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Comment by graton | Hacker News Reader

Your parents might consider Starlink. My mother is in a similar situation. Way out in the countryside with only very slow DSL available. Even the two WISP (Wireless ISP) providers did not have towers in line-of-sight of her property (darn trees).

She got Starlink and now is getting about 80Mbps down and 40Mbps up.

It is a bit pricey at $550 for the unit delivered and $99 a month. But when you don't have any other realistic options...

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And it's portable. I take mine camping in the National Forests in Oregon, far away from any sort of cell signal (or data for that matter). I love how fast it is to set up and automatically positions itself to get a signal lock (as opposed to having to manually point it at the right spot like most other satellite tv/internet dishes). I've done a few 4k youtube livestreams with it. Something that would be impossible otherwise without a tv satellite truck.

> I take mine camping in the National Forests in Oregon

How do you do this? Starlink is location-locked at the moment. They're awaiting FCC approval for fully-mobile use, and other people have reported that they can't even get service in a fixed location that's more than a few miles from their registered service address.

The last time I checked (roughly 2 months ago) Starlink is not available yet anywhere in the state of West Virginia. Has this changed?

I signed my parents up for the Beta in WV sometime in 2021 (I don't remember exactly when, and did not have any issues.)

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