No cable internet dilemma

[bigben2k]

The wife and I are about to close on a new house, yipee!

Unfortunately, and I have yet to confirm this, it looks like cable isn't available, because it's pretty remote from Houston (Magnolia, for those who know).

So I've started to look at satellite TV, with internet option, but none have VPN available, unless the connection is significantly slowed down, because of the latency with satellite.

Maybe I ought to look into DSL, huh?

[ezlid]

BB2K - I'm in the same boat out in the sticks of Ft. Bend county. No cable And no DSL. Give SWB or whatever they call themselves now and check. A word of caution, the business office doesn't know it's DSL from a hole in the ground. I went through a 3 month monkey f*** with SWB trying to get DSL working until the right guy finally admitted that my location doesn't have DSL capability. *#$&@*! dial-up only for me. I did get a second line just for the modem so the real phone line is free.

Try DSL Reports (http://www.dslreports.com/) to see if you might have a DSL COB close enough. Good luck.

[bigben2k]

Good tip, thanks!

DSL report says Earthlink is available, through cable, but it's the only one.

I'll give them a shout tmo, and see.

[utabintarbo]

Broadband access is actually one of the requirements for our next house/condo. No cable or DSL, I look elsewhere. I am such a geek!:rolleyes:

Bob

[airspirit]

I don't know why anyone except the desperate would consider satellite. It is expensive, slow, and nasty. I can't believe you didn't think of your connection situation sooner, man .... I will never move to a place that doesn't have broadband ... it is a requirement.

[bigben2k]

Yeah, it's a new subdivision. Time Warner says it's not them, it's "Cable Charter", but the phone number just puts me on hold.:shrug:

Otherwise, Earthlink is ready and able.:rolleyes:

It'll be a lot easier to gauge the situation, once we have a phone number.:cool:

[TerraMex]

Seems you're not the only one ;) :

http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2003-08-01&res=l

[airspirit]

I'm about to move to another place across town, and I ended up in the same boat as Ben: the place I wanted had no cable. I ended up choosing another slightly smaller and more expensive apartment further away that I KNEW could get it.

[bigben2k]

An update:

For some reason, it's difficult to get a straight answer from people around here (where I live).

So cable is definitely out: it's just not available.

Satellite internet is however available, but for a hefty price:
Install: $279 then $60 per month, for a 400 kbps connection, which won't give me the VPN (Virtual Private Network) connection to the office, that my wife needs.

So I've been looking into an ISDN line.

I might be able to get a 128k line, for $40 per month. The problem is that we're with AT&T right now, and they don't do it, and I'd have to switch to SBC (SouthWestern Bell) to get it. which I don't really want to do, unless I have to.

SBC charges $79 for the install, and that only includes the wiring to the box outside: I'd be doing the rest of the wiring, which is fine.

The thing is, SBC wants to charge me $392 for an ISDN modem! So does anyone have a good source for a cheap one? I haven't looked anywhere yet.


Otherwise, opinions?


I'll post pics sometime of my ghetto phone patch panel. ;)

[TerraMex]

I've been there.

When i moved , i had to wait almost 4 months for a straight answer from my phone company.

And because there was no cable available , i chose ISDN. It was a bit more expensive however. Almost $150 for the installation and the NT. 3 phonelines, 3 different numbers (1 line shared). But the $40 per month sounds about right for a 128k connection.

I purchased the ISDN modem (Teles ISA card, one of the best back then) and a splitter for normal phones on the side. $100 both. Dont know what they are trying to pull, but $400 is waaaaaay expensive. Unless US ISDN connections are different. Which i dont think they are.

You can buy an internal ISDN PCI card for about $40 over here. External ISDN modems are more expensive thou, but not $400. Maybe $150.

As far as the connection goes, it's fair enough for browsing , but not heavy duty downloads. And it's great for gaming, you get very good (low) pings.

[bigben2k]

I think I'm going to give up on the ISDN idea: at $40 per month to have the line, plus the ISDN ISP ($10 ?), for a mere 128k connection, I'd rather wait until I can afford the $60/m, 400 kbps satellite connection. Of course it'll be my expense, since the wife only needed it for VPN, and satellite doesn't work for VPN, because of the timing lag.

But thanks all the same for the tips: if my wife's still interested in having a VPN connection, I can hook her up. She's got a company laptop, so it'll have to be an external modem: easy stuff.

Right now I'm on dial up, and I'm getting ~24kbps... ZzZzZzZz:rolleyes:

[Zhentar]

I feel sorry for you, I find simply using dial-up in a hotel room for the duration of a trip a very painful experience. Even shitty dsl from qwest is unbeleivably better than dial up (except when it starts acting up, then dial-up is usually faster).

[ezlid]

Originally posted by bigben2k
Right now I'm on dial up, and I'm getting ~24kbps... ZzZzZzZz:rolleyes:

I don't know which ISP you have, but I use Earthlink dial-up. I also have a second phone line just for internet. Anyway, I was only getting 24kbps too and I checked to see if they had other dial-up numbers. Lo and behold, I now have a choice of 5 numbers to call and and I connect at 52 or 53.3kbps, sometimes at 50.7kbps. Heres the really screwy thing, the furthest location always gives me the best speed and the closest is the worst. Go figure!

Another really stupid thing. The dedicated line is a different area code than the main line and has no add-ons like call-waiting or extended calling. I can't call my main phone, even though it is only 30 feet away, without getting toll charges! SWB sucks!

Since I don't have extended calling on the second line, when I was checking on which dial-ups worked I just called the numbers on the second phone line phone to see if I could call direct or had to put a "1" in front. The "1" meant toll call and since I'm connected 24/7, of course I didn't want anything but toll -free. I canned all the toll numbers and still came up with the 5 I use now. Also try all the Houston area codes - 713, 281, 832, 979, and even 409. There is no rhyme or reason which numbers work.

I live in Richmond, but you may be able to find better numbers to your ISP from Magnolia. Give it a shot. It isn't DSL, cable or ISDN speed, but I'm twice as fast as you.

[bigben2k]

Well as I found out, I still had an old 28.8 kbps modem in my box, so I'm going to upgrade it (in a few minutes) to a spare 56K I have here. Hopefully, I can get a little bit more out of it.

Otherwise, I called AT&T (my phone provider) and got all the dialing prefixes that are local to me (they'll read off the list to you, if you ask, and you don't have to be nice about it, a tip I got from 2600 magazine ;) ). Even though I have an unlimited phone plan, where it doesn't matter if the call is local or long distance (continental US), I just wanted to make sure that there wouldn't be any surprises. EV1 happened to have one dial up number that's local, so I'm all set there.

The complete local calling list I got includes 31 3-digit prefixes, split over 3 area codes.