Rural Cable and Internet

[Panik]

Good morning! We're going to be closing on our dream home and property in a couple of days - 10.5 acres in NW Ga. It has everything we want with plenty of woods, privacy and mountain views, a MIL suite for my mom and more importantly no issues with flooding fields unlike our last place. The one concern is that cable and Internet service providers are limited due to our location. Our choices are:

Television Providers:
- Dish Network
- DirectTV

Internet
- Hughes Net
- ATT DSL

Cable/Internet Combined Package
- Charter DSL

Normally I would go with a combined service however ATT only offers internet, Verizon does not service my area and I have heard questionable things about Charter's reliability and customer service. At the moment I am leaning towards ATT for Internet and trying either Dish or DirectTV for TV service.

Back in the day when it first came out i had DirectTV in Fl and it usually worked alright in all but the worst storms, but that was probably close to 15 years ago. If anyone has any experience with these services either in general or specifically in the NW Ga area I really would appreciate your input.

 

[mostly_gas]

I have charter in the STL area. They did a complete turn around on customer service 10 tears ago here and now are as good as they were bad prior to the change.

 

[tractorshopper]

Congrats on your new home. I have Directv and had Hughesnet, but it was so terribly slow and daily limits, so switched to Verizon MyFi, which has a monthly limit, but no daily limits and is 4G so very fast. I know that is not an option for you, but if I had cable or dsl option, I would have them instead for the unlimited access and speed, so if I were you, I'd at least go with Charter internet and forget about the dish internet options.

 

[smithrngr]

I can't comment on your internet we have only had frontier dsl and it was ok, and time warner before that and I had them at the house every week. we went back to time warner last year for everything and it is great now no problems. for tv we have had direct and dish and we liked dish a lot better than direct, the only thing we had problems with dish is with them changing our locals from the are we had and wanted to a viewing area south of us, and when we called I had to fight to get them back and at that I had to give a address in the area we wanted so they could use it as a service address.

 

[HarryN]

I agree with "tractorhopper". Go cable.
In a few more years you'll have other choices as technology changes....

 

[DKCDKC]

We're pretty rural and mountainous here, but I can go with wireless broadband as well as Verison DSL. As DSL and landline prices rise, I am reconsidering jumping to broadband - and using it with VOIP for the home phone... And cells for all else. Or just dropping home phone altogether. I think you have to constantly keep checking on options because they seem to change every year.

I use Direct TV and it has been fine. I used Dish at first but their service and attitude was very poor, so I switched. Never been sorry.

 

[Locoweed]

Satellite internet is only better than dial up. Most anything else is better.

 

[Panik]

Hopefully technology will change. When we were in Tampa, Fl we had Fios which was absolutely great and really set the bar for us. On the other hand it is a bit of a contradiction moving back to the country and still wanting uber fast TV/Internet. But then I was at least 19 before my parents were able to get satellite where I grew up.

I may consider charter, its nice to hear that they have turned things around in some areas. I'd really like to go cable over satellite I just hate only having one choice. That being said they do also offer Internet as well. I the decision between them and ATT will come done to speed and whether or not either has data caps.

 

[Barry 1]

I use Dish for TV and got rid of Hughesnet,and went with Dishnet-so Dish for both.

 

[Gunny]

I'd go with Charter. My unit was stationed at Fort Campbell a few years ago and if you wanted cable, Charter was all you could get. They turned out to be a pretty good outfit, had an installer at my apartment the day after I called, took the time to show me all the features of the cable package I'd selected and also stuck around to make sure the cable internet was working properly.
I had a modem bail out on me after a few months, when I called them to ask what needed to be done, the lady said I could either wait until the next day for them to deliver one or I could just take the bad one to them and they'd replace it over the counter.

Though it was only for a short time (9 Months), I had nothing but good things to say about them