Comment by garciasn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by garciasn | Hacker News Reader

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My rural cabin has access to:

1. 25/2 DSL for $140/month (12 month contract with $40/mo seasonal disconnect)

2. 5G (60/0.03 which was 100/20 last summer until the nearby tower became overloaded).

3. LTE (see above) which I routinely get ~100/30 but which Verizon, at least, will not allow their boxes to use if it can connect via 5G, regardless of usability of the connection.

4. Fiber (100/100) at $89.95 (12m contract with $25/month seasonal disconnect). The fiber has higher speeds, but I didn't price them out. The costs were originally listed at $34.95 before they ran the lines, but they have upped them to $89.95 now that they are run to my lake home.

5. Starlink (supposedly 150/20 for Residential Lite which is available in my area) at $80/month on a month-to-month with purchase of a dish (I got mine refurbished for $135). I am routinely seeing ~400/40 with 25ms ping even though I shouldn't be. That said, the speeds are more variable (low as 120/7).

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I would LOVE for there to be reasonably priced and very stable Internet for month-to-month, but there just isn't except for Starlink--at this point.

My cabin (I don't live there full time currently) has starlink's $10/month plan where you pay by the gigabyte. LTE isn't even an option because the topography kills terrestrial radio.

Starlink completely changed rural internet. It's revolutionary.

The infrastructure has to be maintained year round, not just the summer months when lake houses are full. I don't think it's reasonable to expect affordable month-to-month pricing.

I don't know how you think $89.95 for 100/100 fiber isn't reasonable, unless you're the type of person who believes the introductory price at comcast is the real price.

I pay 2/3rds of that for 10x the speed. 100/100 fiber is not that great.

We pay 2/3rds of that for 15/3 WISP service with variable latency and common outages. That's a great price!

I am doubting the level of rural that has that level of connectivity.

Your options there are far better than what I had living adj to downtown mountainview not so many years ago.

It's in Central MN. It is 11 miles, straight line, from a town of 2200 and 15 miles from a town of 4400. The closest town is 8 miles as the crow flies of 700 and only has a gas station and a couple of bars. There's a bar and volunteer fire department 4 miles as the crow flies that has a population of 48.

Believe me: this is rural. Until investment from the federal government and/or forced lower-bound limits on 'broadband' back about 6 years ago, the only option was 768/300 DSL.

I'm in a small town (5000 people) on the Utah/Arizona border. The internet options are better, cheaper, and more reliable than I had in old town Mountain View, Palo Alto, or Sunnyvale. I go with the symmetric 1 gig with static IP, but symmetric 8 gig is an option as well. Silicon Valley's home internet options just suck.

I know a guy who lives in rural West Virginia. He has fiber to his home, but the top speed is (IIRC) 10 Mbps down.

Is it like... cotton fiber?

Rural areas don't have anywhere near that many options.

DSL, fiber? Those do not exist if you are actually rural.

I explained below how it is defined by me as rural; but, yes, it's rural. In fact, my primary home JUST HAD FIBER RUN in my neighborhood last month and I get 1 bar of VZW. So; if anything, rural is ahead of major metro areas (my suburb of Minneapolis/St Paul has just under 90K residents). In fact, DSL from CenturyLink or whatever they call themselves today is 6mbit.

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