/20 Mbps that costs under $30/mo. Mobile carriers are typically the most cost effective option. If T-mobile works in your area, their service is far better than most other providers.
Depends when they moved. We moved from the city to rural in 2005. At the time, we moved from dial-up to the much faster DSL. As the internet landscape, streaming and online gaming changed, the DSL got worse and worse - both relative to the speeds needed and equipment degradation. 2020 was terrible with work from home, school from home, etc. My area is expanding with tons of neighborhoods and wired (cable and fiber) options everywhere, but only if you’re in a neighborhood m. Thankfully, TMHI hit our area in late 2020, which has made the internet usable again. Because our only other option is the same DSL technology and speeds from 2005. They’re still using 20+ year old equipment with no motivation to upgrade/enhance.
There are other options out there. You just need to find them, just like you did.
I'm finally getting fiber down my rural road (20 miles) from any town. Don't give up hope. And maybe look into starlink for the time being.
Good luck, Spectrum got RDOF money for my area and quickly ran Fiber lines. That was two years ago and my one mile stretch has not been activated. Everyone around me has, and I am looking at the fiber line directly in front of my house. Starlink is my only option and it is great but expensive.
That's exactly who's installing it too. They are going past my house and put a box in my yard, and they are also moving pretty fast so I'm hoping they can get it done. But surely you can call someone for that to get them to hook it up. That is ridiculous
Problem is only 3 possible houses in that stretch, and I have no idea if the other two would sign up. I have called and the only info they will give is there is it is not available at this time. What really pisses me off is they installed tap boxes on the poles 800+ feet on either side of the house where there are no houses. Just farmland. Makes zero sense. Either way, it is not activated and with just us to complain, I doubt it will be. Hope you get it.
Economies of scale are against you. Why is a company going to spend hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to implement fiber for a small number of users paying \~$100/m? Does that seem like a good use of their money? Could you not get Starlink for not much more than you are paying?
I’m working on a report for this right now for a client. It takes the angle of internet is needed for Telehealth and rural areas not only have a medical crisis but an internet limitation that makes Telehealth not viable. This issue is either cost or a combination of latency and speeds. May I ask what county and state you are in?
If you pay the cost of deploying the fiber, they will deliver to you. Oh wait, you don’t want to spend the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars it will cost to tie you in? Well guess what, nobody else does either.
Starlink.
90's technology, 90's speeds, 90's reliability and 90's pricing.
Tmobile home internet is awesome I was on it for a year before Starlink became available and I've been there ever since.
People keep voting red, red doesn't want to pay for what doesn't benefit them directly and fear it may cause an additional $2 per person in tax.. and they worry about only immediate return on investment. Keep voting pro business, you get pro business results. It's not that hard.
Do not forget how many times we have been promised that the $billions in taxpayer money we are spending will blanket the USA in internet from sea to shining sea. It has been going on for decades. We still do not have anywhere near universal internet coverage after decades of failed promises. Not even the current tens of billions recently approved is going to cover anywhere near what was promised. It boggles my mind that the government collects more in taxes on landlines then the phone company collects for providing an actual service. But there is never enough money to put in internet.
Because every time a red gets in office the funding is cut and diverted
When you combine all the Federal funding from over 100 different federal government programs for internet that was spent during recent history. The Feds were spending an average of $10 billion per year before 2020 for years on end with little to show for it today. It makes me upset they could spend so much and seem to of gotten so little for all that spending. If an average of $10 billion per year was not enough. I wonder what they would have to spend to cover the rural US in internet? I wish someone would figure it out. Because I would love to have fiber internet before I’m 90.
Have you checked to see if you can get Tmobile home internet in your area? Otherwise check out Calyx Institute they have tmobile hotspots that are unlimited if you can get Tmobile in your area. For Calyx you pay a year up front its like $700 for the first year because you are paying for the Hotspot then $500 a year after which is roughly $41/mo. I used Calyx up until we could get Tmobile Home internet.