Posted: 8/28/2026 4:53:40 PM EDT
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There are some hot spots that claim to be good and cheaper than many fiber plans Are any worth it? |
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FIrst, you need to verify that your location has decent reception of the cell signal. But even then, there is no comparison with fiber. Fiber offers 10Gbs, whereas cellular offers only 50-100mbs. Perhaps that's sufficient for you, or a good trade-off vs cost, YMMV. |
Gun control is not the answer. Gun control is the question. The answer is NO.
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Originally Posted By kychas: There are some hot spots that claim to be good and cheaper than many fiber plans Are any worth it? They are OK, till you have any kinda issues. You might as well yell at clouds. I operated ISPs for decades (Dialup, Cable Modems, Fiber, Fixed Wireless) a good majority of my customers had been either Cell or Sat (not Starlink) and that was the reason they became my happy customer. IF a Fiber provider is worth crap, and they haven't split/muxed it to death, its going to be the best and easiest for them to upgraded to future tech. Cable Modems next, followed by Starlink, then Fixed Wireless. That is if service (Speed and reliability) are #1 concerns. If price is your #1, then yea, Cell or maybe Fixed Wireless. Everyone has different priorities. |
LARUEMINATI
NRA Endowment Life Member
Originally Posted By Boom_Stick:
""AKs are for villagers you have to tell not to shit in their water supply.""
NRA Endowment Life Member
Originally Posted By Boom_Stick:
""AKs are for villagers you have to tell not to shit in their water supply.""
| I just added T-Mobile Residential Backup Internet connection to my home network. The speeds vary wildly. While testing it its speeds went from just over 100 Mbps to over 700Mbps. Most of the time it hangs in the 300-400 Mbps range. That’s using the provided T-Mobile gateway connected to WAN2 on my router. My wife and I both work from home so no internet means lost wages. This connection is fast enough to let us work until the fiber connection gets restored. For $20/ mo it’s worth it. |
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Starlink speeds will vary based on time of day an how many users are in your area. It's hard to beat terrestial fiber when it comes to bandwidth and price. You can get lower latency with wireless solutions…but that's a very niche use case using equipment that is not cheap and outside the average consumer's price point but 160 km of of single mode fiber can offer 25+ Gbps of throughput without blinking. |
"Have you heard of the Gospel according to NIMS?" - Some EMC...Probably
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Originally Posted By Moondog: Speed-wise it varies on time of day. Originally Posted By Moondog: Originally Posted By Tan41: Starlink  Speed-wise it varies on time of day. |
Preferred pronoun: MARINE
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Originally Posted By wildearp: Most users wouldn't notice, and I have never had anything but full bandwidth on a speed test. I wouldn't know this if fiber were an option, but our local commie public utilities commission limits available providers to the few that pay a bribe. My neighborhood is unlikely to ever have fiber. I got Starlink 3 years ago out lack of better options. Midwest Energy rolled out fiber in my region and it was finally ran in my area last year. I can get 1Gb fiber service slightly less than I'm paying for Starlink. Best speeds I get with Starlink is around 250Mbps. Usually it's in the 150-200 range. My concern is reliability, but haven't heard anybody complain about down times with their fiber connection. In the last 3 years, I only experienced one outage with Starlink, and a few dropouts when the weather got really bad. If down time is low or non-existent I'll switch over before winter. |
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Originally Posted By Moondog: I got Starlink 3 years ago out lack of better options. Midwest Energy rolled out fiber in my region and it was finally ran in my area last year. I can get 1Gb fiber service slightly less than I'm paying for Starlink. Best speeds I get with Starlink is around 250Mbps. Usually it's in the 150-200 range. My concern is reliability, but haven't heard anybody complain about down times with their fiber connection. In the last 3 years, I only experienced one outage with Starlink, and a few dropouts when the weather got really bad. If down time is low or non-existent I'll switch over before winter. There was a fire burning in Texas for the last few weeks in a fairly rural county. 70 miles and two counties away a municipal utility worker cut an unmarked bundle in the aerial that was wrapped up the the municipal infrastructure. Took all AT&T services including FirstNet down that covered the incident four over 4 hours because…no redundancy on AT&T's side. It's also not the first time that has happened in that county. Multiple (~12) fiber cuts within a two week period when the utility was replacing poles in their right of way…few hundred yards the auger would cut the buried fiber bundle and would take everyone down. Remember, if you are ever stranded on a desert island just bury a piece of fiber optic. A backhoe will show up shortly to dig it up. |
"Have you heard of the Gospel according to NIMS?" - Some EMC...Probably