Rural internet
 

No cable or DSL service available. Verizon gets good signal but I have no idea how much data to get. Lot of surfing for me, facebook for wife. We have friends who use Verizon hotspot which gets 4G on the west end of house. But they are constantly going over their data which worries me,($$$$). No gaming or streaming movies for the or us. Too many hills for line of sight to tower. Only other option I've come up with is exede satellite internet, which at least has time blocks of unlimited service and throttles back when you hit your limit instead of charging more. Does the brain trust have any suggestions?

I have satellite on my mountain home, it's disappointing, but it works... except when it snows.

My house is in the same boat....Been on Verizon for over 5 yrs now.....6 GB month for $60.....Have to really pay attention to not go over. Have many guests in home that want to whip out their device as ask for my password.....Constant battle......

How many neighbors do you have line of sight to? If more than a couple, and it is worth it to all parties, you may be able to get a commercial line in for a reasonable cost per month and then split with neighbors as a co-op.

Or, if you think you may be close to town, see when the big boxes on the side of the road get worked on... thats how I got DSL. Moved in, had 28.8 dialup (not even 33.6). Few years later, drunk driver takes out the big green box down the road, no phone for a few hours, when I get phone back I have 56k dialup. A month after, I get a call from telco offering DSL due to "upgrades in your area". :)

Where the heck in Illinois are you with hills!?

I'd say Go for the sat.
How far to your closet neighbor with DSL or cable?
Or
Buy a T1 for probably like 500 bucks a month

Same issue here. We have Hughes Net for internet and Direct TV. It sucks but we have no other options if we want internet and TV.

Satellite for internet isn't all that great. About 10 years ago, I tested a commercial (not consumer) grade of this service at my home over the course of a few years. It was OK but not without shortcomings. Rain- and snow-related blockages, time delay for signals traveling to/from the geostationary satellite requires special processing to overcome the handshaking that's in the TCP/IP and application-layer protocols, which may or may not work all that well. Let's just say I was glad to get back to cable internet...well, except for the part about having to start paying for internet service.

I just googled "illinois wireless internet service provider" and a number of different companies offering service popped up. Perhaps there's a company or companies that offer wireless internet service in your area. Best wishes on getting reasonably good service. SmileWavy

Same here. I work from home at least one day a week (weekends as well, depending) so I chew through data plans very quickly. i also have a Verison plan with a lot of gigs as well.

When the kids are home in the summer and holidays, we burn though more data packets than the NSA.

my experience with Sattelite is dated (10 years ago) so perhaps technology has improved. The company I worked for at the time had Sattelite system as no other options were available at the time (in Somerset county NJ). The connection was deathly slow, and there were frequent reboots required to keep the connection up. We ended up installing an ISDN line for purposes of establishing a VPN between our location and the parent company in France because the Sattelite was too slow and unreliable. The ISDN was much faster that Sattelite for basic web browsing too. When I got a call from a vendor who informed me that DSL had been made available in our location, we jumped on it immediately and retired the sattelite.

It has come a long way. During peak hours Hughs Net does slow a bit, but not as much as before.

There seems to be less technical problems than before, but I've had sat internet since it was first available in the late 90's.

If there were viable, affordable alternatives, we'd jump.

Here are some alternatives to Hughes: Satellite Internet Reviews in 2014 - Top 5 Service Providers

DO NOT get Hughesnet..............horrible horrible inconsistent............dead dog slow if even functioning half the time. I had 32 trouble call tickets into tech service to India in 36 months.


As we just finally got DSL, I had used a Verizon Jetpack Mi-Fi which worked great.

I can sell you my 4620 jetpack with extended amp/hr battery for cheap cheap, then you just add it to your plan.

Data use isn't too bad, 16-18 gig a month but that was just web surfing, not streaming Netflix movies or on-line gaming. With my Jet pack I saw an average of 12-15 meg/second.

PM me if you want to try my jetpack.

Geeze, really? I do 6GB or more in an average day. That's crazy.

I had Wild Blue at one time - I referred to it as Wild SUCK on a regular basis. I felt like I won the lottery when better options camea around. There is no such thing as good rural internet. The have you by the you know what and they know you'll pay. Best thing to do is pray evvery night for something better to come along...

Moving out of Illinois, now in Missouri. Ozark Mountains. My neighbor (not plural) is a mile away. Put the house halfway down the valley, no line of sight to anything.

You could run a fiber cable. With the right equipment you could go up to 80 kilometers.