DSL in Lancaster County, PA?

June 27, 2014 12:03 PM

Moving to a fairly rural section of Lancaster County (Paradise, PA, to be exact), where cable isn't available. *Sad trombone* I work from home full-time and will need reliable, fast internet. Suggestions, please! BTW, FiOs isn't available here (I checked) and it's been hard to get a solid answer on exactly WHAT internet services are out there, so alternatives are welcome. The last tenants here used a mobile hotspot, which was unreliable and slow, so I want to avoid that. Also want to avoid working from a coffee shop every day.
posted by KateH to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

My parents are from that area and they could only get satellite I.e hughesnet. It's expensive and has data caps, but that's all I could think of. Dial up is there too but it's dial up.
posted by lpcxa0 at 12:32 PM on June 27, 2014

Here's a list of what Speednet has.

It looks like your choices are:

Clear
Windstream
Verizon DSL/Verizon Wireless

And that's about it.

If money is no object, you might get a T-1 straight to an Internet provider (Level 3, CenturyLink, Verizon Business, Sprint, AT&T)

If you work from home, you're going to need to move to a place that has Comcast Xfinity access, because that's about your only hope of decent internet.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 12:33 PM on June 27, 2014

I live in a rural area in north-central Maryland, with a similar lack of options for a decent internet connection.

I have a residential T-1 line through broadband.com, who re-sells me a Verizon T-1 circuit, since VZ doesn't sell T-1 to individuals, just to small companies. I pay through the nose for it.

It's adequate for most things, but not what most people used to broadband would call fast. I can stream Netflix, HBO To Go, and YouTube, but sometimes it's choppy. Online gaming is OK. So is Remote Desktop into work when I work from home. Conference calls with video don't often work well.

However, if I'm using Remote Desktop to work and my wife is watching HBO To Go or playing Warcraft, both of our experiences suffer. It seems like you can only do one High Bandwidth Thing at a time.

Unfortunately, rural options for broadband just suck.

My next door neighbor has HughesNet, and he complains about it constantly, particularly about data caps and latency. He works from home at least 85% of the time.

I have good enough cellular reception (clear line-of-sight to two towers), but the caps on wireless internet through any of the major cellular providers would be blown very quickly in my family.
posted by tckma at 1:48 PM on June 27, 2014

Okay, the article that Ruthless Bunny linked to quotes a $970/mo price for T-1 plus a $2,500 installation charge.

It's not nearly THAT bad -- I pay $340/mo -- still very expensive, in my opinion. I forget what I paid for installation, but it was less than $1,000. They didn't bill me for the first three months, then, when I asked how they would be billing me, they said "OOPS!" and sent me a bill for $1,150. This included the first three months of service at $340/mo, so based on that, my installation charge must have been a mere $130.

I understand the price of T-1 depends highly on your location and distance from the Central Office. T-1 is just 24 POTS lines tied together; you're effectively getting 24 land lines from the phone company.
posted by tckma at 2:10 PM on June 27, 2014

I live in Paradise (hey neighbor!) and have Comcast. There is also Frontiernet in this area for folks who don't want or can't get Comcast.
posted by DWRoelands at 4:35 PM on June 28, 2014

Response by poster: DWRoelands- I can't get Comcast. I can't even get VerizonDSL! I hadn't heard of Frontiernet, though, so I'll check them out. Do you know of any info re: Frontiernet vs. Hughesnet?
posted by KateH at 9:22 AM on June 30, 2014

I have no experience with HughesNet, but I know that many folks at my church used FrontierNet until Comcast became available in their area. However, since Comcast isn't a choice for you...
posted by DWRoelands at 9:24 AM on July 1, 2014