Internet Provider Options

DouglasDanger

My wife and I are moving. We have lived for the past three months with my sister-in-law and her boyfriend and our niece. We are moving to a small town in rural northeast Pennsylvania(USA). We want to get internet and TV. I don't watch a lot of TV, and my wife watches some shows on NBC and Fox. I enjoy playing vidjagames on the internets, so I want a fast but affordable connection. In the area, there are few options. Satellite, cable, and Verizon FIOS.

We had Comcast before we moved (we used to live near Lancaster, PA) and didn't really have anything to complain about. Comcast has yet to... infiltrate? this part of the state, so that isn't an option.

My parents have sat TV, I think DirectTV, and had it when I was growing up. My sister-in-law also has sat TV, I think hers is Dish. I think it is OK. I don't know anything about internet via sat. How reliable is it? My parents used to lose their TV service at times, although that was a few years ago.

I don't know anything about fios. One of the guys I used to work with in Lancaster had it and bitched about it constantly. He paid something like 100 dollars a month for fios internet and wasn't getting the speeds he was paying for.

Does anyone have an opinion on sat. internet? What about FIOS?

Thank you.

MushroomStick

I would get Fios in a heartbeat.

The thing about satellite is that they'll have an installer at your house within the next couple of hours, even if its christmas morning during a blizzard. Unfortunately the customer service takes a sharp drop from there - It took me a year and a police report to finally get Directv to cancel my old account (they kept reopening it every few months even though I had sent back all the equipment and paid a bill labeled "this is your final bill"). They also keep credit card info on file forever - like say your friend was late and gave you the cash to phone in a payment with your card, don't do it, if your friend ever misses a payment again they will charge your card again.

Jimmy King

We've got FiOS for our office at work and I have no complaints about it whatsoever. Most people I know who have it are really happy with it. I do know two people who it has been a total mess for, but that was more our local Verizon office's fault than FiOS itself.

TheDragon

If you're just going to catch a couple shows on NBC and Fox, try an antenna. I got this indoor antenna and it worked great for me: "RCA ANT1650 Flat Digital Amplified Indoor TV Antenna": http://www.amazon.com/RCA-ANT1650-Digital-Amplified-Antenna/dp/B0027FGW3K/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1294102805&sr=8-1

I get 30 channels, most are digital including CBS, NBC, Fox, ABC and more in HD. Be sure to first look online for a map of over the air broadcast locations and see that you get the channels you want in your area.

DouglasDanger

Thanks for the tips guys. The local cable company is the only one that doesn't make you sign a contract and it is also the best value, so we are going with that. If it is bad, we could go with something else after a few months. We are hoping to find a house within a year, so we will probably move again. No contract is a good thing.

Arrath

Speaking from personal experience, Satellite internet is utterly worthless for gaming. The best ping return I ever got was in the 400ms range. And when I was on HughesNet they had some very restrictive bandwidth caps. 200megs/down per day during peak hours, and the same for off-peak. Past that you'd get throttled down to sub-dialup speeds. If you ran over one of the caps, there was a fair chance it would take a day or two to get back to normal speeds.

It sucked, horribly.

Sarcastro

If you were a little more hardcore on the internets usage, I'd say Fios. The potential there is outstanding. But as is, cable will serve 99% of all your needs at a great rate. Solid bang for your buck.