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I have a question about something not related to wood

1K views 11 replies 6 participants last post by  sandhill 
#1 ·
Can anyone give me any guidance on this?

I am looking at a home in VA but cant seem to find an internet provider for DSL or FIOS, only satellite internet is available and I am afraid of the reliably of it. My wife works from home and MUST have a reliable fast internet (Dial up is not an option) So my question is does anyone have satellite internet and if so what problems do you have how often and for how long is it unavailable? The house we are looking at has a killer shop and is on 5 acres so I really would love to live there. Thanks
 
#4 ·
I am in a similar situation; I'm moving to a rural area that lacks DSL, so I've done some research into satellite internet; I've also used sat. internet when I've worked in some areas in the arctic. The main issue is that it is very slow; in my area, basic plans will give up to 1 Mbps which although way faster than dial up, it is not close to DSL speeds. As cr1 said, there is also the issue of a slight delay between sending and receiving.
Really, it depends what your wife does; I have sat. TV and rarely have problems with connection interference due to weather etc. If she doesn't need to download huge amounts of data or stream live from the internet, sat. internet may work for her.
The other option would be connecting to a cell phone network; in my rural area we have 3G cell coverage going in later this summer which I'll be able to connect my computer to and have internet faster than sat. internet.
 
#5 ·
Here is the situation: My wife works for a company that requires her to share desk tops with people all over the world and communicate using "VOIP" and "MS live meeting software" so I use a software package on my desk top that gives me level I & II trading in the stock market. I think that these combined will rule out satellite if I understand correctly.
 
#6 ·
we had satellite service at church and frankly it stunk. it is so slow it reminded me of the old dial up days. we switched to 3G and it is better. You might get away with the VOIP since that is what it mainly does, however if you are going to need split second up and down you may be out of luck. Now 4G on the other hand is coming and I hear it is much faster, but I have yet to experience it. The rural areas will be the last to get it unless you happen to get lucky. Good luck
 
#7 ·
Hey ole' buddy,

I am used to cable and when I moved to central Maine my town only had the first level of DSL…..Not so fast. I did look into satellite , the one thing I found here in Maine is….They wanted $300.00 install plus $159.00/Mo. I just couldn't do that. So here I am on a slow dsl connection. I must admit though at 3 mb/sec ( Mega bits per second, not Bytes…8 bits per byte) I can use skype trouble free. The video streams fine at that rate.

What about the cards you can get from Verizon or another cell phone company. Those seem pretty good, but I have minimal experience with those. I also believe you'll need a laptop with an expansion slot…it has a fancy name i can't think of right now.

What town is it you're looking in? maybe I can help ya out finding something.
 
#9 ·
jumbojack@ Verizon is who we have and they are about to switch to a 3 tier payment plan. I have not looked at it yet but we have two phones one is the iPhone the is an android. She also has AT&T which her company pays for and her phone bill is a over one thousand dollars per month because of international calls that last hours each day. If I buy this house It may be cheaper to rent an office a few miles away and eat the cost.
 
#10 ·
I've got a verizon aircard. It works ok, and way better than satellite. I work in technology, so work from home sometimes. It has served me well so far.

If your wife works by remote desktoping or using citrix, stay away from satellite. You'll wish you had dial up. Its a duel encryption scenario, and its terrible.
 
#11 ·
The strange thing is DSL is available but they tell me no to the address I will be at because they are maxed out with subscribers. Makes me think even the DSL will be under par. I am going to look into an office space that we can let her use until DSL or something better is available. Internet would cost about $50.00 or more so maybe another $100 per month would give us what we can live with for a few years anyway as long as its not more than 10 - 15 miles from the house.
 
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