move to wireless

[lockhaven]

I have reached the point that I need to wireless. I have been looking at the offered plans and find them confusing and misleading. The voice is not so much a problem but the data is a different story. I need loads of data to keep with my current activities. I have found that in the wireless business "unlimited" does not have the same meaning. With Verizon unlimited means as long as you keep buying 2 gigs at a time it's unlimited. Virgin unlimited means first 2.5 gigs then less then dial up for the rest of the month. AT&T and Sprint are similar. My reason for going this direction is that the phone company refuses to replace the ancient phone lines, every time we get a hard rain the phone goes out and the DSL goes to a crawl. I call them and they schedule 3 days or more by that time the line has dried out and the technician tells me that nothing is wrong. That is why I am asking for advice on which wireless carrier to go with, I have a tower close by so according to the coverage maps I have 4GLTE but with the limits what good is it?
Frustrated

 

[JD5210]

I HAD been experiencing the same issue with Verizon DSL for 3 years. Things would get better after the VZ tech came out and when a storm came along I had the same problem you are experiencing. I would call, finally get to a tech that would reset my line and speed it back up again. It turns out that Verizon runs a program that tests the lines and if it finds a problem, they slow the line down. Then it would storm again and the line would slow down more.

Here is what I got them to do. In the box outside my house they spilt the line with the filter now outside ie I no longer need the filters on each phone line, because DSL comes into the house on a separate pair. It turns out DSL-2750B wireless gateway has problems on longer distance and they replaced it with GT784WNV.

Here is the silver bullet. I had to fight very hard, but I got them to STOP running the program on my line, which slows the line down. Since this change was made 6 months ago I get 2.8Mbps down and .73 Mbps up all the time. Do not even talk with the person that answers the phone, get them to transfer you to a tech located in the US and in the state that you live in.

Here is a speed test program.
Speakeasy Speed Test

 

[dmccarty]

We have similar problems. The various tech's keep blaming "rain" yet we have problems even when there has been no rain.

The last visit from a tech was a few weeks ago. He actually did some wiring changes in the box on the house and we are seeing faster ping times. It is too early to say if we have better reliability.

When we have a serious connectivity problem, we reset our modem for 30-60 seconds while the wireless router is unplugged. This mostly improves the speed but if it does not we reset and then leave everything unplugged for 15-30 minutes. This almost always soles our speed problems. Support had us go through the reset and unplug routine. They said it would reset the equipment in the central office. Support has also remotely done things that have fixed the problem but not always.

The tech has not blamed the wires lately. Next time he does, I am going to tell them to replace the wire. The phone company is responsible for the wires up the termination on the house. Since they keep telling us the problem is THEIR wire, then it is time for them to replace it. What really ticks me off is that there is faster service close to us in two directions but the phone company will not upgrade our service. Course, other people in the county have NO service what so ever which is worse. The commissioners have started talking about these problems. I don't think they have any legal power over the issue but they can start making a stink and I hope they do.

What makes me even madder is that the wifey called up the phone company a few months back to see if we could get fast service. We get 1.5 MB down but the techs have told us we could get 2.8ish MB down. The phone company sells a 3 MB down plan but since we are not at 3 MB they will not give us the faster service. I would pay the 3 MB service even if we got 2.8 MB and we told the company we would even sign a piece of paper saying we knew there was a limit and we were not getting 3 MB. It was a no go. But here is the rub. They reduced our phone bill by $25 because we talked about canceling the land line. :shocked::confused3: I would gladly pay $25 to almost double our data rate but they wont do it! :confused3: Now I am glad to be saving $25 but dang it I would give them that money for fast speed!

Quite a few people in the county are ticked off by no, slow and unreliable service. I suspect at some point the state and Fed are going to start getting into this situation.

Satellite will just not work for us and has bandwidth limits we would chew up quickly. Cell service would be fast but again we would go through the data very quickly and cell service is expensive. Cable is not in our area though they run on the major road in front of us. They refuse to provide service to our road. We are left with DSL.

Later,
Dan

 

[forgeblast]

We had the same problem, every spring I would call because my phone died. It was squirrels getting into a box and chewing the wires and making a nest. Spring rain would come and short our our line.

 

[Industrial Toys]

Maybe when there is a storm, everybody goes inside and jumps on the Internet! Who knows?

Same thing up here. Phone lines are getting old and Ma Bell has had her wings clipped, and she doesn't want to spend money on this country infrastucture when people now have alternatives.

Basically, up here, if you don't want to spend $60.00 or so bucks a month, you arn't going to get much. I'm sure, that's exactly what they have planned. They want so much money a month from a customer and if they get that, then they really don't care what, or how much they give you, within reason.

I'm lucky. I have a neighbour who is only a weekender. He shares his high speed connection with me, via a link using Engenius transcievers.

 

[lockhaven]

I am leaning towards Verizon's basic plan of 500Meg data and keeping dsl. I look after my parents 86 and 90 so when my phone goes they cannot contact me also when I go to the store or am cutting wood they cannot contact me. I think with the wireless that would help. With the basic data I could still get email when the rain comes. It sounds to me like "MY" problem is spread out over the country. I cannot get cable, they stopped about 1/2 mile away. Satellite is not an option because I refuse to cut 200 year old trees also the extreme expense of satellite.

 

[IXLR8]

That is why I am asking for advice on which wireless carrier to go with, I have a tower close by so according to the coverage maps I have 4GLTE but with the limits what good is it?
Frustrated

You need to find out whose tower that is. If it is an ATT tower, getting Verizon service will not work and vice versa.

 

[Daver1963]

If any of your neighbors are having the same problem you need to band together and see if you can get some replacement lines or better yet tell them you want a fiber optic hookup to the pedestal and converted to wire out of the ped to the houses.

 

[dmccarty]

Our cell data plan is limited to 200 MB which works for me 99% of the time. I bet I don't use 25 MBs a month. The only exception is on vacation when we might use the data plan to get weather and send emails. The wifey on the other hand, has crossed over 200MB a few times but she seldom does use anywhere near the limit.

Later,
Dan

 

[MossRoad]

You can get 2.5G of 4gLTE data from T-Mobile for $30 buck per month with no contract. If you go over that 2.5G of 4GLTE, it drops to 2G service until the month runs out, then resumes to the LTE service. They have higher and lower plans for more and less $$. The nice thing is, no contract. You can try it and if you don't like it, dump it. Here's a link.
Mobile Broadband Unlimited Data Plans w/ No Annual Contract | T-Mobile

 

[NVBigBlue]

I don't know if this is an option for you, but you might see if there is a point-to-point microwave provider in your area. I live out in the sticks (sort of).... too far from a CO for DSL, Charter cable is on the other side of the highway and will not spend the $$ to haul it over to our area. So we thought we'd be stuck with dial-up.... Called around and found a company that normally services businesses with p2p microwave internet. Small antenna on the house, 26 mile shot. A little more expensive than some providers ($75/mo for full T-1 speed and no limits), but it works, it's always on, and best of all it's reliable. Of course, we can see the mountain top. You might check it out.
Good luck!
NV

 

[Ken45101]

Some of you guys are lucky, even if you are complaining, LOL. No DSL or cable here, dialup landline is so bad that you can't even use the phone for voice communications a lot of the time. AT&T literally uses garbage bags to patch the main cable and when you call them to tell them that there is a tree down on their line that has the line down in the creek water, their response is "that's not our responsibility"!

The only cellular data with a signal here is AT&T. Yes, they claim 4G service, BUT that's only to the tower. Apparently they are using two tin cans and string to connect the tower to the Internet Oftentimes it takes a minute or more for a page to load via cellular data. So do not trust their claims of 4G service, that's an outright lie! I've seen speeds as low as 0.06Mbps

We have gone to Excede/WildBlue satellite with the 15GB/month package. It's about the same cost as we were paying for cellular data but we get twice the data per month and better speed. (We had Hughes satellite for years but their service was poor and their customer service non existent.)

 

[rekees4300]

That is why I am asking for advice on which wireless carrier to go with, I have a tower close by so according to the coverage maps I have 4GLTE but with the limits what good is it?

IMO Verizon is the best wireless carrier. Wireless unlimited data plans are a thing of the past, you won't find any with any carrier. Best plan I have found is Millenicom. They have no contract, use the Verizon infrastructure, $70/mo. for 20GB.

Millenicom

 

[MossRoad]

IMO Verizon is the best wireless carrier. Wireless unlimited data plans are a thing of the past, you won't find any with any carrier. Best plan I have found is Millenicom. They have no contract, use the Verizon infrastructure, $70/mo. for 20GB.

Millenicom

T-mobile has unlimited data plans. I gave a link to them above.

 

[lt190b]

Ken45101 Did you have a contract plan with AT&T? If so, did it expire? lt190b

 

[lockhaven]

I want to thank everyone for their input. I have discovered that unlimited is a play on words. I just got off chat with T-Mobile the data is unlimited on 2G which they said is about 100kb/s, the one question I could not pry out of them was the amount before the throttle down. They just said that the 4G was only for a certain amount but we seem to have been disconnected when I pressed for what the certain amount was.
Does the Millenicom cover the phone also?

 

[Ken45101]

Ken45101 Did you have a contract plan with AT&T? If so, did it expire? lt190b

The contract we had for the cell data hotspot expired. We still are under contract with our iPhones.

 

[Ken45101]

I want to thank everyone for their input. I have discovered that unlimited is a play on words. I just got off chat with T-Mobile the data is unlimited on 2G which they said is about 100kb/s, the one question I could not pry out of them was the amount before the throttle down. They just said that the 4G was only for a certain amount but we seem to have been disconnected when I pressed for what the certain amount was.
Does the Millenicom cover the phone also?

Ah ha! Now we understand Thanks.

 

[rekees4300]

Does the Millenicom cover the phone also?

No, they are Internet only.

 

[MossRoad]

I want to thank everyone for their input. I have discovered that unlimited is a play on words. I just got off chat with T-Mobile the data is unlimited on 2G which they said is about 100kb/s, the one question I could not pry out of them was the amount before the throttle down. They just said that the 4G was only for a certain amount but we seem to have been disconnected when I pressed for what the certain amount was.
Does the Millenicom cover the phone also?

See post #10 above. Follow the link. Scroll to the bottom of the page to GOT QUESTIONS?

Questions on plans?
What happens if I go over the limit of my high-speed data?
At T-Mobile we don't charge overage fees. Once you have used all the high speed data allotted on your data option, your data speed will automatically convert to up to 2G web speeds for the remainder of your billing cycle. At the beginning of your next billing cycle youll be back to nationwide 4G data.