Affordable Rural Internet Access

[Athene]

DH and I (fingers crossed!) are trying buy a house that is well outside the area for cable, DSL, and the university network. As best I can figure, we have these options- please tell me if you know of one I've forgotten.

1. Going without internet at home. My thought is that we could set up automatic deductions for our bills, but I am wary of this as I used to work at a bank. Or I could make DH pay the bills while he's at work, though I'm wary of this, too, for other reasons.

2. Getting dial up. It's super cheap, at $7/mo, but so slow that I wonder if I could pay bills and text, the two primary things I use the internet for.

3. Satellite internet. I've ruled this out. It just costs way too much.

4. A 3G/4G tablet. I know these exist, and that's all. I have no idea if we'll get good service or how much the service costs. I don't like Apple products, so I doubt I'll buy an iPad.

5. An air card. I've heard poor things from people who use these at home, but at $40/mo it's half the price of basic satellite, so this is in the maybe column.

6. Smartphones. I don't think I want these, since they are also horribly expensive and coverage is kinda spotty out there, so I know we'll still need a landline. Nonetheless, I am more open to this option than I am to the satellite internet service.

What have you done? What has worked?

Thanks!

 

[Beekissed]

Some telephone companies in rural areas offer high speed DSL. That is what we use here and it is billed along with the phone. VERY nice, fast as I will ever need and won't tie up the phone lines like dial-up.

Ours cost $25 per mo. I was paying $15 for crappy dial-up....extremely slow and impossible to use due to being kicked off every two seconds. The $10 extra bucks is soooo well worth it.

 

[BarredBuff]

Some telephone companies in rural areas offer high speed DSL. That is what we use here and it is billed along with the phone. VERY nice, fast as I will ever need and won't tie up the phone lines like dial-up.

Ours cost $25 per mo. I was paying $15 for crappy dial-up....extremely slow and impossible to use due to being kicked off every two seconds. The $10 extra bucks is soooo well worth it.

x2

Thats what we do....its worth it.

 

[Hinotori]

X3

That's what we have. I use my phone quite a bit as well.

Friend of ours tried the satellite internet for a year. Hated every moment of it. He ended up going back to dialup as it was faster and more reliable. He said the customer service was horrid as well.

 

[Athene]

DSL won't be available there for at least another 18 months.

 

[Cindlady2]

I use Cricket... they have both phone and wireless services. It's done over cell phone towers so that would depend on what's available too. You can check your area @ Mycricket.com

 

[~gd]

A lot depends on the hard-wire phone service in the area, if it is bad don't expect DSL to make Internet better. T used dial up for years to do my on-line banking and bill paying, during off hours works best. At long last we got DSL and it was great for the first six months. Then we had a PUD [Planned Urban Development] fancy term for tons of 'residential units' jammed together on postage stamp lots, open about a mile closer to the city. The phone company failed to provide enough relays so every bandwidth hog slowed down the entire system. Read the fine print on DSL ads and contracts they always say UP TO x Speed which means that is the Max that the system can deliver IF NO ONE ELSE IS USING IT! If you have a bunch of heavy users it is often slower than dial up! We lucked out. the cable TV company wanted to run a cable out to their Attenta farm and they offered a tie in to the cable instead of cash for an easement. Yes we have to pay to use it for internet and incoming cable TV but there are few if any other users because it is fiber optics and the modoms cost big time [that is what we got instead of cash], Real Estate people tell us it adds $2-2.5K to the value of our house as a residence and an internet based business should pay a heck of a lot more.
Getting back to the OP I would ask existing DSL users about the service before I signed up for it, Heavy uae can slow it down but only heavy capital investment by the phone company can make it faster. ~gd

 

[AmericanHomesteader]

I use my smartphone its a t-mobile comet and cost 99.00 dollars my plan is 45.00 amonth and i have 3g speed for internet and its unlimited. Im not on a contract i pay month to month. My phone turns in to a mobile hotspot and can connect up to 5 devices to it at the same time. Been working fine now for the 7 months we have been off grid.

 

[Athene]

Thank you. It's reassuring that dial up works for paying bills. If I can pay bills, text with Google Voice, and read Wikipedia to answer the kiddos endless stream of questions, I'll be fine.

I will investigate Cricket and TMobile, but I doubt they are up here. Sprint *just* got here this year. I live in the middle of nowhere, y'all. It even says so on the road signs.

I looked into AT&T and Verizon smartphones, and for DH and I to each get one, it would be $160/mo, plus tax. That is offensive, so we won't be going that route.

 

[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.