6 ms·

In my area (Midwest USA), you can only get 100Mbps or more from either A) Cable company. In my case Mediacom. B) Fiber, which is also offered by Mediacom as w

In my area (Midwest USA), you can only get 100Mbps or more from either A) Cable company. In my case Mediacom. B) Fiber, which is also offered by Mediacom as well as some rural providers to select locations. DSL is barely 20Mbps around here, and you can't even get 10Mbps service in some spots two miles off US 20. As someone who'd like to buy a home in the country, I find this lack of coverage a much bigger issue. Forget competition, there's practically no service at all.

rayiner 9y ago
Much of my county doesn’t even have water and sewer pipes. People just spend the thousands to tens of thousands of dollars needed to build septic systems and wells and accept that is the trade off for living in the country.
- freehunter 9y ago
  You say that like it's a bad thing. Wells and septic systems are so common that I would struggle to believe they're a "trade off". Where I grew up (on well water and a septic tank), people couldn't believe that city folk pay for their water, and what's more, that they pay to have it go down the drain! A septic tank costs ~$5k and will last for 40 years. Over the lifetime of a septic tank, my city water bill will have cost me $24,000.
  - randallsquared 9y ago
    A septic tank also costs acreage that city homes do not typically have available for less than $24,000.
    - freehunter 9y ago
      Which is why cities have city water systems, yeah, but anywhere outside of the city, septic and wells just makes more sense.
      - ghaff 9y ago
        >anywhere outside of the city It's not quite that stark. I live in a population ~7K ex-urban town. I have town water. I do have a septic tank although I believe a portion of the town near the center has sewer hookups.
      - gnim 9y ago
        There is an environmental downside to septics too. Where I grew up there was a sandy aquifer that caused nitrogen loading from septic run off in ponds and marshes. This attributed to algea growth, oxygen depletion and marine species die-off. There is now an extensive effort to sewer the region.
  - wiredfool 9y ago
    Yes, and occasionally, you might have to get a guy with a backhoe to come out and do some work. That's $1000. That's assuming that you don't need a new line, which would take a perc test and a new permit. All the while the guy with the backhoe is looking at your system and wondering how it ever worked or got signed off in the first place. It's several hundred to get it pumped every couple of years, I think I'm remembering in the range of $600 and just shy of 3 years between pumpings. Then the well needs power, and someone needs to do the generator in a power outage, or you get to chip in for a spiffy one with an autostart, and the only time the well head ever acts up is on national holidays when if you can get someone out, it's 3x overtime. You know, I kind of like city water now.
    - freehunter 9y ago
      You say that like city water never needs maintenance. My neighbor had roots growing into his pipes from a tree on city property, but since the pipes were on private property he had to have them replaced on his own dime, and also fix the flooding in the house from the backed-up sewer line. I'm not arguing that septic tanks are better, and I apologize that many people reading my comment seem to think I am. What I'm arguing is that septic tanks are not uncommon. On the contrary, basically everyone outside of city limits is using one.
      - Broken_Hippo 9y ago
        Most cities I lived in serviced the lines up to the point they entered the house, though. Not as much to worry about.
        vonmoltke 9y ago
        All the cities I have lived in would only serice lines up to and including the meter. Everything downstream of the meter was the property owner's responsibility.
    - LyndsySimon 9y ago
      > Yes, and occasionally, you might have to get a guy with a backhoe to come out and do some work. That's $1000. I can rent a mini excavator for a weekend for <$200. > That's assuming that you don't need a new line, which would take a perc test and a new permit. What permit? > It's several hundred to get it pumped every couple of years, I think I'm remembering in the range of $600 and just shy of 3 years between pumpings. I had my tank pumped last month, it was $160. > Then the well needs power, and someone needs to do the generator in a power outage, or you get to chip in for a spiffy one with an autostart, and the only time the well head ever acts up is on national holidays when if you can get someone out, it's 3x overtime. When I was on well water, our pump could (and did) run off a car battery and an inverter when necessary. > You know, I kind of like city water now. I just bought a home that's on city water, but has a septic tank. I'm prevented by ordinance from replacing the tank, but I'll do everything in my power to keep it as long as possible. It's far easier and cheaper than paying for city sewer even without including the costs of hooking up to it.
  - justin66 9y ago
    > Where I grew up (on well water and a septic tank), people couldn't believe that city folk pay for their water, and what's more, that they pay to have it go down the drain! Where I grew up, people with the choice invariably chose "city water" when it was available, and the network of its availability is continuing to expand outward, as quickly as substantial pressure and money from the suburbs and exurbs can make that happen. I don't know whether the same is true of sewer service.
  - Broken_Hippo 9y ago
    Actually, some years ago a septic system could cost anywhere from $5k to $15k in the area I was in. Most companies won't take payments, and if you've had some financial difficulty, many places won't help you fix it. You can, however, get different programs to help with your sewage and water bill. And then you have the upkeep. Folks have already mentioned power issues (generator or stored water), pumping, and other things that can go wrong (including backflow into your house and testing water occasionally to make sure it hasn't been contaminated). Most folks where I lived (indiana) also needed a water softener just to keep their water from stinking of eggs. Clothes didn't last as long, and few white clothes stayed white for long without special caustic cleaners. Blonde hair turned orange and it took a beauty treatment to get it back and/or special shampoo. Some homes have a section of yard that stays pretty soggy, and folks need to know where the system is so they don't accidentally dig there or plant trees to closely. If you don't know this stuff, you gotta pay someone to come out and tell you. Not to mention that at least with city water, the expenses are constant instead of sudden: city water is more like regular oil changes whereas a septic is more like a sudden flat tire or two that happens to stink up your car somehow.
- dboreham 9y ago
  And some of us spend tens of thousands building themselves a network. Experience has shown me however that I'm in the minority. Almost nobody values their Internet sufficiently to want to spend that much on a connection.
- Shivetya 9y ago
  throw in many would be surprised at how many areas cell coverage drops out. traveling a lot has shown me that cell is not guaranteed and having a satellite dish at least gets us tv/music. then again traveling also reveals that free internet is just a McD away.
- oneplane 9y ago
  In my country there are no houses with septic tanks or wells. I guess it really depends on your location and government on how infrastructure is handled.
  - perl4ever 9y ago
    What is your country, where they have no wells?
ndespres 9y ago
I didn't realize DSL speeds were even possible above 7.1 Mbps, have things changed? ADSL is (or was) very much dependent on total wire distance and overall copper line quality from the nearest telco switching station. Top speeds were simply not possible above the 2-mile mark and that was pushing it. Rural areas, forget about it.
- freehunter 9y ago
  In my experience modern DSL (like AT&T Uverse) is fiber-to-the-curb and DSL from there. Meaning the amount of DSL line you have is incredibly short and then it hits a fiber line.
  - ndespres 9y ago
    That's an interesting approach, and really seems like it would cut down on the amount of work required in the home to provide such a significant speed upgrade over traditional ADSL. Thanks for enlightening me! Verizon rips out the copper network interface from your home and replaces it with Fios gear all the way through, which always felt like overkill though I know they do it partly to suck you in to their TV offerings too. I wonder how much the extra expense of this last 100 feet of the deployment (from telephone pole to house) holds back more broadband penetration.
- dwyerm 9y ago
  vDSL is what changed to make the speeds higher, but although it got a little better, it seems like the distances are still pretty limited. I suspect that the DSLAMs have become smaller and cheaper, so that you can push those out of the central office and into smaller cabinets inside neighborhoods, which had the effect of making the distance problem appear to go away. That still seems to leave truly rural areas out of luck, though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDSL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDSL
- rsynnott 9y ago
  That’d be ADSL1. ADSL2+ showed up here (in Ireland) in 2006 or so, and it wasn’t new then. It went up to 24Mbit/sec. Same range as ADSL1, more or less. VDSL showed up here in 2010 or so (again, not sure when it was actually introduced), and does up to 100Mbit/sec. It’s much lower range, and is usually used from roadside cabinets. G.fast is extremely low range but can go up to 1Gbit or so. In some markets it’s used for multi-hundred-Mbit links for premises within 500m or so of a cabinet. None of these are especially useful for rural areas.

rayiner 9y ago

Much of my county doesn’t even have water and sewer pipes. People just spend the thousands to tens of thousands of dollars needed to build septic systems and wells and accept that is the trade off for living in the country.

freehunter 9y ago
You say that like it's a bad thing. Wells and septic systems are so common that I would struggle to believe they're a "trade off". Where I grew up (on well water and a septic tank), people couldn't believe that city folk pay for their water, and what's more, that they pay to have it go down the drain! A septic tank costs ~$5k and will last for 40 years. Over the lifetime of a septic tank, my city water bill will have cost me $24,000.
- randallsquared 9y ago
  A septic tank also costs acreage that city homes do not typically have available for less than $24,000.
  - freehunter 9y ago
    Which is why cities have city water systems, yeah, but anywhere outside of the city, septic and wells just makes more sense.
    - ghaff 9y ago
      >anywhere outside of the city It's not quite that stark. I live in a population ~7K ex-urban town. I have town water. I do have a septic tank although I believe a portion of the town near the center has sewer hookups.
    - gnim 9y ago
      There is an environmental downside to septics too. Where I grew up there was a sandy aquifer that caused nitrogen loading from septic run off in ponds and marshes. This attributed to algea growth, oxygen depletion and marine species die-off. There is now an extensive effort to sewer the region.
- wiredfool 9y ago
  Yes, and occasionally, you might have to get a guy with a backhoe to come out and do some work. That's $1000. That's assuming that you don't need a new line, which would take a perc test and a new permit. All the while the guy with the backhoe is looking at your system and wondering how it ever worked or got signed off in the first place. It's several hundred to get it pumped every couple of years, I think I'm remembering in the range of $600 and just shy of 3 years between pumpings. Then the well needs power, and someone needs to do the generator in a power outage, or you get to chip in for a spiffy one with an autostart, and the only time the well head ever acts up is on national holidays when if you can get someone out, it's 3x overtime. You know, I kind of like city water now.
  - freehunter 9y ago
    You say that like city water never needs maintenance. My neighbor had roots growing into his pipes from a tree on city property, but since the pipes were on private property he had to have them replaced on his own dime, and also fix the flooding in the house from the backed-up sewer line. I'm not arguing that septic tanks are better, and I apologize that many people reading my comment seem to think I am. What I'm arguing is that septic tanks are not uncommon. On the contrary, basically everyone outside of city limits is using one.
    - Broken_Hippo 9y ago
      Most cities I lived in serviced the lines up to the point they entered the house, though. Not as much to worry about.
      - vonmoltke 9y ago
        All the cities I have lived in would only serice lines up to and including the meter. Everything downstream of the meter was the property owner's responsibility.
  - LyndsySimon 9y ago
    > Yes, and occasionally, you might have to get a guy with a backhoe to come out and do some work. That's $1000. I can rent a mini excavator for a weekend for <$200. > That's assuming that you don't need a new line, which would take a perc test and a new permit. What permit? > It's several hundred to get it pumped every couple of years, I think I'm remembering in the range of $600 and just shy of 3 years between pumpings. I had my tank pumped last month, it was $160. > Then the well needs power, and someone needs to do the generator in a power outage, or you get to chip in for a spiffy one with an autostart, and the only time the well head ever acts up is on national holidays when if you can get someone out, it's 3x overtime. When I was on well water, our pump could (and did) run off a car battery and an inverter when necessary. > You know, I kind of like city water now. I just bought a home that's on city water, but has a septic tank. I'm prevented by ordinance from replacing the tank, but I'll do everything in my power to keep it as long as possible. It's far easier and cheaper than paying for city sewer even without including the costs of hooking up to it.
- justin66 9y ago
  > Where I grew up (on well water and a septic tank), people couldn't believe that city folk pay for their water, and what's more, that they pay to have it go down the drain! Where I grew up, people with the choice invariably chose "city water" when it was available, and the network of its availability is continuing to expand outward, as quickly as substantial pressure and money from the suburbs and exurbs can make that happen. I don't know whether the same is true of sewer service.
- Broken_Hippo 9y ago
  Actually, some years ago a septic system could cost anywhere from $5k to $15k in the area I was in. Most companies won't take payments, and if you've had some financial difficulty, many places won't help you fix it. You can, however, get different programs to help with your sewage and water bill. And then you have the upkeep. Folks have already mentioned power issues (generator or stored water), pumping, and other things that can go wrong (including backflow into your house and testing water occasionally to make sure it hasn't been contaminated). Most folks where I lived (indiana) also needed a water softener just to keep their water from stinking of eggs. Clothes didn't last as long, and few white clothes stayed white for long without special caustic cleaners. Blonde hair turned orange and it took a beauty treatment to get it back and/or special shampoo. Some homes have a section of yard that stays pretty soggy, and folks need to know where the system is so they don't accidentally dig there or plant trees to closely. If you don't know this stuff, you gotta pay someone to come out and tell you. Not to mention that at least with city water, the expenses are constant instead of sudden: city water is more like regular oil changes whereas a septic is more like a sudden flat tire or two that happens to stink up your car somehow.
dboreham 9y ago
And some of us spend tens of thousands building themselves a network. Experience has shown me however that I'm in the minority. Almost nobody values their Internet sufficiently to want to spend that much on a connection.
Shivetya 9y ago
throw in many would be surprised at how many areas cell coverage drops out. traveling a lot has shown me that cell is not guaranteed and having a satellite dish at least gets us tv/music. then again traveling also reveals that free internet is just a McD away.
oneplane 9y ago
In my country there are no houses with septic tanks or wells. I guess it really depends on your location and government on how infrastructure is handled.
- perl4ever 9y ago
  What is your country, where they have no wells?

ndespres 9y ago

I didn't realize DSL speeds were even possible above 7.1 Mbps, have things changed? ADSL is (or was) very much dependent on total wire distance and overall copper line quality from the nearest telco switching station. Top speeds were simply not possible above the 2-mile mark and that was pushing it. Rural areas, forget about it.

freehunter 9y ago
In my experience modern DSL (like AT&T Uverse) is fiber-to-the-curb and DSL from there. Meaning the amount of DSL line you have is incredibly short and then it hits a fiber line.
- ndespres 9y ago
  That's an interesting approach, and really seems like it would cut down on the amount of work required in the home to provide such a significant speed upgrade over traditional ADSL. Thanks for enlightening me! Verizon rips out the copper network interface from your home and replaces it with Fios gear all the way through, which always felt like overkill though I know they do it partly to suck you in to their TV offerings too. I wonder how much the extra expense of this last 100 feet of the deployment (from telephone pole to house) holds back more broadband penetration.
dwyerm 9y ago
vDSL is what changed to make the speeds higher, but although it got a little better, it seems like the distances are still pretty limited. I suspect that the DSLAMs have become smaller and cheaper, so that you can push those out of the central office and into smaller cabinets inside neighborhoods, which had the effect of making the distance problem appear to go away. That still seems to leave truly rural areas out of luck, though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDSL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDSL
rsynnott 9y ago
That’d be ADSL1. ADSL2+ showed up here (in Ireland) in 2006 or so, and it wasn’t new then. It went up to 24Mbit/sec. Same range as ADSL1, more or less. VDSL showed up here in 2010 or so (again, not sure when it was actually introduced), and does up to 100Mbit/sec. It’s much lower range, and is usually used from roadside cabinets. G.fast is extremely low range but can go up to 1Gbit or so. In some markets it’s used for multi-hundred-Mbit links for premises within 500m or so of a cabinet. None of these are especially useful for rural areas.