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Todd Erwin

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Todd Erwin submitted a new blog post

Broadband Internet in Rural America (or a Lack Thereof)
RuralInternet-1024x576.jpg


Continue reading the Original Blog Post.
 

Adam Lenhardt

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New York State is currently trying to kick Charter/Spectrum out because the State's approval of the Charter/Time Warner merger was dependent of Charter/Spectrum's agreement to build out broadband service to rural areas that aren't nearly as profitable per mile of fiber. Charter says it met its build out requirements, but the State has indicated that Charter is counting new New York City subscribers in its total, not just new subscribers in the rural areas that were at the center of the agreement.

And New York is one of the more densely populated geographically large states, so I can only imagine the challenges faced by states in the West, which are even larger but don't have a sliver of the population.
 

Josh Steinberg

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Service in NYC is terrible too - not objectively terrible compared to no rural access, but less than what they promised they would do when they came to town. And the costs are just outrageous. I wouldn't shed a tear if they were sent packing.
 

Adam Gregorich

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Fascinating read, thanks Todd! I thing the cheapest solution is wireless 5G service. Verizon and T-Mobile are both planning on doing it. Bringing wireless the last mile is cheaper and faster than getting fiber there. Hopefully in the next few years rural America will finally have high speed Internet. It needs it to be part of the future economy.
 

Scott Merryfield

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Todd, I understand what you are going through in rural America. My parents live in the middle of nowhere in northern Michigan, and getting them any type of Internet access has been a struggle for years. For the longest while, all I could get them was dial-up access for $20 per month, but as broadband became the norm websites stopped worrying about efficient website design and their dial-up service became useless. Trying to install Windows updates on my dad's PC would take all night, too. They are over a mile from a paved road, with no cable TV or DSL service available.

I got them the Verizon wireless Jetpack you mentioned for a few years, as both Verizon and AT&T have decent LTE service at their home. The service was $50 per month for 5GB, which was usually enough for my dad as long as he didn't make any mistakes when installing computer updates. Once or twice he downloaded the same patches over and over as he got confused, which blew his limit that month.

A couple of years ago their Jetpack began to get flaky, so I looked into other options for them. Since they were a DirecTV customer and AT&T now owned that company, I thought I may be able to leverage the two services. While that wasn't possible, AT&T did offer a combined home phone / wireless data service that would give them 250GB of data per month and unlimited calling. By switching to this offering and switching their home phone from Frontier I saved them about $50 per month.

Getting the service up and running for them was an adventure, though. Their home phone service wasn't supposed to switch until the new wireless router arrived and was activated, but on the first of the month their home phone service with Frontier stopped working. Luckily the router arrived the next day, and I made the 2.75 hour drive to go install it for them. Activating the service went well, but the billing was screwed up, showing they had zero data available on the account. This was a new offering from AT&T, and it took me 1.5 days to get the issue resolved. I was transferred from one group within AT&T to another, and ended up right back where I started -- I think I was literally transferred around the world!

The service will occasionally stop working if AT&T runs some sort of maintenance routine and it takes a phone call to customer service to get it back. I really hate dealing with AT&T -- I dealt with them professionally for 35 years in my roles in data and voice networking, and they are a pain in the ass to deal with. AT&T is not one company, but instead is a bunch of smaller companies that have been bought but never integrated into common support or billing services. They are a nightmare to deal with, but right now they are the only reasonable service offering for my elderly parents in rural northern Michigan.
 

Todd Erwin

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Todd, I understand what you are going through in rural America. My parents live in the middle of nowhere in northern Michigan, and getting them any type of Internet access has been a struggle for years. For the longest while, all I could get them was dial-up access for $20 per month, but as broadband became the norm websites stopped worrying about efficient website design and their dial-up service became useless. Trying to install Windows updates on my dad's PC would take all night, too. They are over a mile from a paved road, with no cable TV or DSL service available.

I got them the Verizon wireless Jetpack you mentioned for a few years, as both Verizon and AT&T have decent LTE service at their home. The service was $50 per month for 5GB, which was usually enough for my dad as long as he didn't make any mistakes when installing computer updates. Once or twice he downloaded the same patches over and over as he got confused, which blew his limit that month.

A couple of years ago their Jetpack began to get flaky, so I looked into other options for them. Since they were a DirecTV customer and AT&T now owned that company, I thought I may be able to leverage the two services. While that wasn't possible, AT&T did offer a combined home phone / wireless data service that would give them 250GB of data per month and unlimited calling. By switching to this offering and switching their home phone from Frontier I saved them about $50 per month.

Getting the service up and running for them was an adventure, though. Their home phone service wasn't supposed to switch until the new wireless router arrived and was activated, but on the first of the month their home phone service with Frontier stopped working. Luckily the router arrived the next day, and I made the 2.75 hour drive to go install it for them. Activating the service went well, but the billing was screwed up, showing they had zero data available on the account. This was a new offering from AT&T, and it took me 1.5 days to get the issue resolved. I was transferred from one group within AT&T to another, and ended up right back where I started -- I think I was literally transferred around the world!

The service will occasionally stop working if AT&T runs some sort of maintenance routine and it takes a phone call to customer service to get it back. I really hate dealing with AT&T -- I dealt with them professionally for 35 years in my roles in data and voice networking, and they are a pain in the ass to deal with. AT&T is not one company, but instead is a bunch of smaller companies that have been bought but never integrated into common support or billing services. They are a nightmare to deal with, but right now they are the only reasonable service offering for my elderly parents in rural northern Michigan.
I had a similar situation with the Verizon JetPack - I'm guessing that the salesman was so excited that he was able to sell one that he forgot to activate it before my mother in law left the store. We tried walking her through activating it over the phone per the instructions on Verizon's support page, even conference called support, and eventually she had to get a ride into Fallon to the Verizon store there to get the thing activated.
 

Malcolm R

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Heck, there are some places here in rural VT where you cannot even get wireless/cell service, let alone any semblance of broadband unless it's via one of the satellite dish companies (and reliability is likely a concern).
 

Todd Erwin

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Fascinating read, thanks Todd! I thing the cheapest solution is wireless 5G service. Verizon and T-Mobile are both planning on doing it. Bringing wireless the last mile is cheaper and faster than getting fiber there. Hopefully in the next few years rural America will finally have high speed Internet. It needs it to be part of the future economy.
I agree, as long as Verizon and T-Mobile don't play the data plan game. 4K streaming chews through a lot of data.
 

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Great read! I recently read articles on this subject as part of my masters program. I had no idea and it was certainly eye opening!

Thanks for the post!
 

Todd Erwin

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I agree, as long as Verizon and T-Mobile don't play the data plan game. 4K streaming chews through a lot of data.
Hawthorne was one of T-Mobile's rural 5G launch communities last year, and this year began offering their $60/month 5G internet-only service.
 

Todd Erwin

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Fascinating read, thanks Todd! I thing the cheapest solution is wireless 5G service. Verizon and T-Mobile are both planning on doing it. Bringing wireless the last mile is cheaper and faster than getting fiber there. Hopefully in the next few years rural America will finally have high speed Internet. It needs it to be part of the future economy.
Hawthorne was one of T-Mobile's rural 5G launch communities last year, and this year began offering their $60/month 5G internet-only service.
 

Scott Merryfield

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Hawthorne was one of T-Mobile's rural 5G launch communities last year, and this year began offering their $60/month 5G internet-only service.
I thought the service was $50 per month? I am considering this for our South Carolina condo, as there is no contract. I am hoping I can easily turn the service on and off, depending on whether we are there or in Michigan. I need to visit a T-Mobile store soon anyway to swap out my wife's phone - - we are Sprint customers, and her current phone is supposed to stop working at the end of the year as it's not compatible with T-Mobile's network.
 

Todd Erwin

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I thought the service was $50 per month? I am considering this for our South Carolina condo, as there is no contract. I am hoping I can easily turn the service on and off, depending on whether we are there or in Michigan. I need to visit a T-Mobile store soon anyway to swap out my wife's phone - - we are Sprint customers, and her current phone is supposed to stop working at the end of the year as it's not compatible with T-Mobile's network.
It's now $50 for Auto Pay customers, who get a $10 credit.
 

Lord Dalek

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Considering I live in Rural America, its remarkable how useless 4k streaming is when your internet taps out at 720p.

Not like it goes any higher than 1440 though in the Fios coast though am I right?
 

Clinton McClure

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Some days I still can’t believe I went from a very unstable 6Mbps (usually closer to dial-up speeds) for $100/mo to an always on 1Gbps for the same price. I moved 15 miles down the road from a rural community of about 500 people to a 3-college city of close to 70,000. I feel very fortunate.

23D3939E-9BC4-405A-9DA1-0823B799C7B4.jpeg
 

Todd Erwin

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Some days I still can’t believe I went from a very unstable 6Mbps (usually closer to dial-up speeds) for $100/mo to an always on 1Gbps for the same price. I moved 15 miles down the road from a rural community of about 500 people to a 3-college city of close to 70,000. I feel very fortunate.

View attachment 110281
We went from $55/month 18 Mbps down, 1.5 Mbps up with AT&T to $50/month 400 Mbps down, 20 Mbps up with Spectrum. Because my wife works remotely, we kept AT&T as backup for about another year, until AT&T raised their price to $65/month without notice. We called them up and accused them of highway robbery, then promptly cancelled the service. Shortly thereafter, our promo with Spectrum ended, and the internet portion increased by $5. Our free 400 Mbps upgrade expires in January, so I'm expecting another increase which looks to be around $25, but will definitely call prior to that to see if I can get another promo added on.
 

Scott Merryfield

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Hawthorne was one of T-Mobile's rural 5G launch communities last year, and this year began offering their $60/month 5G internet-only service.
I just signed up for this service for our South Carolina condo. The gateway arrived yesterday, and I set it up this morning. My signal here in our Michigan home is fluctuating between "good" and "weak". I need to move it around the house to see if I can improve the signal. I want to try it out here for a couple of weeks before we head south. Right now I am streaming the Steelers game on my iPad via the Xfinity app while sitting on our deck (it's a beautiful September day here).

My next step will be to swap in the Roku Ultra I will be taking south and stream some 4K content.
 

Scott Merryfield

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Well, my T-Mobile Home Internet experiment didn't last long. I could not even get a HDX film to stream through iTunes last night on the connection with the box in our Michigan home, and re-checking availability at our South Carolina condo where I really want to use it shows it's questionable whether it will even connect there. So I returned the device to the local T-Mobile store and canceled the line.

The good news is I then called HTC, the local cable company that services our SC condo complex, and the monthly service there will be $20 per month less expensive than listed on the website -- $45/month instead of $65 per month for 300Mbps download speed, including a cable modem / WiFi router. The representative was able to bundle the Internet service with the basic cable TV service that is already included with our HOA dues. So I scheduled an installation appointment for when we are down there next month.

300Mbps was their lowest and least expensive tier, and that should be sufficient for our needs. We should never be streaming to more than one display at a time. The only other current uses will be Internet browsing and VoIP from our cell phones, plus I have the thermostat connected to the current guest WiFi so I can control the heating/cooling remotely -- I will have to move that to the new, secured connection.. I may add some security cameras at a later date, but we currently have the best security system you could ask for -- a next door neighbor who immediately texts my wife whenever anything suspicious is going on. :laugh:
 

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