Has anyone here ever moved to a house without broadband and not regretted it?

[Chaotic42]

I'm looking at buying a house here in Missouri, but unfortunately my area is rather poorly connected with broadband. I'm strongly considering buying a house without broadband and I was wondering if any of you have done this.

Did you regret your decision?

 

[lxskllr]

I can get broadband here, but I use a prepaid cell phone out of choice. I'm doing alright.

edit:
You're still in Missouri, right? *That's* the decision I'd regret.

 

[Thebobo]

I couldn't. Elons Musk's Starlink broadband internet network is in the future, so there is hope.

Elon Musk‏Verified account @elonmusk
Replying to @nitantbhartia @ninoles and
Pretty good. TinTin A & B are both closing the link to ground w phased array at high bandwidth, low latency (25 ms). Good enough to play fast response video games.
12:07 PM - 26 May 2018

https://www.geekwire.com/2018/game-...s-prototype-internet-satellites-working-well/

 

[nakedfrog]

Would you at least have 4G LTE?

 

[Chaotic42]

I can get broadband here, but I use a prepaid cell phone out of choice. I'm doing alright.

edit:
You're still in Missouri, right? *That's* the decision I'd regret.

Alas this is where my job is.

 

[Viper GTS]

Buying a house without broadband is absolutely a non starter for me. Frankly the house I just bought only having access to 400/40 cable (or 400/50 for business) was a source of serious debate. Taking a 95 percent hit on upload bandwidth is painful, but supposedly gigabit optimum fiber is imminent so hopefully this is temporary.

If you post here I would strongly encourage you to look elsewhere. If you don't really use the internet at all while home and don't stream, download software, and are morally opposed to running Windows updates... Maybe?

Seriously though - just don't do it.

Viper GTS

 

[Ken g6]

What internet options would you have? Satellite?

When I moved at college I lost internet except for dial up. I dialed up a lot and downloaded stuff with wget and on campus. But that was over 15 years ago. I wouldn't go someplace without at least 10/1 internet today.

 

[Exterous]

Depends on my other options but it would probably be tough, particularly since we cut the cord.

 

[crashtech]

Our rural telco has used multiple loop extenders to get broadband to almost anyone who lives on a mile road. There's little excuse for telcos not to provide broadband any more, it's just not that hard.

 

[lxskllr]

Alas this is where my job is.

I'd buy a silverstream, and live in a campground, all the while looking for jobs elsewhere, and dreaming of seeing Welcome to Missouri in my rearview mirror. Buying a house causes the roots to start growing.

 

[KMFJD]

Internet has only become bearable in the last 18 months after they upgraded the wi-max, it's back to being over saturated again and terrible during prime time.

 

[Red Squirrel]

The only way I would do it is if it was such an awesome property. Ex: lake front rural property in a rather isolated area with year round road access. Basically, I would see that as such a big plus that I'd be willing to take lack of broadband as a tradeoff. I would not expect to even have it in such a property though. Otherwise when I was house hunting, availability of DSL or cable was a must. Now we have fibre for overhead fed homes. I see that more as a bonus than a must though. I'd go back to DSL if I really had to.

What I'd probably do if I got a property without internet is I would just look into satellite, or build a tower and setup a point to point link to somewhere that does have internet, and work some kind of deal with the property owner.

 

[Thebobo]

Have a friend who has Hughes satellite internet. No way can he can play real time games with it though. Maybe a slow MMO will work, I know folks back in the day who played EQ with very high pings like >250.

There is this which helps the rural "steamer."
Satellite Internet Users Can Finally Watch Unlimited Netflix - NightShift. basically It downloads your netflix programs at night you want to watch in prime time.

 

[mikeymikec]

It would be a non-starter for me too.

I think even if someone said "will you accept this lovely brand-new house for free and £50 million in cash, the only catch is you can't get broadband here", I'd still lean towards no. Presumably the arrangement would revolve around not immediately selling the house, pocketing the cash and moving somewhere sensible.

 

[lxskllr]

It would be a non-starter for me too.

I think even if someone said "will you accept this lovely brand-new house for free and £50 million in cash, the only catch is you can't get broadband here", I'd still lean towards no. Presumably the arrangement would revolve around not immediately selling the house, pocketing the cash and moving somewhere sensible.

Holy shit, you really love your memes! :^D

For the right house, no cash at all, and no internet at any speed, I'd move in a second.

 

[mdram]

i can only get cell or sat broadband. knew it when i moved in 15 years ago, no issue for me

tethering a cell is easy with pda net
use internet sharing to send the signal out your ethernet to a router and let anything connect to the router and you have home internet

 

[mikeymikec]

Holy shit, you really love your memes! :^D

Ok now I'm afraid because AFAIK I wasn't consciously basing that on a meme! I can't even think of which one you're referring to!

 

[rchunter]

We're able to get line of sight wifi here in north idaho. The fastest speed they offer is 9 mbit for 60 bucks a month, but at least it's unlimited bandwidth so no extra charges if you go over a data cap. It's fast enough to stream youtube 4k while i'm downloading a torrent but I don't do a whole lot of streaming usually.
I'm only like 1.5 miles from my ISP's tower that I ping off of. It's basicly right above me on a ridge, I can see it from my house if I squint really hard.

Satellite internet is worse and even more latency. I'm glad I don't have to resort to that. Also most satellite internet has data caps.

 

[nakedfrog]

Ok now I'm afraid because AFAIK I wasn't consciously basing that on a meme! I can't even think of which one you're referring to!

I think I've seen something with a picture of a cabin or something and a question about whether you'd live there with no cell/internet for a week or a month or something in exchange for some big pile of money. Wasn't a "move here forever" kind of thing from what I recall.

 

[lxskllr]

Ok now I'm afraid because AFAIK I wasn't consciously basing that on a meme! I can't even think of which one you're referring to!

Wasn't on any particular meme. Just a way of trivializing the internet. IOW, I was saying you couldn't live without memes :^P

 

[clamum]

I have no experience with this but just thinking about it, it would have to be an absolutely killer house in a fantastic area for me to consider it. I just stream too much (limited games these days but I do play them once in a while) and use the Internet too much for me to want anything less than say 20/3 Mbps down/up. And I only believe that fast Internet will be more and more important in the future.

 

[Viper GTS]

And I only believe that fast Internet will be more and more important in the future.

This is the real issue. Not having broadband will be effectively opting out of participation in society. I would argue it's there already, but the trend is clear. Even simple shit like banking and managing financial accounts is going to be brutal on dialup, have you seen the average page size these days?

https://speedcurve.com/blog/web-performance-page-bloat/

The entire internet is being developed as if size doesn't matter, because for most of the population it essentially doesn't.

https://sitechecker.pro/page-size/

Chase.com = 1.31 MB

WTF chase that is like 5x the size of your competitors.

Viper GTS

 

[Fritzo]

I can't imagine life without it. All of our TVs use streaming services, our gaming devices use it, our house has a dozen home automation devices....it would be like going back to 1970.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Seriously though - just don't do it.

Yeah. Some of us would rather eat our meat raw, than go without broadband.

 

[VirtualLarry]

This is the real issue. Not having broadband will be effectively opting out of participation in society. I would argue it's there already, but the trend is clear. Even simple shit like banking and managing financial accounts is going to be brutal on dialup, have you seen the average page size these days?

https://speedcurve.com/blog/web-performance-page-bloat/

The entire internet is being developed as if size doesn't matter, because for most of the population it essentially doesn't.

https://sitechecker.pro/page-size/

Chase.com = 1.31 MB

WTF chase that is like 5x the size of your competitors.

There should be an HTTP-Header, or a sub-string in the User-Agent header, that specifies "dialup". Then, like "mobile" versions of sites, they could have a dial-up version, that DOES NOT autoplay video backgrounds to your web pages, among other bandwidth-gobblers. They could still support most web sites, on dialup. Granted, it would feel like using Lynx (an early text-based browser, might still be developed), but it would be functional. I mean, isn't the web meant to be scalable, and accessible to all?