patrick.net

Is this any different from health scare provider market space with only one provider in certain markets.

Starlink will come after a while.

Is the T-Mobile 5G box available in your area?

We have two providers. Frontier (telephone wire) and Mediacom (cable). Mediacom just buried a fiber line in front of my house and I'm waiting to hear back if I can get service fiber. The local library has it and the speeds are insane. We also have a service you can get called Aircell (I believe). Also there's an AT&T 5G tower in down, but they would throttle speeds after a while if you stream which we do.

Once you have the infrastructure in, it's hard for another company to compete after the fact. Eventually I think everything will be over the air/cellular. My cell phone gets totally respectable speed or at least functional for my whole house to use if necessary. They actually hit the cable when ditch witching the fiber wire and it was my first outage in 3 years. Myself and wife just used my phone hotspot. Worked totally fine.

I feel for those in internet "deserts" so to speak with just one service. Not having a choice would blow. I'm more of a service and speed guy, but I'm fortunate to have choices so prices are reasonable in my opinion for data usage and the speed for a small town of about 2,500 in the middle of corn fields.

Misc says

Starlink will come after a while.

It's already available but from what I understand will only ever serve rural areas.

zzyzzx says

Is the T-Mobile 5G box available in your area?

Seems like it is available. I'll check it out. Thanks.

Waitup says

zzyzzx says

Is the T-Mobile 5G box available in your area?

Seems like it is available. I'll check it out. Thanks.

More importantly, if you do get it, let us know how it works out for you.

Waitup says

I have exclusively Comcast in my area and they keep increasing the rate by $10 every year. I have no other option but to pay up. My brother has only Cox in his area and he pays $100 every month and like me, he has no other option. Why isn't anyone complaining? What loophole is this? Where is the competition?

You might want to look into using 5g instead. Just like landlines, some people don't bother with a wired connection today.

You'd have to look at your data usage to see if it's feasible. In some places, this works out to be about $50 / month.

zzyzzx says

They should write to Elon.

Yeah now that they got us where they want us, there isn't any more talk about providing free internet to anyone.

What happened to the free City WiFi grants, and the Google WiFi balloons, and the thousands of other free internet access programs?

What do you all pay for internet in your zip code?

I'm in 94025 and https://www.sonic.com/ charges me $72 per month, even though their site says my service is $55/mo plus $6.50 for IP Broadband ATA, whatever that is.

I think I could do better. Tmobile seems to be offering $50 for 5G internet, but maybe it will cook me with radiation. Also, Tmobile are bastards in general. Had some bad experiences with them.

I've got VZ FIOS 1 Gb. I normally get 750/600 dowload/upload speeds tested at the router.

For a few years it was a sweet deal at $60 per month, but they've jacked it up about 50% in the last year or so to $90.

For phone I use US Mobile. Unlimited 5G (throttled after 4GB) talk and text for $17 a month per line. The only catch is that you have to pay for 12 months in advance. They bundle all three major carriers (Verizon, Tmobile, AT&T) so you can pick which network works best. You're allowed to switch networks twice a year no charge. Customer support is excellent.

Tenpoundbass says

Google WiFi balloons

You have to move to Africa for that.

stereotomy says

For phone I use US Mobile. Unlimited 5G (throttled after 4GB) talk and text for $17 a month per line. The only catch is that you have to pay for 12 months in advance.

Thanks, this sounds good. I'll check it out.

For US Mobile, the network options map as Warp = Verizon, Dark Star = AT&T, and Light Speed = Tmobile.