Verizon as a whole house internet provider

We live in a rural area where our only option for internet is satellite. There are no cable providers. Since FSN has been pulled from Dish, I would like to cut the cord but I have very little options it seems.

The only thing I can think of is to increase our Verizon data (that we use with our existing cell phones) to unlimited and then buy some boosters in the house for wifi, using laptops, tablets, etc

Does anyone use Verizon as their sole internet provider? Can you stream movies? Use Hulu plus or similar? Does the speed slow down at some point or stay consistent?

Thanks,

I think it depends on how good of service you have at your place. I use Charter for my internet service but from time to time it will abruptly go out. In those cases I have been able to turn on the hotspot with my phone and connect my console via WiFi with no trouble streaming Netflix, YouTube etc. etc. If you can I’d suggest turning on your phone’s hotspot, link your laptop to it and test out a streaming service just to see what the performance is like.

When I signed up for T-Mobile the salesperson said that she uses her phone as a hotspot for all of her internet and tv streaming service.

I opted out of the HD streaming service but I can tell you that my standard streaming is pretty questionable. It seems to depend more on the location vs actual signal strength on my phone. It’s as if the tower isn’t give me enough bandwidth to stream. I can have a strong LTE signal in one place and simply can’t stream at all. Then I can have 1 bar of LTE close to the city and stream anything I want.

I don’t get it.

I’d say read the fine print in the contract around unlimited. There’s something in there that says something like: “After x GB of data used, bandwidth may be ‘prioritized’ to other users” or some crap.

Basically, it’s unlimited data in the sense that it’s impossible to incur overages. However, you don’t get unlimited full bandwidth 4G LTE.

We switched to unlimited awhile back for verizon and it may be total conjecture, but our speed overall seems to have decreased quite a bit. If you do watch a lot of tv/stream a lot of movies I’d be worried about getting throttled back for a good portion of the month.

philtickelson wrote:

I’d say read the fine print in the contract around unlimited. There’s something in there that says something like: “After x GB of data used, bandwidth may be ‘prioritized’ to other users” or some crap.

Basically, it’s unlimited data in the sense that it’s impossible to incur overages. However, you don’t get unlimited full bandwidth 4G LTE.

We switched to unlimited awhile back for verizon and it may be total conjecture, but our speed overall seems to have decreased quite a bit. If you do watch a lot of tv/stream a lot of movies I’d be worried about getting throttled back for a good portion of the month.

This is 100% correct and the salesperson disclosed this with us very openly. I would guess this is true for every unlimited consumer plan.

I’ll add that my unlimited data plan limits streaming resolution to 480p. Fine on an 8-inch phone screen, not so much on a 60″ tv.

We tried using our “unlimited” cellular Verizon plan at the cabin for streaming. We burned through the first 15 Gig of data pretty quick and after that, it slowed to a crawl to point it was worthless. No chance of streaming after you’ve used your 15 Gig of data.

Do you have a phone line and access to DSL? That’s what we use now. We have it through CenturyLink. It’s 10 Mbps service for $45/month. It works great for streaming at least one device at a time with no interruptions for us yet. We’ve done limited streaming of 2 devices at a time with no issues so far as well.

Verizon throttles their data once you use 10gb when tethering. It will be worthless after that.

Are you sure you can’t get DSL? How recently have you checked?

Grouse

Well, that backs up / confirms Verizon would not work for this. My wife said she heard the same thing, that the speed would throttle back at some point.

As for DSL, it is confusing. Our neighbors have some type of DSL hub and so they have it. But for some reason when we looked into it 5 years ago it was not an option for us. Might have to re-check that…. seems like our only hope other than satellite.

Thanks,

Yeah, I’d check into DSL again. If you have a land line, I’d be shocked if they didn’t offer some type of DSL service. It isn’t screaming fast, but often times good enough for internet work and some streaming.

I would also read fine print regarding the ability to mirror your phone screen to your TV set, lots of providers are taking that capability away because it allows folks to basically get cable tv without paying for the cable tv service…

I would check with century link again. We are in wealthwood and they told me their circuits were full(couple years ago). However they have been doing system upgrades and their capacity and speeds have increased. Also mille lacs electric will be running fiber internet in the area soon.