Patchwork Times by Judy Laquidara logo

Venting!

Believe it or not, I try very hard not to gripe and complain on the blog but this is definitely a whining, complaining blog post. I’m not looking for solutions . . just sympathy!  🙂

I keep telling myself that it was my idea to live out in the country. I knew there would be snakes, raccoons and possums trying to get my chickens and their eggs. I knew there would be deer eating everything not fenced off. I knew there would be little to no police or fire services. What I probably never realized is that there’s almost no internet out here. Almost every time I try to use the internet, I find myself saying “Calm down! It was YOUR idea to live out here!”

We pay about $80/month for 4 Mbps. Just about 5 miles north of us, they get dependable 10 Mbps for $40. The cost doesn’t bother me . . well, I’d rather pay $40 but I would pay $200 if I could get dependable 10 Mbps. Almost since we’ve been here, we’ve paid for two services (yes, that’s $160 per month) in the hopes that one would be working at any given time. One of those services got so bad that we cancelled it in January and then the other service, that had been fair, got sold and it’s just awful. They’re lucky that when the service goes down, we can’t use our phones or they would have heard from Vince every day for the past month!

Vince wrote the other service yesterday and said “Has your service in our area improved?” The guy wrote him back and said “Check back with us in a couple of months!” and I take that answer to mean no . . we’re no better but maybe at some time in the future.

Not only is it frustrating when I’m trying to do a blog post, but we don’t have cable and we watch (or try to watch) Netflix and lately, you can forget that.

And, our phones . . we have Magic Jack for the home phone and our cell phones work off a microcell and without internet, we have ZERO phone service. Yesterday afternoon a friend called. It was someone I hadn’t talked to in a while and she was checking on us after hearing about the crazy weather in Texas. I had to put on my boots and walk about 100 yards to one spot in the yard where I can get a weak cell signal. I truly feel like Green Acres and am wishing I had a pole to climb so I could talk on the phone! I guess I should put the poddy chair out there so I’ll at least have a place to sit while talking on the phone!

Lawn Furniture

I guess after so many years of having dependable service, I never thought that there were places that have no service. It’s funny because there’s also zero Verizon service here. Friends visited from Kansas City and they had no service for about an hour before getting here. I don’t think folks believe me when I say “If you don’t have AT&T, you’re not going to have cell service here”.

Last night I told Vince . . let’s just get a land line, and dial up and forget about high speed internet. He said “I don’t think you’d be very happy with that” and I know he’s right but it’s so frustrating that about 90% of the time we try to make a phone call, we have to wait or go traipsing through the woods to get to a spot where, for some crazy reason, there’s cell service.

Vince said “In Nevada (MO), we had great cell service but horrible water with outrageously expensive water and sewer bills.” I added . . and the red tag guy! And here, we have great water and  sewer and water are both free, but no cell service. Pick your poison.

I guess when you think that Chad and Nicole are in MO, I’m tempted to say “Let’s go back!” Who am I fooling? I say that every day!

Feeling sorry for me yet?  🙂

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Yep, we chose this life style also!! We do have direct TV but we have Verizon internet and it is WAY expensive. The new mayor of the county says they are working on broadband. The last I saw they were planning on improving what is in the little city and then work to outlying areas of the county. That means we might get it in 10 years..lol 1 mile from our house we can see where Comcast internet wire stopped on the line but the the life of all of us we can’t get them to come down the road. You would think this little county could be brought up to the current age of computer with out too much trouble…Oh well, back to playing outside…..

    • We have a similar problem with Comcast. We tried to get them to run a cable up our hill through their business division. They quoted us $30,000.00, I jokingly asked “Does that include lifetime service?” The rep didn’t think that was funny. I too pay Verizon way too much, plus we have DirecTV, all within 15 miles of Silicon Valley. Sigh.

  2. Definitely feel for you. It sucks to not have Internet when you want it. We just purchased a house in the mountains east of albuqeueque and to my amazement we have great cell service and not too bad cable except for the fact that the modem fries every time there is a storm. Think the house has a grounding problem. Once we get retired and actually move there I might find more to complain about. Hope you get everything working!

    • Don’t worry about it on my account. That’s one word I can never spell without looking it up so I didn’t notice it wasn’t right (not that it matters if I notice it or not!).

  4. You have my sympathy Judy.

    But I have to tell you . . . . when you were talking about climbing a ladder for better reception my first thought was to tell you to have Vince get a bucket truck (like the phone companies have) so that when you want to make a call you can sit in the bucket & raise it high enough to get service.

    Now, don’t start saying that it would not be economical. . . . the bucket truck could be used once the fruit trees get bigger. . . .you know that all the best fruit is always at the top of the tree, right!! LOL

    I hope things get better for you soon. . . . .and I am glad to know that you have not been washed away. . . . the pictures that I have been seeing on the tv are just heartbreaking.

    Sherry V.

  5. It may be venting, but it’s useful for those of us considering moving away from the cities and putting in a huge garden. On the top of my list will be, “check the cell and internet services.”

    My girlfriend who lives about 45 minutes west of Yosemite has Directv with internet and says it works fine. I don’t know if that’s an option for you.

    • It isn’t an option. There are limits to how much bandwidth you can use with satellite internet. Once you reach the threshold (or get near it) your service slows way down. We don’t want that . . it would be worse than what we have.

  6. Oh I feel your pain!! When we lived in beautiful SW CO, cell was terrible and spotty! And when on vacay in Yellowstone last year, I had T-Mobile and got ZIP except when we drove up to Mammoth. My niece had Verizon and got service pretty much everywhere–IN YELLOWSTONE! ANNOYING! And I get super aggravated when my internet is lagging. Can’t imagine not having it at all. Don’t think I’d last long there. Not sure there’s anywhere you can have it all..if there is, not sure WHERE it is! LOL

    • If southeastern MO had decent water and we could have a good well, live in the country and have good internet, I think I would be happy . . unless Chad and Nicole moved away from MO.

  7. You do get my sympathy, and I offer no advice. This blog post – and others you have written – are helpful to me in that I realize I am 100% a city girl.

  8. My aunt only gets cell reception up in her attic! If Vince gets the deer blind, try to place it where there is a bit of a signal…might be better up higher?

    • Don’t think I haven’t thought of that already. He needs to get a big enough blind that there’s room for me to put a little desk! 🙂 You can tell him that for me.

  9. Here in my little part of Arizona, if you don’t have cell service with Verizon, you don’t have cell service no matter who else you might be paying for service. Cox Cable TV is right across the road, but can’t come to this side of the road for some reason. Our local Telephone/cable/DSL service company is spotty and slow even though it’s supposed to be fast. And it’s very expensive. We go weeks at a time with very spotty internet connections. So I totally sympathize with you and totally understand your frustrations! I could get sat TV, but choose to not have them because they are so expensive. I watch Prime and Netflix when I can. And I watch a lot of movies.

    • Yep, we made the decision over 2 years ago that satellite/cable tv was a waste and we may soon make the same decision about the internet.

  10. Dial up is all I could get here in Mo. and it was sooooo slow. Finally broke down and got wild blue and love it. We have a lady line cause NO ONE gets a signal here with a cell phone.

  12. You all have made me very grateful for something I take for granted. When we built our house in a semi-rural area 5 miles south of town, I researched Internet providers and found my only choice was Charter because the tall pine trees that surround me prevented signals from reaching us and upgrades to relay stations were way in the future. Charter seemed an expensive alternative but I’m thrilled with what we get: fast internet, good phone service, and TV that isn’t interrupted by storms. A friend outside Charter’s area would pay any price for that . He’s a HAM radio hobbyist and his only solution to get Internet service was to convince an Internet provider whose boundaries ended nearby, to use his tall radio tower for a relay station. He gets internet service and they got access to other customers in his neighborhood.

    • Does your friend live in my neighborhood? 🙂 Several ranches down, there’s a guy with a ham radio tower. An internet company in a nearby town provides service to a local business and needed to boost their signal so they are using his tower and they’re coming Friday to install internet for us. It will be a backup (or it may end up being primary) but we have to have some relief.

  13. Spotty service is not just an issue for remote locations. Two years ago when we were driving from VA to AZ, we stopped in a good-sized town for the night. While trying to check into a motel, I called my husband on my cell phone to let him know our choices of available rooms. Verizon did not work. The clerk told me Verizon was not available in the motel. Say what??? Needless to say, we left and found a different motel. How do you block cell phone service in a building in a large town?

    • That is weird, unless it was something about the hotel that stopped all cell service from coming in and they had a booster for AT&T. Here, no one’s phone works inside the house unless we add their number to the microcell. When visiting my friend near Houston, they also have to have a microcell because of insulation in their roof and even standing by a window, without being added to their microcell, I had no service inside the house.

  14. I know it is frustrating, and it sounds expensive. If I were living there, I’d be without service because of the cost. I hope one of the companies comes through for you soon!

  15. I feel your pain. We are in the same boat. We have two choices here, a local family run company and Verizon. If you choose Verizon be prepared to bend over (sorry) because they stick it to you with overages and fees. The family run company is no better. “Mama” answers the phone and does not have one ounce of customer service in her body. She talks over you and generally blames every issue on the user. Today she told me (after I called for the fifth time in a few weeks) that maybe I should choose a different provider since I wasn’t happy with what they were giving me. I said maybe they should improve their service! Then she said that the issue was my fault, but I kept telling her that ever since she did an update to whatever it was there to update, I have been having issues. She finally transferred me to a tech (probably son #2) and lo and behold, it was something on their end! All this lovely service for $80.00 a month!

  16. I fought the same problem since I first got a computer back in 1995! We lived in the boonies and I even tried to get a dsl from the phone company, but “we didn’t have the proper phone lines going down our road”. Satellite was iffy at best, and if it rained, forget it. Finally got a “hotspot” from Verizon that cost as much as satellite, but at least worked a little better. A year and a half ago I sold my beautiful log home in the country (and yes, pick your poison), and moved into a small house in the city -same day as the movers were leaving, cable internet came out and installed my internet, phone service and tv. And I’m close to all the cell towers, so cell phone always works. Trade off: neighbors on top of each other, and noise. Don’t know why we can’t have it both ways: quiet country living and cell and internet service, but I guess that would be “someday”.

    • It seems there are always trade offs and I guess as we get older, we accept that some things, we just cannot have and have to decide what’s worth which sacrifices.

  17. I had a “Green Acres” flashback when you mentioned climbing the pole to use the phone. I can just see the modern version where they are sitting on top of the pole with a laptop… Not having dependable internet would be a definite downside of living in the boonies! Sorry you are having problems.

  18. Judy, I feel for you. We are in the same boat, only with satellite internet and it’s so limited. We could never in a million years watch Netflix or any other video service or we would be over our limit. People just down the road can get broad band, but we don’t have line of sight. We do have a land line because cell service is very erratic. Only Verizon works sort of works here, people with AT&T are out of luck! Yes, we choose to live here in northern Idaho, but I sure do wish we could get better internet and cell service!

    • I don’t even think we can get a land line here. I thought that was something every household in this country could get but the last time we checked, it wasn’t an option.

  19. I also use a microcell. I just learned they have to be registered every year to work reliably. Even though it wasn’t registered I could still connect. It was just poor signal.

  20. Same thing here only a year or two ago they magically installed a cell tower so we get cell service. No TV, or Internet movies or anything fancy though. I don’t care though. We’ve lived here for 15 years so I’m used to it. Now water. That’s a whole other story. Our well has lines of iron and sulphur feeding into it. Nasty. I miss good tasting water. I grew up with an artesian well that tasted great. I miss that.

  21. No land line here and we had no cell service until a company asked if they could put a cell tower up on the ranch. When we moved here, there was a phone in the house, but it was a radio phone that was run from a box about 200 yards from the house. It was analog and once everything changed to digital, it no longer worked. No other options.
    Our only option for Internet and tv is satellite. The internet won’t allow us to stream anything either so no Netflix. And yes, we run out of bandwidth on a regular basis.
    Still, I wouldn’t change living out here for anything and I imagine you feel the same way. Doesn’t mean we can’t whine and grumble a little though! I’d be whining a lot more if I had to live in town!

  23. Judy, our son, in Redding, CA has poor Verizon reception at his home out in the country. Just last week he purchased something called “WeBoost”. It boost his cell phone signal to totally clarity. I can hear him now when he calls. I don’t know anything about WeBoost, but maybe it would help your situation. As for internet. We have a local wireless service that bounces a signal off a tower about 12 miles NW from our home. It’s called CDS Wireless and it was some brainstorm idea from some Ham Radio operators years ago. It has worked for us. Unlimited Data which is great, and about 5gb for streaming Netflix, and Amazon prime. About $75 a month. We have no other internet resources except Wild Blue satellite which we tried briefly, and it was too expensive. We use our internet a lot. We have lived here for over 50 yrs. Way before internet service was a consideration. We had AOL landline years ago with our first computer. I wouldn’t live anywhere without internet service nowadays as we do so much online. Including ordering our meds. and a lot of Amazon shopping. I do wish everyone had reasonable access to the internet.

  24. We have a microcell with ATandT. Our bandwidth is 1Mbps or less. Frustrating as…can’t think about playing a Utube video. we keep bugging them, but don’t see a change in our future. Why would they spend that kind of money for just a hundred people? Our house dips down to the lake, we can get a 2bar signal at the top of the driveway. At our rental (where the hubby is working) 2 hours from here, even MORE remote, we have 8-9Mbps, (?!) and a cell tower a mile from us. LOVE IT. But, Verizon doesn’t work there either. If we ever move, that will be at the top of the list, for sure. Of course, a friend who just bought a house 12 or so miles from the rental asked about Internet, and they said “sure, great internet,” bought the house and found out they could get NONE. Nice.

  25. Really the most important thing is to have service in times of emergency. That’s all I’d be worried about. Crappy internet service is a major pain in the butt! I can attest to that and I live in the city. I think with the proximity to Detroit here in Windsor ON, only separated by a river a mile wide and we live 1 block from the river, that service companies get confused as to what country we are in. Many times I’ve had to call our cell phone provider and get them to remove the roaming charges. I’ve also heard that people here have called 911 on their cell phones and received a Detroit operator and not a Windsor one. That could be very dangerous! The good and the bad, it doesn’t seem to matter where you live.

  26. We have directv for our tv, which is pretty reliable. We have HughesNet for our internet. It’s pretty reliable, except for bad storms. We “like” it (not really, but when you’re limited as to what you can get, it’s the best of the worst.) because it has a daily download limit, vs monthly. That way we know it will reset each day. We can’t watch a lot of videos, but so be it. We have Straight Talk cell service, which we are quite pleased with. They just increased us to 5GB/month. I still would rather this than living in a city/suburb. LOL!