What internet are yall using?

[Doco Overboard]

I'm looking at spending a bit of time with family down in snow hill and figured I'd ask here if there's any other options then starlink for decent internet. Hoping to be able to stream and possibly do some remote work/school.
So far all the decent options I've googled are for just in town and nothing surrounding. Any ideas?

If your on the co-op system sooner or later fiber will be in. In the meantime over here were stuck on copper.
The fiber legislation is probably one of the few useful bits in my opinion to come along lately. No public service commission regulatory involvement.
In my area Bay country comms will be running the network after installation is complete. Theirs tens of thousands of feet of back bone already installed and just as much occuring on nearly a weekly basis. I heard probably incorrectly that Hillsboro/Ridgely may have some up and running. My outfit is involved with the pole clearnace work and associated system upgrades and we have a number of crews on the project for URD installation. At this time, because backbone is primarily underway no service drop work has commenced on our behalf.

 

[Occam]

If your on the co-op system sooner or later fiber will be in. In the meantime over here were stuck on copper.
The fiber legislation is probably one of the few useful bits in my opinion to come along lately. No public service commission regulatory involvement.
In my area Bay country comms will be running the network after installation is complete. Theirs tens of thousands of feet of back bone already installed and just as much occuring on nearly a weekly basis. I heard probably incorrectly that Hillsboro/Ridgely may have some up and running. My outfit is involved with the pole clearnace work and associated system upgrades and we have a number of crews on the project for URD installation. At this time, because backbone is primarily underway no service drop work has commenced on our behalf.

There are spots all over the country where they've never been close enough to the CO to even have bad DSL, and fiber will never, ever get run ten miles down a gravel road to service three houses, with drops to their doors that mean going through woodland on rocky terrain a quarter mile or more to a residence. Or down a miles-long farm road. Just never going to happen unless the resident wants to spend tens of thousands of dollars to make it happen. That's enough to pay for many years of Starlink service for years.

If there are government programs that put you on a decades-long waiting list for some sort of subsidized utility cut/install that dies anyway every time a branch hits the pole-to-pole telco stuff, why not just save huge piles of money and subsidize that user's Starlink hardware and monthly service. Far fewer tax dollars used that way, and nobody is getting married to perpetual maintenance of fragile lines on poles.

 

[Harrys]

My jeep has built in WIFI works just about any place.

 

[Doco Overboard]

There are spots all over the country where they've never been close enough to the CO to even have bad DSL, and fiber will never, ever get run ten miles down a gravel road to service three houses, with drops to their doors that mean going through woodland on rocky terrain a quarter mile or more to a residence. Or down a miles-long farm road. Just never going to happen unless the resident wants to spend tens of thousands of dollars to make it happen. That's enough to pay for many years of Starlink service for years.

If there are government programs that put you on a decades-long waiting list for some sort of subsidized utility cut/install that dies anyway every time a branch hits the pole-to-pole telco stuff, why not just save huge piles of money and subsidize that user's Starlink hardware and monthly service. Far fewer tax dollars used that way, and nobody is getting married to perpetual maintenance of fragile lines on poles.

I dont know what the rest of the country is doing or what your talking about.
But, I do know what our contract is with Choptank elec co-op and the work thats already been completed. Not just by my org but a pretty good Idea of the others too becuase of the competitiveness of the bid.
Your assumptions by large however, are kindly incorrect. The OP lives in Snow Hill, whether or not he's a CEC member remains yet to be communicated.
Otherwise the work is underway and has been for sometime by both multiple contractors and, Choptank personnel.

 

[Occam]

My jeep has built in WIFI works just about any place.

Do you mean that your jeep leverages your phone's cellular connectivity (through something like a bluetooth connection), and provides WiFi through it for other users/uses in the vehicle? In that case, it's really your phone providing the connectivity.

Or do you mean that your jeep has its own cellular data device built in, for which you pay a monthly service fee, and it exposes that connection as WiFi access to that cellular service for people/devices in the car? In that case, it's really just another phone (but data only) built into the jeep.

WiFi is just the local way to connect to whatever device is actually doing the longer-range cellular data connection to the local tower(s), and all of that is of course only workable if you're on comfortable range to a tower that carries service from the provider your phone (or jeep's data module) is subscribed to.

I routinely drive through spots not far west of here that have no cellular data service available once you get in the radio shadow of certain terrain features, heavy trees, etc. If you lived in one of those valleys, you'd have no cell-based data, so nothing to provide over local WiFi. That's when systems like Starlink shine: the signal is coming from overhead, not on a tower that's hidden behind a hill or with miles of trees in between killing the signal.

 

[Occam]

I dont know what the rest of the country is doing or what your talking about.
But, I do know what our contract is with Choptank elec co-op and the work thats already been completed. Not just by my org but a pretty good Idea of the others too becuase of the competitiveness of the bid.
Your assumptions by large however, are kindly incorrect. The OP lives in Snow Hill, whether or not he's a CEC member remains yet to be communicated.
Otherwise the work is underway and has been for sometime by both multiple contractors and, Choptank personnel.

Speaking broadly about rural areas that do not and will not have any such customized service of fiber being run down miles of back country roads just to service one or three houses. Why spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to run fragile pole-based utilities to service a couple of people whose monthly service fees will never, ever pay off the installation cost? For $600, you get those users instantly on broadband using something like a Starlink ground station mounted to their roof or pole in ten minutes.

What I'm getting at is that 20th-century approaches to stringing up telco/data lines to a handful of remote rural homes at hugely subsidized cost no longer makes any kind of 21st century financial sense.

 

[BFMIN]

Breeezline, formerly Atlantic Broadband.
Speed is OK, but the latency is slow as a snail with a sore foot.

 

[Doco Overboard]

Speaking broadly about rural areas that do not and will not have any such customized service of fiber being run down miles of back country roads just to service one or three houses. Why spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to run fragile pole-based utilities to service a couple of people whose monthly service fees will never, ever pay off the installation cost? For $600, you get those users instantly on broadband using something like a Starlink ground station mounted to their roof or pole in ten minutes.

What I'm getting at is that 20th-century approaches to stringing up telco/data lines to a handful of remote rural homes at hugely subsidized cost no longer makes any kind of 21st century financial sense.

You very well may be right but it does to the customers/ coop membership as far as I can tell. They'll be getting internet where before by and large they had none. And the membership will control it to some extent not a satellite provider becuase its a co-op.

 

[Roscoe1]

Hey Neighbor,

I'm near Furnace Town. Over spring we had Choptank Fiber trenched along our road. Have not signed up yet.

Currently run off my ATT router. Fortunately have a cell tower nearby.

Call Choptank, they can tell you if or when they plan to service your location

 

[Doco Overboard]

Hey Neighbor,

I'm near Furnace Town. Over spring we had Choptank Fiber trenched along our road. Have not signed up yet.

Currently run off my ATT router. Fortunately have a cell tower nearby.

Call Choptank, they can tell you if or when they plan to service your location

I was over there yesterday with our guys to Redhouse. They're doing all those three and single phase pole lines poles for additional clearance for when the aerial portion comes in.
Thats some nice country down there. Soon multiple contractors will be back to get it up to the houses.

 

[Roscoe1]

I was over there yesterday with our guys to Redhouse. They're doing all those three and single phase pole lines poles for additional clearance for when the aerial portion comes in.
Thats some nice country down there. Soon multiple contractors will be back to get it up to the houses.

Doco,

Small world. I've been taking Pennewell Rd or Millville as detour home. It is nice area, we back right up to the state forest.

Thanks for what you do to get us up to speed with society down here !

 

[G Rose]

I'm looking at spending a bit of time with family down in snow hill and figured I'd ask here if there's any other options then starlink for decent internet. Hoping to be able to stream and possibly do some remote work/school.
So far all the decent options I've googled are for just in town and nothing surrounding. Any ideas?

t mobile $50.00 per month--no usage over fee. got mine 5 months ago and I am very pleased.

 

[shocker998md]

t mobile $50.00 per month--no usage over fee. got mine 5 months ago and I am very pleased.

1 month into this service. Pretty decent here outside of snow hill and I haven't messed with it too much to optimize it.

 

[SouthCo]

Speaking broadly about rural areas that do not and will not have any such customized service of fiber being run down miles of back country roads just to service one or three houses. Why spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to run fragile pole-based utilities to service a couple of people whose monthly service fees will never, ever pay off the installation cost? For $600, you get those users instantly on broadband using something like a Starlink ground station mounted to their roof or pole in ten minutes.

What I'm getting at is that 20th-century approaches to stringing up telco/data lines to a handful of remote rural homes at hugely subsidized cost no longer makes any kind of 21st century financial sense.

Actually both the federal and state have initiatives underway that offer funding to get broadband to rural and other areas where there is no broadband. This is for ground based networks such as fiber. Sounds like DOCO works for a company doing Make Ready work to get the poles ready for additional cables to be placed. Anyone not currently served by broadband can fill out a survey on the MD link below. I'm not saying every single home will be covered by ground based networks but they are making a push toward lowering the number who can't get that kind of service.

FCC Announces Nearly $800 Million in RDOF Funding for Broadband

To Date Over $6 Billion Authorized for Broadband Deployment in 47 States

www.fcc.gov

Office of Statewide Broadband

An official website of the State of Maryland.

dhcd.maryland.gov

 

[Doco Overboard]

Actually both the federal and state initiatives are underway that offer funding to get broadband to rural and other areas where there is no broadband. This is for ground based networks such as fiber. Sounds like DOCO works for a company doing Make Ready work to get the poles ready for additional cables to be placed. Anyone not currently served by broadband can fill out a survey on the MD link below. I'm not saying every single home will be covered by ground based networks but they are making a push toward lowering the number who can't get that kind of service.

FCC Announces Nearly $800 Million in RDOF Funding for Broadband

To Date Over $6 Billion Authorized for Broadband Deployment in 47 States

www.fcc.gov

Office of Statewide Broadband

An official website of the State of Maryland.

dhcd.maryland.gov

Actually I work for one company that does both the URD and Overhead portions of the project. Their are several involved.
Large portions are entirely underground mainline installs.
Soon after the backbone is completed, service installation will be undertaken at a later time.
As for they why and how rural development implementations are being undertaken Ill defer to the experts from elsewhere to provide their recommendations for how the work should be done and who it should be provided to.
The measure was on the ballot some time ago with the most extraordinary hurdle being the project not regulated by the public service commission.
How people voted I cannot say, but evidently there were enough to bring the project to fruition.

 

[SouthCo]

Gotcha... Yes the deployment typically follows what's in place now whether it be aerial, underground (manhole systems) or buried. I know lots of fiber has been placed since just last year and it's being ramped up even more now. Many would be surprised at what is being spent to only pick up a few houses here and there. What I don't know is how they determine what areas to address first.

And about pole based utilities, many homes are served power this way and poles aren't going anywhere. In some cases I've seen areas undergo redesign for one reason or another and the cables will be put in the ground but it's not often.