Affordable Rural Internet Access

[hqueen13]

We live on the edge of rural (less than 2 miles to the nearest (not that great) grocery store), BUT we live about 1/4 mile from the end of cable, and up the hill off the road by another 1/8 mile. There is NO way we are paying for cable to be run.
We tried satellite, and it stunk. DSL isn't an option, either, and I do too much surfing to do dialup.
We now use our sprint smart phones as hot spots, and it works very well. We have solid 3G signal here, and I'm able to surf and multitask pretty well. If you can figure out who has the best coverage, then you may be able to do pretty well. Just read the contracts carefully, and know if you have caps or limits. There are also other services out there like Cricket, too, do some homework, you might find something that works decently. It costs us only an additional $20.00 extra per month to have the hot spot on our phones. And the advantage is that my hot spot goes with me everywhere, so I can jump online almost anywhere, like airports where they try to make you pay for internet.

 

[Denim Deb]

I'm wanting to get a netbook. What about internet for one of them? I don't really have any internet access out at the farm, and want to use it a lot out there and DON'T want to have a phone w/internet. They're too small for me.

 

[hqueen13]

Deb, so long as you get some sort of internet service for it, then you can. But it will require you to pay for the service.

 

[Denim Deb]

How much do those types of services cost? I don't want to spend a lot of money for it.

 

[Athene]

Depending on where you live, you may be able to get free dial up through the library, schools, or university. Dial up service, if you have to pay for it, runs about $7/mo through a third party (not the landline phone company). DSL is anywhere from $20-$40/mo. Cable is usually about $40/mo. Satellite is $80/mo, and slower than DSL. An air card through a cell phone company is usually around $50/mo.

If we are talking 3G/4G wireless internet, something like Cricket or CLEAR, it varies wildly and you just have to check for your area.

I have decided to go with free dial up through the university. I'll be able to pay bills, and the price is right!

 

[luvinlife offthegrid]

We had to go with Hughesnet. It's expensive, but we run a business out of our home, out where no wires run. We had a little verizon thing that plugged into the side of the laptop for a while, but even verizon has spotty coverage here. We ended up having to switch to At&T for our cell service. At that time we also switched to hughes. Oh, well- at least it's a business writeoff. :/

 

[tjcnok]

I've used cricket broadband for a couple years. It's $40.50 including taxes and everything. Very fast compared to dial up and much more reliable than AT&T land line service (every time it rained, the telephone went dead for a few days and the repair guy is pretty useless too so after making sure Cricket was going to work we cancelled our land line and went totally cell phone for telephone service and Cricket air card for internet. We are so far in the country that cox internet will never be an option here, at least in my lifetime but there are ATT & a Cricket cell towers very close to us so both work remarkably well. We have skype installed on the computer but no one else in our circle of relatives and friends do so we actually have never used skype.

 

[Eddie_4]

Internet is the need of today's generation. It should be affordable and cheap in rural areas.

 

[hqueen13]

Should and are can be very far apart. Since this thread started I've moved to an area further out of town but with a MUCH higher income bracket. We have the smallest most humble house tucked between massive mansions (my landlords house has 6 chimneys). But we have no internet here. No cable no nothing. I'm not paying through the more for bad satellite service. Thankfully I have strong cell signal with Sprint, and my bf has good signal with T-Mobile, both are 4g. The only bad news is that we still can't afford the cellular internet. Thankfully we manage to have smart phones and so we Do everything from them. He can jump off his phone as a Hot spot but it's super slow.
But that explains why my typing is rather strange sometimes. I at least try to catch the bad autocorrects, but the punctuation and grammar is not worth the trouble to fix most of the time.

 

[eagrbeavr]

If you have sprint coverage then I'd try straight talk. Same as t mobile in regards to unlimited and no contract for 49$ total. I love it. However, Ive never heard of cricket and just looked at the website. I may switch over. Thanks to who it was who mentioned it