I am looking for some help, and apologize upfront for this not being a fishing report. I have a home in Merifield (just outside of Clarksville) and need high speed internet. DSL or cable internet is not available, so I am left with using satellite. Are there any recommendations? Is anyone familiar with, using, a provider called Wild Blue? Thanks for your consideration.
Cable is the way to go but if it isin't available then DSL would be 2nd best option. DSL is limited by distance from your local Intra LATA. This is usually 2 miles from your switch.
I think Satellite is definite NO WAY! They charge you a lot of money for equipment, there are many hidden charges. They throttle your bandwidth is dial up speed after you reach a certain quota per day. The connection can be flakey at times.
Dial up or wireless broadband is your best option. Broadband cards are about $60 per month for unlimited use. The speed varies between 64k and 784k depending on how far you are from towers. You need a lot less signal for wireless data than wireless voice. I like the Sprint/Nextel broadband cards. Best of all these are mobile.
If you don't want to spend the $60 per month then your stuck with dial up.
Thanks for the two quick responses. I have Verizon telephone service, unfortunately they do not have DSL into my neighborhood. Its either dial-up or satellite for now.
BB, I live in Mill Village, on the edge of Verizon's DSL. It mystifies me that Charter nor Vzw have put high speed into Merifield. Anyway, you should phone up both of them to query their plans for the next 12 months or so. Last time I checked neither had near-term plans. The Vzw DSL here is 1.4M down, 207k up with roundtrip latency of @ 45ms. I use a router and run 100% of my business voice thru the Vzw DSL...works great and very reliable. I give you this data as reference for the next part.
I use Verizon Wireless broadband with a tethering option for business travel. This means I can tether my PDA to my PC via USB and use the VxW Wireless BB to connect the PC. Using the same test and test server as above I got 126k down and 137k up with a RT latency of 268ms. The data side of this wouldn't work for voice but the voice would be part of the mobile package anyway. The unlimited data plan is 44.99 per month and the tethering is an extra $15. An upside of this would be you'd have email & internet on your PDA. If you like, I'll come over and we'll do the speed test from your house since Merifield is further from Vzw tower you would for sure want to check that. I have connection problems between longwood and where Stovall picks up and some of Merifield would be in that same hole I'm afraid. Good luck...jfo
JFO, thanks for that very detailed reply and offer to test your Verizon wireless service. I didn't include in previous posts, but I have an employer provided Verizon CDMA card and I get 126 up/down with that in Merifield. My problem is 128 is just too slow for work. It is not uncommon for me to receive files 2-3 meg in size. It appears you can order satellite service with 1 Mbps second, depend on getting 700-800 kbps download speed. $70 a month, ouch, but if this enables to me to move fulltime to the lake, may be well worth the cost.
I wonder if that data center moves into the Russell Stover building whether that will encourage Verizon to expand DSL.
