Fairfield County, Ohio, USA | Paul, depending where you are, things might have changed significantly in the last 5+ years.
For many years, I was stuck with a 1.5 Mbps DSL line from my local phone company (Frontier) that only ever did about half that speed. It was in no way usable for streaming video, other than sometimes YouTube on the lowest setting. But then AT&T released a "Wireless Home Phone & Internet" plan (that they have since discontinued) which got pretty popular in some areas, and it improved things quite a bit. It used 3G, and later 4G, to provide wifi internet to a home (or barn, or whatever). They had data caps that were, if I recall correctly, 250GB and 500GB. That's large enough that in my opinion most farm families wouldn't need to worry about them. My parents are still on that 250GB plan; they watch AgDay and US Farm Report via streaming every day, the grandkids like to watch YouTube when they're there, and they never come close to the limit.
T-Mobile released a 5G home internet solution in my area a few years ago, and technically it works the same as AT&T's did -- they send you a cell modem that converts 4G and 5G signals to wifi -- but they have a plan that is "unlimited", and it's less expensive than AT&T or Frontier ever were, in my area. I signed up for the T-Mobile 5G home internet right after it became available in my area, and after a couple of months of using it to make sure it worked well, I canceled my AT&T wireless home internet service. Now the T-Mobile service is not perfect -- it can get pretty slow particularly on Friday and Saturday night, I assume because a bunch of people in the area with the same service are streaming video or some such. And their solution has made it much more difficult to host servers at your home, but that won't apply to nearly all farm families, I suspect. But aside from that, I don't have any complaints. Funny thing is, I get a decent 5G T-Mobile signal using that home internet device, but I have tried T-Mobile cellular service for my cell phone, and it is downright awful in my area.
Verizon also has a cellular home internet solution, but it isn't available in my area, so I have no experience with it. They are my cell provider for my cell phone and tablet, though, as their service is *maybe* the best in my area -- they and AT&T seem to keep going back and forth on which works the best around here. |
Ironic?
