Help with internet

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Help with internet

Postby Bigwoods » Mon Jun 17, 2019 9:25 am

Some folks her seem to know the newest thing on the market. I get my internet through the land line telephone {which I do net need} and the bill keep creeping up. It is now over $100. a month. I am having trouble getting wireless because we have trees all around the house.. My wife does not want any of her trees cut.. My question is there any other things that might work like satellite and is that any good.

We are retired and it is getting so I do not wanna pay for the land line I do not want just for internet.
Greg in Northern Minnesota

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Re: Help with internet

Postby tony.latham » Mon Jun 17, 2019 10:04 am

Bigwoods wrote:Some folks her seem to know the newest thing on the market. I get my internet through the land line telephone {which I do net need} and the bill keep creeping up. It is now over $100. a month. I am having trouble getting wireless because we have trees all around the house.. My wife does not want any of her trees cut.. My question is there any other things that might work like satellite and is that any good.

We are retired and it is getting so I do not wanna pay for the land line I do not want just for internet.


When you say wireless, are you not accessing the Internet through wifi with your current system? Or are you talking about a different provider that uses microwaves -- which would consist of a small dish antenna pointed horizontally?

I just sold a house that the Internet came in through the landline. I opted out of the phone portion of the service. Perhaps you can too?

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Re: Help with internet

Postby lfhoward » Mon Jun 17, 2019 10:10 am

I don’t know what company is doing your phone and internet, but I’ve had internet without phone for years, first with Verizon and now with Comcast. Ask for “dry loop” which means a phone line with dsl only, if you want to continue getting internet from the phone company without a landline. Or you can get internet from the cable company without TV, which is what I’m doing now. Costs about $64 a month in Philadelphia. The intro rate was $49.
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Re: Help with internet

Postby Bigwoods » Mon Jun 17, 2019 6:16 pm

I did mean through the phone. By wireless I mean the small dish they put on your house. The company said I would need a 60' antenna and the cost was $800. What I have is week and cuts out every hour.. Comes back after a few minutes.. I will look for alternatives.
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Re: Help with internet

Postby Bigwoods » Tue Jun 18, 2019 7:48 am

I ask provider and can't get stand alone phone. Will have to look at Comcast or Verizon I guess.
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Re: Help with internet

Postby tony.latham » Tue Jun 18, 2019 1:13 pm

Bigwoods wrote:I ask provider and can't get stand alone phone. Will have to look at Comcast or Verizon I guess.


You might ask around your 'hood (that's ghetto talk!) and find out what your neighbors have and how they like the service.

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Re: Help with internet

Postby Bigwoods » Tue Jun 18, 2019 4:19 pm

Thanks everyone. I live on 18 acres. The guy that built the house was a character. He planted 3,876 trees.. Maybe over planted. Now the pines are 30 feet high.. And there are cottonwoods even higher. That is why we can't get "line of site" to the towers for wireless. Most people have that.. We can not even have cable tv. In the winter we get 3 basic channels with a few sub channels. In summer with trees leafed out it goes to one most of the time with a few sub channels.

Such is the life in the middle of my own forest 158538
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Re: Help with internet

Postby tony.latham » Tue Jun 18, 2019 4:28 pm

Such is the life in the middle of my own forest


Nice watchdog. :frightened:

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Re: Help with internet

Postby lfhoward » Tue Jun 18, 2019 7:34 pm

Trees have other hidden benefits. Tree cover gives you a cooler home in the summer and a warmer one in winter. And they soak up big rains that otherwise cause basement floods.

My dad did the same thing planting tons of trees around the house when I was a kid. Lots of changes since then! Basement stays dry and heating/cooling takes less energy. The tree canopy is 2-3 times as tall as the house now!

He still doesn’t own a cell phone though. Lol.
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Re: Help with internet

Postby pchast » Tue Jun 18, 2019 7:52 pm

The basic question is how do you get your telephone? On poles or underground? How much would a new line run cost when costed out for its life? Can Cable or Fiber be cost effective for you? It would certainly be many times more stable and strong.......
:thinking:
I was told to install a tower also. Trees love to grow. Cable was better for me. It's installed through a 200' water pipe for conduit/protection on the top of the ground..
:D
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Re: Help with internet

Postby Bigwoods » Wed Aug 21, 2019 7:21 pm

Still living with rising cost and poor internet speed. I tried a hotspot and knew I was in trouble as cell service is poor too.. An internet provider from MPLS said he could get service for me with the use of a radio. Then he found out I was 350 miles away he dropped off. Google thinks IK live in the Cites so I get ads from there all the time.
Has anyone heard of using a radio to get past the tree problem I have? Maybe a possibility.
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Re: Help with internet

Postby pchast » Thu Aug 22, 2019 8:50 pm

Any Ham's in the area you can talk to???????
There are several on here I hope will chime in..
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Re: Help with internet

Postby wannabefree » Mon Feb 15, 2021 10:24 pm

Give this a look: https://www.viasat.com/
Last I checked it was about $75 a month. There is no data cap, but at some point they will start throttling your connection until a new month starts if you use a lot of data. Download speed will be on par with or faster than your landline, but you will notice latency, which will be on the order of 4 times what your landline can provide, so you may wait a couple seconds for a page to start loading. That is just the nature of satellite, the signal is making a 36,000 mile round trip. There are companies working on LEO satellites (low earth orbit) which will solve that problem but requires hundreds of satellites vs. 3 to cover the earth, so you can imagine there are problems with that approach, not the least of which is keeping them from running into each other.
If you stream a TByte a month you would be better off sticking with landline, but if you are around 100GB or less this is viable.

Hope that helps. BTW - I used to work for these guys. A good company, but I am probably a bit biased.
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Re: Help with internet

Postby S. Heisley » Mon Feb 15, 2021 11:08 pm

Supposedly, there is a new, start-up Internet company that is going to put up 3 satellites over America. These will be lower in space than the existing dsl ones. The three are going to be linked to each other to give better and faster service, too. The dsl companies are not happy about it. The company is called something like "Starlink"? I heard about it on the news, but when I tried to find it on the Internet, I couldn't. Anyway, if it happens, it will be in maybe a year, which won't help you now. Still, you might want to keep your eyes and ears ready to catch any news of it in the future.

Did a Google search and found this: https://www.space.com/spacex-launches-6 ... eb-15-2021
The above article says they are putting up 60 satellites and will have 1,440 to start!
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Re: Help with internet

Postby Greg M » Mon Feb 15, 2021 11:31 pm

Yes, that’s Starlink. It’s in limited beta testing currently, and about to start rolling out to limited numbers of consumers. Up front cost is roughly $500 and the monthly is $100. Not cheap :(
Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach a person to use the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks.
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