Constant Content

I seem to have some free time, after almost a year, to actually sit for more than five minutes at a time to write. I probably should write an article about the reasons not to move, but I'll digress for now.

So anyway, before we moved we contacted Verizon and Comcast to find out if they had high speed internet in our area. Comcast actually came out to check and said no, but Verizon assured me that they did. So we bought the house and moved in. (Yes, internet was a consideration when we were searching for a new home.)

The day comes, and the Verizon representative shows up at the house - then informing me that my new home was outside their area for high speed internet (even 768 DSL). Other than dialup, guess what option there is for supposedly fast internet? You guessed it... Satellite was the way we went. For those of you who don't know much about Satellite internet, especially in its curent incarnation, you're supposed to get up to 1.5mbps download speeds with most of the plans. That's basically a T-1 connection. The problem is that ALL of them now have what they call a "Fair Usage Policy" in place. The official reason is so that they can limit users who pirate copyrighted material. The unofficial and real reason is so that they can charge more for the amount of daily bandwidth you use.

Well, for 89.99 a month I get up a 425mb a day download limit (you don't want to know the upload limit). If you exceed that limit during any 24 hour period, your bandwidth is restricted (for the next 24 hours or until you're 'caught up' for practical purposes) supposedly to 56kbps. Guess how long it takes four kids to use up 425mb, not to mention three adults? Anyway, the reality is that we're slowed down to about 28 to 38kbps with an upload of 6kbps when the limit is hit. (That's Hughes Net for nyone who's curious.)

Notice I didn't go into actually moving? Yes, my priorities may be screwed up to the casual observer, but when you and your wife do a lot of work online it drives you batty not to be able to access half the websites you need because they're designed for high speed connections.

Hopefully I can get back more often now.

This is exactly what happened to my son. He lives on the next road over (we both live out in the country), but I have Comcast and he has satellite. I get blazing fast downloads so I can watch Hulu, Netflix, and download huge files in an instant. He sits and waits for page to load and can never enjoy watching TV shows or movies. Use too much bandwidth and no more access for the rest of the day. He even upped his account but it never did work right. To top it off he pays more for his Internet than I pay for Internet and TV combined. He recenlty switched to Cricket ad that seems to be somewhat faster and there is no bandwidth quota I don't think. But it's still not as good as cable. There's no DSL way out here.

Having fast Internet access was definietly one of my main considerations in buying a house. I knew mine would work since there was cable TV in it, but my next-door nieghbor can't get it since I am the last one on the streeet to have it.

BarryDavidson wrote:Well, for 89.99 a month I get up a 425mb a day download limit (you don't want to know the upload limit). If you exceed that limit during any 24 hour period, your bandwidth is restricted (for the next 24 hours or until you're 'caught up' for practical purposes) supposedly to 56kbps. Guess how long it takes four kids to use up 425mb, not to mention three adults? Anyway, the reality is that we're slowed down to about 28 to 38kbps with an upload of 6kbps when the limit is hit. (That's Hughes Net for nyone who's curious.)

I thought it sounded like Hughes Net. We had them way back in 2004 when they were still DirecWay - and until they became Hughes Net. The DirecWay service was pretty bad, but it went further downhill when they became Hughes Net. We hated how they throttled our bandwidth for 24 hours (and we weren't even going to YouTube and those heavy bandwidth sites - we blame it on Flash heavy sites - you can't go anywhere on the Web nowadays without seeing Flash).

So we switched to Wildblue and it was okay for about a year until the modem they gave us started dying. Getting someone to come out to fix it would take AGES. When we called them, they said no one would be able to fix our satellite internet for at least 6 WEEKS! So we promptly canceled, and we switched to Verizon mobile broadband in April 2008.

We tested Verizon out for about 2 weeks and decided we weren't satisfied so we canceled and only paid for our two-week usage. Then in May, hubby and I went off to our trip to Asia. We were in Philippines in June when his mom emailed us and told us we better call her fast. She was taking care of our mail while we were away and she opened one from Verizon. They charged us a whopping $800 for our mobile broadband usage for the month of May and June, when we had canceled in mid-April. The next several hours were spent trying to get a hold of Verizon customer support and getting things straightened out. We decided then we weren't going to use any Verizon service -- EVER.

March of last year, a local cell phone provider (Cricket) here in the valley started offering their own mobile broadband. For $40 a month, we could take our broadband anywhere here (between Porterville and Modesto actually) and have fast Internet. And the bandwidth was basically unlimited. Lately, though, the service has been declining. For about 2 weeks, we hardly could load a page here at home so we had to go to cafes with wifi and even go with the in-laws to their gym where there's wifi too. If you couldn't find me in Panera, I'd be in a McDonald's, where they have free wifi now (started only a couple of weeks ago).

We just put in an application for a line-of-sight internet with a company out of Fresno. They're supposed to get someone out here in the next couple of weeks to see which of the 3 towers they have will work for us -- of course, we're surrounded by mulberry, olives, and all sorts of trees around so...

I feel your woes, Barry...


~Sherry

I live in Northern Minnesota a few miles out of town. Qwest phone company decided to run DSL out to our area and I jumped on that immediately. At the time I was building my house, sleeping in a tent in the future living room, and I had DSL before I had a roof and windows. (I covered the computer with a tarp to keep the rain off.)

To add to that, I'd had DSL for about two years before we finally got the kitchen stove installed. Talk about priorities, eh?

For anyone out there who's never built a house with their own hands from a hole in the ground to the soffits, I highly recommend the experience.

I shudder to think of the days before broadband. If I recall, when I first started CC I was using dial-up. I had a special box that allowed me to share my phone line with Internet. If I was online and the phone rang, I had something like 20 seconds to take the call and determine if the call was worth a full disconnect from the Internet. I liked it because it solved the problem of a constant busy signal but it didn't address the slow speeds.