Best rural internet service?

czgunner · Oct 26, 2014

My wife and I are moving to Woodland, WA. We bought some property in the "country".
I've called around and there isn't anything available for the regular high speed internet.
I had a co-worker really poo poo satellite internet.
What do you all recommend?
We don't use cable or satellite for television, just looking for internet.
We stream netflix and hulu.
Thanks!

Oregonhunter5 · Oct 26, 2014

If you don't want satellite service, then your out of luck.
If you decide to use it, watch out, it's horribly expensive with limited use.

Blitzkrieg · Oct 26, 2014

There's a new cellphone based high speed, a portable box system, have only heard of it. It's supposed to be plug n play

The Heretic · Oct 26, 2014

It really depends on your location.

I do agree that satellite is to be avoided if at all possible - expensive, unreliable, slow.

I have a wireless setup with a local outfit called Upward Access - they put this flat antenna on my roof and it beams down to a node in the valley. Weather affects it about the same as satellite. I believe it works in the 2.5 ghZ range. It is kind of like a long distance WiFi. If you can find one of these providers in your area then that's the way I would go assuming you can't get DSL/FiOS/cable.

Beyond that, there is cellular - but it will really depend on whether you can get a good cell connection. I have very iffy cell coverage here - sometimes it is decent, sometimes non-existent - in the house. Outside it is usually nothing. So that does me no good.

DSL here is only 1.5 mbps, but at least it is reliable. That isn't enough for streaming Hulu or Netflix or Amazon. I went to the long distance Wifi because they offered more speed - 3.5 mbps - it still isn't enough and it is $65 per month, but it is all I can get.

I am going to get a DirecTV dish because I am tired of not being able to watch what I want on TV. Until this year a dish would not have worked because of the trees, but my neighbor clear cut so now I got a shot at it from the edge of my property.

pokerace · Oct 29, 2014

I have a friend in hills above Newberg and they use a ATT set up.

You might with ATT.

Garg · Oct 29, 2014

I went through this exercise when we moved. Satellite was my only option. Huges and Exede are the two vendors. I went with exced. It's usable, and does what I need to do. No more streaming though, it will eat your limited bandwidth. It's a metered service, and if you are not careful you can eat it all in one day. The only good thing is that between midnight and 5am the service is not metered so you can do updates/upgrades etc..
As soon as ANY other service becomes available, I will dump this so fast......

Something I found out during this process, Comcast is not laying any new cable at this time. And if they have to, will charges you by the foot. Since I am almost a 1000 feet from the road, it would be about 2000 bux to get it down here. Plus they are not even servicing the main road at this time, so I'm screwed.
Satellite internet and TV where I am.

The Heretic · Oct 29, 2014

pokerace said:
I have a friend in hills above Newberg and they use a ATT set up.

You might with ATT.

They may be on the Yamhill side - I am on the Wa County side (about 1000 ft. from the county line

) and the local phone co. here is Verizon and the closest I can get to the local CO is just barely at the edge of even being able to get DSL.

As for cellular - yeah, Verizon is the best here, but I hate them - only ATT and Comcast beat them out for being one of the worst corps to have to deal with.

Mainly I want better TV so since some trees got cut down I will go with a satellite dish. The internet at 3.5 mbps is okay for most things except video, and if I have satellite then that pretty much ceases to be an issue.