Rural fixed wireless internet
 

I’m having a hell of a time trying to figure this out. Just bought a cabin in mid Michigan area, about 12 miles west of Mt Pleasant where CMU is located. At my cabin I can pull in the 5Ge tower good enough to stream my Xfinity television on my iPad.

When I search home base wireless and put in the address for availability they say it’s not available in my area! Well what the hell that’s why I want rural internet which I kind of already get through my damn phone. I just want a base station with wifi so I can connect my smart TVs etc to it.

What am I missing here?

Craig

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Id look into this for a remote cabin:

https://www.starlink.com/

Nice place.

Beautiful cabin

I did buy a weboost to pull in the cell signal better for our phones I’ll install that up on the tv antenna already on the roof for now and see how that works

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We really enjoy the place, hope to slowly get it ready to maybe retire up there in 8 or 10 years, in the meantime maybe do a little farming on the 12 acres, or see if I can squeeze in a 1400’ runway to get the planes in lol

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https://cyberonic.com/
we're looking into this for my s/o's country house. She has Viasat now and it sucks - out whenever there's cloud cover. She has decent cell service. Cyberonic resells cellular for internet use, looks like enough capacity for domestic use.

That's really horrible! I don't know how you guys can stand it.

The fall colors are really amazing. I don't think we had a lot of fall colors when I lived in Japan because there weren't many deciduous trees. And while there may have been some when I lived in NoVA (Woodbridge, VA), it was essentially a suburb town for DC, so lots of homes and townhomes, and I was in HS, so had anything else on my mind other than fall colors. The rest of my life has been in Florida or Houston, so no fall colors to speak of in either of those spots.

Beautiful place!

I do a combination of satellite internet and Verizon via my phone. Both are sub optimum.

I am looking at Ubifi: https://www.ubifi.net/

I will follow this thread!

If our country place goes through (no reason to think it won't, but don't want to tempt fate), I'm probably going to need something too, hopefully that's good enough that I can work from home which probably wouldn't be normal (geo) satellite (like Hughs). I'm curious about Starlink since the latency should be tolerable compared to normal geostationary satellite. I keep forgetting to check my cell access when I'm out there. I think it should be decent, but probably not remotely as fast as it is here in the city.

I work from home 3/4 days a week - it is workable with Hughes just not optimum. We have developed workarounds so I am not holding things up. I don't ever host meetings, for instance - our Ops person in Las Vegas does, nor do I broadcast my mug during meetings...a good thing :)

I am looking at the DirecTV internet as well since I have their basic sat TV package.

The Verizon 4G hot spot on my phone works great but I run through the allowable download g's quickly.

Let me know how Starlink works.

Thanks and I hope you get your place - another really near rural property.

WOW! That's a great place. Just beautiful!

Do you have DSL available? I thought it would not be fast enough, but DSL and satellite were our only options out here. It's $85 a month, but it's fast enough that we can stream 2 movies at once.

We have Frontier, and they claim to have service in your area.

https://internet.frontier.com/local/michigan/mount-pleasant/

DSL can be plenty fast depending upon how far you are from the source. As the distance goes up, the speed goes down. The distance my be greater if there's fiber involved, but my guess is that most rural locations won't be targets for fiber for a while. They are still rolling fiber out in cities and suburbs.

Rural fixed wireless internet
 

The local phone company, Winn Telephone Co, does offer DSL and our place already has the wires/phone in place just not active. I will be checking with them about speeds, it might be enough to stream the television


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If you can use 5G at prices you can live with, search "mifi" to share 5G data over wifi. Everything from pocket dongles (so you don't have to hot-spot your phone) to access points/routers (some also with DSL/cable ports).

DSL will probably work out cheaper.

I got this service www.bixwireless.com
They use ATT LTE towers. I"m getting 27M download and 7M upload 400G data for $99 a month .. Great customer service so far love them

My daughter needs rural internet so I'm following this intently.

I saw the following article that looks interesting. I understand some up on the central coast here have done similarly with cooperatively owned line-of-sight towers. It can be expensive, but the more you can sign up the less so.

https://www.inquirer.com/news/rural-broadband-internet-covid-wireless-fcc-20200705.html

My brother is faced with this problem at his new place in Templeton.
He's working on a line-of-sight solution with his neighbor who has line-of-sight to the repeater.
I'm watching this thread for ideas to pass along to him.

Can you ask any neighbors what they are using? Some rural areas offer wireless from a tower. Needs to be line of sight though.

If the cell service is good, you need a Netgear Modem.

This is what you want, but they said it would already be out. Still waiting. It is 5G, up to 100 Mbps.

https://www.netgear.com/home/products/mobile-broadband/mobilerouters/mr5200.aspx

We use the older 4G unit at our remote power plant.

https://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-LTE-Modem-Broadband-Connection/dp/B01N5ASNTE/ref=sr_1_3?crid=IICIWD2SWI0R&dchild=1&keywords=net gear+4g+lte+modem&qid=1604321958&sprefix=Netgear+4 g%2Caps%2C250&sr=8-3

Add antenna

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DN3J03O/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Or better
https://www.amazon.com/Electronics-Wideband-Directional-700-2700-314411/dp/B00J14YEHQ/ref=sr_1_3?crid=1Y1XEPKKFTW8D&dchild=1&keywords=4g +antenna+outdoor&qid=1604322071&sprefix=4g+ant%2Ca ps%2C230&sr=8-3

Those modems are great, but as a primary internet source you need an unthrottled cell provider. Most cell service throttles at a level that makes long term streaming an iffy proposition.

T-Mobile doesn't throttle until about 20GB and does not count streaming.

My cable based IPS throttles at ~150GB, but counts streaming

That Netgear is essentially a 5G hotspot, right? 5G radio on one end, WiFi access point and Ethernet jack on the other? So it will work standalone, no need for anything but power and a 5G signal? Can you power it from a USB battery?

That Netgear is essentially a 5G hotspot, right? 5G radio on one end, WiFi access point and Ethernet jack on the other? So it will work standalone, no need for anything but power and a 5G signal? Can you power it from a USB battery?

Also, what antenna would you use if on a vehicle (van, boat)? So you have plenty of room for a tall aerial, but has to be omni directional.

It is not a "hotspot" as it is much larger than the regular hotspots. The 4G unit is NOT WiFi. You must supply a WiFi router. And it is 12V.

The 5G unit "will" supply WiFi, but it does not exist yet. It does contain an internal battery AND it appears to be USB-C for power.

Well, it looks like AT&T released it!!!

https://www.att.com/buy/connected-devices-and-more/nighthawk-5g-mobile-hotspot-pro-black.html

At $509, it is not cheap!

I can get unlimited DSL for $95 a month at 10MGPS that's not too bad and Ill have the house phone again lol

If you are with T-Mobile, an extra line is like $20/mth.

We got a "free" phone line with our Frontier DSL. It's really just a filter that lets the phone use the DSL. I've never used it.

This is interesting, and I've seen the same from other providers, or higher streaming limits. My concern is that the "streaming" means streaming video to a smartphone or pad-otherwise its just data-how does the carrier distinguish when its going to a modem-ie not thru an app native to the smart device.

How do they distinguish on a tablet or phone?

They have to add in a phone, some regulation will not allow them to only put in a DSL data line, has to include a phone.

I don't know the exact mechanism, but I can guess. They probably have a list of the IPs and/or DNS addresses for all of the major streaming services, and allow unlimited data from those addresses. That's probably why when T-mobile first started their unlimited streaming, it was for a selected list of providers and they had a caveat that said something like "we are adding more streaming providers in the future."

Netflix probably has a pretty fixed list of load balanced IPs or DNS names, same goes for Hulu or anyone else that streams. There are also devices that watch for specific protocols or signatures for common streams. They could be using that instead. I think it would be easier to just allow all Netflix.com addresses, but like I said, I don't know the exact mechanism.

I would hope they distinguish by ip. With a phone or tablet and a direct cell connection its easier as the apps "talk back" to the carrier. I've never tried-can you stream video thru a browser these days on your phone or does it force you to use an app for the service? I just tried netflix thru safari and it directed me to the app. The carrier knows that data going to a netflix or prime app etc is streaming video content. I guess they could monitor the ip directed from a browser, but I wonder if in practice that occurs.

Either is possible. IP could be a moving target based on multiple data centers all over the US and dynamic expansion based on load/use, but name could be setup to point to any/all of those IPs, so one entry that never /rarely changes vs many, many entries that could change regularly.

I have cellular LTE on my laptop. And the streaming is through my browser. I expect it is based on WHERE the data is coming from.

I use my phone for a casual hotspot. This thing looks perfect for a mobile setup (RV, etc) or to bring to a vacation cabin, remote work site, etc. $509 is a little ambitious, though.