Rural area with terrible internet choices (3mbps max). What are my options? - mmili
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salawat
A) Move somewhere else. B) Become intimately familiar with what services you
consume and see if you can get some sort of compression in the works. C)
Organize your community to either reach out to an established ISP to have them
upgrade your infrastructure, or try to organize a municipal effort to do the
same. D) If C, prepare to be sued by an incumbent ISP if they have passed laws
to restrict municipal network setup E) Also be prepared to keep a thumb on
your legislative reps if they haven't, because it'll likely be popping up in
some bill somewhere soon. F) Maybe do satellite.

Godspeed, friend.

~~~
mmili
This is an excellent answer. I know that mediacom services 98.5% of our area
with 1gig fiber... yet somehow our community (neighborhood) doesn't have the
option.

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a3n
Move, and tell as many influential people why. Suggest to other people with
your same issues to also move and tell their tales. For an area with such poor
service, I'm _guessing_ that there may already be a net outflow.

Also, are you in a state that large ISPs have bribed the legislature to
prohibit local governments from providing broadband? Work that into your
narrative.

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eitland
Depending on your needs you might get away with a remote desktop connection to
somewhere that does have a great connection.

Also I'd prepend "Ask HN:" to the title.

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mmili
Fixed the title... thank you!

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vikramkr
options for what? Are you asking if there's some sort of thing like satellite
internet or using data or something to get more bandwidth, or are you asking
how to deal with low bandwidth because you've looked through all the options
and none of them are good?

~~~
mmili
I'm not even sure, any options for improvement, would it be possible to pay to
have a line run?

~~~
vikramkr
I'm not sure what quality of actionable advice you're expecting here when
literally all the info we have is that you are in a rural area with bad
internet choices. Carrier availability and regulations differ on a town by
town, county by county basis across the US creating a huge spread of potential
issues and solutions in the one country alone, and you could be anywhere in
the globe. Rural Kentucky is not the same as rural Ontario is not the same as
rural Kenya. And, it's likely not a good idea to share a set of personal GPS
coordinates with the internet on the hopes that someone might happen to be
familiar with your local situation. Maybe it's possible to pay to have a line
run, maybe it's not, maybe it'll cost 20 million bucks.

Maybe there's a WISP initiative, maybe there's satellite, maybe you could use
mobile data. Or maybe you're just in one of those broadband dead zones in the
country that just don't have internet options and won't get any in the near
future because of regulatory capture, apathetic political leaders, and the
unfortunate reality that poor rural communities really don't matter to
politicians with the power to change the regulations to allow for a better
internet to come there. Even in south Carolina, a state that matters an awful
lot every four years because of the primary there, so many areas have no good
internet and no options because nobody cares after the election is over. If
you're in one of those areas, your only option is to create a mini political
revolution, move away, or just deal with it.

