Well of course. I think that if a land-based Internet option is availiable, the general guidelines say that is probably your first consideration. The bed and bfast friends live way, way out in the sticks. There is not even dsl over copper.
Before going Hughes they actually used a Verizon Jetpack. But it had to be in an upstairs window facing a tower somewhere out there. Surprise data plan and all they had a bigger surprise when they went ka sat.
I mean options were almost none. Trees galore and a dish way up high to peek through trees made for some creative dish sweeping. I see that they tried the electric "dog blanket" snow melter thingy. It's still up on the side of the home.
Thing is. I happen to live in the town where Adelphia, now Zitomedia is based. Some interesting reading there.
Supposedlly the first place where cable broadband was constructed to service individuals. The little town went from streets rolled up at 9pm to having to put in a second red light. The whole nine yards. Pole climbing training. Buying up and absorbing small mom and pop cable companies and upgrading them.
And then, well. You find out. Don't sign a form if it looks like there might be a piece of carbon paper under it. And don't drop the soap. Tossed the dear old (seriously) CEO in the slammer. A son or two.
What I'm getting at is this place had state of the art ISP. When the cash got tight, the system degraded and no cash was spent to do proper upgrades. They were smart though. Two hardline coax cables with a third fiber strung for miles and miles and miles. Another story. REC took advantage of the rural broadband thing a few years ago.
People went to them in droves out in the sticks when after repeated service calls to Zitomedia never fixed the problems.
It rains, Cable dies. Sun comes out and dries it, service restores. Wind blows, cable glitches. Add your own scenario.
Because it's hapening here. And when a service issue escalates to maintenance. The tech knows exactly what the problem is. One sent out for a day with line amps, connectors, fiber to cable nodes. A TDR with no idea nor training how to use it. Amps (I have one here along with a box of coax connectors) dated "Repaired 1992". Yeah.
The maintenance dude. Cool guy. Smart. Not afraid to shut the dispatcher up. He didi the dog-on-a-leash thing and did his assignment. Put me on the 2nd coax feeder. No improvement. Traced backwards from subscriver to subscriber until he found where the issue stopped.
Thing is. Those subs had already jumped ship over to Trico Communications fiber.
May 9th coming up 2 years now. That's how long I've put up with what once for over 12 years was very reliable broadband service. I was "this close" to biting the bullet and jumping over to fiber. 10 bucks and tax more for the same speed service. "This Close"......
Then magically about two weeks ago when the snow melted off and we saw the sun again. A bigassed truck with a spool of cable and a small crew starts yanking old cable off the poles and well......you get the rest.
The maintenance tech knew the problem. The nasty emails I sent to Zito fortified it. Forty-seven million modem management log screenshots.
Check out FB for Zito issues in different areas of the country. It's disgusting.
Wildblue, Hughesnet, etc. dishes hanging on the sides of rural homes and even into town. Because the cable ISP just wouldn't spend the cash to repair their systems. Nor treat the field techs good enought to make them want to stick with working for them. I cannot even imagine that they spent the time and money to spool out new cable way out here. I guess a few letters to the FCC mght have helped. Who knows?
Oops. Got carried away again. Sorry. Starlink is fantastic. It's fairly expensive and I wonder how they expect to break even when they toss new sats up there all of the time. But tossing a Dishy up on top of the toy hauler and going a few miles down the road to go "camping" or to a race sure sounds tasty.
Or a bed and breakfast who bit the Hughesnet "hook" and found out fast what fine print actually means. I ain't a fan of ka sat broadband.
