Help me find good broadband in Indiana for my mom.

December 2, 2008 12:44 PM

I'm in the UK, my mom is in Central Indiana. I would like to recommend her a good broadband package that will let us chat over Skype, etc. So nothing too underpowered. Her phone is currently with AT&T, and she would prefer to keep things as simple and non-expensive as possible, and do it through them as well, if that's a decent course of action to take.

So far, I've found their most basic package at $14.99 only offers 768 Kbps downstream, but I'm thinking that if we evolve to the point of video chat I should consider the $25.99 a month package, which offers up to 1.5 Mbps.

Are these prices even fair? Pound for dollar, I get 16Mbps for £15 here, so I'm a little thrown at how little you get for your money.

I want to keep this as un-complicated as possible. An ideal scenario is me setting the whole thing up online, ordering the package, the router arrives and a neighbourhood kid plugs it in to her computer. None of this $200 call-out technician nonsense.

Experiences and recommendations are welcome. Thanks in advance

posted by jim.christian to computers & internet (4 comments total)

The cheapest DSL should be sufficient for VOIP. And yes, that's a very fair price; it wasn't so long ago that $14.99 a month was the standard price for 56k. The main problem in the US is that it's big, and the infrastructure has its limitations. It's hard to get fast broadband to every far-flung village... Hell, I'm lucky to have DSL, as I'm outside the standard radius of a "sub-station" or whatever they are called.
posted by sonic meat machine at 1:22 PM on December 2, 2008

I had AT&T for internet in Central Indiana not too long ago. Their customer service was great. The wiring in my house was crap.
posted by toomuchpete at 1:44 PM on December 2, 2008

I live in kinda central IN and just posted a rant about how I hate Comcast Cable, well today they kinda redeemed themselves. I called them with the intent of telling them I was switching providers and before I even opened my mouth they offered me a deal for 69.00 for full cable and high speed internet. Your mom probably wouldn't need this kind of internet but it's 10Mbps, freaking awesome for downloading off usenet and more than awesome enough for skype. Ask them for the double promotional deal and I'm sure they'll offer it to your mom as well.
posted by BrnP84 at 2:09 PM on December 2, 2008

Not a broadband suggestion, but is there any chance you can get a Skype In number and avoid the whole issue of getting new broadband for her? I did this for my grandmother, who's not terribly up on tech and can't afford massive phone bills to the UK, let alone trying to figure out how to dial all the country codes. It's brilliant, frankly - comes with voicemail and call forwarding to my mobile. All grandma does is pick up her phone and dial a local number that Skype provides in her area code... if I'm not on Skype, it forwards on to my mobile (as in the number - the phone itself rings instead of it just pinging the Skype app). I top it up at about £15/month and have never had us run out of money, despite our marathon yakkfests.

Just a thought...
posted by Grrlscout at 2:57 PM on December 2, 2008