I live in rural Michigan. My nearest "big city" has a estimated population of 2800. No big ISP has run anything our direction. We are just now getting municipal gas run in our area, our house has been on propane since it was built in the 90's.
My current internet connection is provided by wifi access points strung across neighbors roofs that terminates into a T-Mobile data connection somewhere. I get on average 8Mbps down and 2Mbps up. On a good day those might be 12 and 3. It goes down frequently enough that I have a wifi power switch hooked up so I can toggle the PoE and reset the router that never seems to recover on its own.
I work remotely of course, and video is highly pixelated and voice frequently cuts out and stutters. Thankfully I don't work on _huge_ git repos.
Netflix and Youtube adaptive streaming is good enough that their content works well. Streaming from Plex is terrible though, I need to set it to the lowest streaming setting to view anything.
My next best option is "Hughesnet" which is satellite and gives you 10gbp transfer for $40/m the most you can get is 50gbp transfer at $130. No unlimited option. I'll eat 10gb in a day.
I'm dreaming of fiber, and have signed up for Starlink which.. hopefully is a little bit faster and stable than what I've got if it ever arrives.
I also have a place in the rural Upper Midwest (not MI). Our community-owned electric utility has been very aggressively putting fiber out to all the farms and villages in the counties who participate in this cooperative. I thought it would take years to get to my farm, but I was surprised and incredibly happy when put fiber onto my property within weeks of me filling out a form declaring my interest. Now I just have to pay a modest installation fee to get it put into the house.
Consider that I moved here from Alameda, CA where I also only had DSL. I have yet to see "reliable broadband access" anywhere I've lived in the US (5 states).
Even though we have "choice" its generally: Comcast Cable or DSL (some other "subpar" option).
I detest Comcast and wish our country had actual ISP competition. And Comcast isn't available at my address either.
My current internet connection is provided by wifi access points strung across neighbors roofs that terminates into a T-Mobile data connection somewhere. I get on average 8Mbps down and 2Mbps up. On a good day those might be 12 and 3. It goes down frequently enough that I have a wifi power switch hooked up so I can toggle the PoE and reset the router that never seems to recover on its own.
I work remotely of course, and video is highly pixelated and voice frequently cuts out and stutters. Thankfully I don't work on _huge_ git repos.
Netflix and Youtube adaptive streaming is good enough that their content works well. Streaming from Plex is terrible though, I need to set it to the lowest streaming setting to view anything.
My next best option is "Hughesnet" which is satellite and gives you 10gbp transfer for $40/m the most you can get is 50gbp transfer at $130. No unlimited option. I'll eat 10gb in a day.
I'm dreaming of fiber, and have signed up for Starlink which.. hopefully is a little bit faster and stable than what I've got if it ever arrives.