Solutions/alternatives to no cable internet

[Q]

Hi all,

I recently moved into a new place, and the neighborhood is so new, that no internet provider will lay lines down until x number of houses are built. This is basically a minimum of 6 months.

So, I have no internet, besides my phone.

What are some options I can look into? I'd really like to not have to commit to a 2 year service (though I guess I can just pay the cancellation fee when it comes). I've sort of looked into getting a new phone, and apparently you can use it as a mobile hotspot? Anyone know about this?

I've also looked at Wildblue's new exede12 service, which I've read good things about the speed, though it does have a data limit and 2 year contract required. (http://www.wildblue.com/options/availability) I called and they do offer it in my area. I am only looking to browse, not download videos, stream, etc.

Any suggestions on things I can look into?

 

[Fardringle]

Where are you located? That will determine what options are available.

 

[mammador]

A mobile broadband dongle?

 

[Dark Shroud]

If you're in the US you can look into Clearwire, just got to Bestbuy and pick up a unit if they're in your area and you're ok with their basic package.

 

[Q]

If you're in the US you can look into Clearwire, just got to Bestbuy and pick up a unit if they're in your area and you're ok with their basic package.

I thought that just was cancelled a few days ago?

I live in a decent sized city in SC. Nowhere in the boonies at all.

 

[jjsbasmt]

A good friend of mine has the newer faster Wildblue service and he has been getting generally around 5.5 Mbps on the down side and 1.5 on the up fairly consistently for I think $60 a month. The only issue with satellite service (not with standing cost and data caps) is latency which can be a tad annoying at times but otherwise works fairly well. What I have read about Clear is that it's pretty zippy and very reasonably priced.

 

[heymrdj]

You basically have 2 options based on whether or not you game.

If you game: 4G LTE Verizon device (MiFi) or ATT alternative device. I recommend Verizon personally. I get approximately 60-120ms pings in almost all the games I play online (Joint Operations, UT2004/UT3, Serious Sam 3 over Steam, ect). So no it's not cable great, but if your getting your tail handed to you over 40ms of ping you suck anyways.

If you don't game: Wildblue or Hughes Sattelite Internet. Much better caps so you can download way more, but pings are in the order of 2500-5000ms. You WON'T be gaming on it, period. The main benefit, as I said, is much higher bandwidth caps.

Either way you're stuck to wireless. So that means you'll be stuck to tiny caps compared to other alternatives, no way around it. Also you can bundle Wildblue and Hughes for savings. I had DirecWay (This was Hughes, it was part of DirecTV before the government stepped in and split the company off) and it worked great. Could download 175MB per day according to Fair Access Policy (FAP) and unlimited between 12AM and 6AM. We had a program called FAPGuard (not sure if it's still around) that acted as a download manager. You could set it up on all the computers in the house, and monitor their internet usage all day. So we had configured it to take new downloads to 140MB, leave the last 35 for general browsing, and then at midnight it downloaded anything in the queue at full speeds. Also if a download didn't support resume it instead throttled the download to like 10KB/s all day just to keep it open until midnight rolled around. It was an excellent piece of software.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

A good friend of mine has the newer faster Wildblue service and he has been getting generally around 5.5 Mbps on the down side and 1.5 on the up fairly consistently for I think $60 a month. The only issue with satellite service (not with standing cost and data caps) is latency which can be a tad annoying at times but otherwise works fairly well. What I have read about Clear is that it's pretty zippy and very reasonably priced.

The difference between satellite latency being "a tad annoying" and "utterly unacceptable" depends on what you are used to and what you use your Internet for.

It's fine for standard Web browsing, but it makes anything done in real time effectively impossible.. especially interactive gaming.

 

[kornphlake]

I can't believe the PUC would allow homes to be built within city limits without requiring the telco to install some kind of wired phone service. You might call the local phone company and complain that you can't get phone service, make up something about cell phone service being unreliable and being concerned that you won't be able to call 911 in an emergency. They might run service sooner than later if you can get your neighbors to call and complain as well, if you can get wired telephone you should be able to get DSL, although it might only be 1mpbs and it may cost as much or more than other options.