New house no internet.

galdon

I recently moved to a different part of town, owning a house now instead of renting. The house is nice and in a quiet neighborhood.

What I was not aware of, is that some places are not serviced by the main broadband or cable companies, and that my new home is one of those places.

Even worse; my house is the second house on the street coming off a larger road that has service. and several blocks down my street also has service.

I don't know of many options, I've heard horrible things about Hughesnet, ping that makes online gaming impossible, as well as an effective data limit of a mere 6 Gigabytes a month.

At present, I boosted my share everything data plan with verizon to 10 gigs and bought a jetpack to connect with my computer, It's better than satalite but my hobbies and entertainment both depend on the internet.

So, I am wondering, what are my options here? are there lesser known companies I can call to see if they will provide service? Or is there a way effectively request that the service providers expand to fill in the hole in service?

Jasconius

If you live in certain rural places... you can sometimes con the ISPs to dig lines to your house

Unlikely, but possible

Enc

Yes, ideally you will contact the local provider and they will run liens to your house depending upon the amount of return for them. If you are the second house down and own your home, you probably can get service. You might have to pay a portion of the work to connect the lines, but in most cases I've seen the company will do it for free if you sign up for a long term contract.

Enc

Also: if you are in a city it may be compulsory of the company to provide service by their agreement with the municipality. Many cities lobby for total coverage and you may just need to bring it up. Check with your city hall to find out.

SammyF

Definitely contact your local cable companies/service providers and talk to them about the feasibility of running service through your neighborhood. Not only will this benefit you in the short term, in the long-term it will improve the resale value of your house.

Generally the kitchen is supposed to the the primary place to invest because you statistically get the best ROI for your remodeling costs, but in the 21st century, I think high speed internet might be the one thing to prioritize just a little bit higher.

matt has a problem

Hughesnet is an absolute joke. An overpriced joke to boot. Look into DSL honestly, with so many people on cable it's nowhere near as bogged down as it was ten years ago. We have it through AT&T at work, 1up/3down, and it rivals my Comcast broadband at home for speed.

galdon

how would I go about talking to the person I need to for negotiating an expansion to include my house? the normal reps I get on the phone just tell me the computer says no and they don't know when that may change.

@Matt: I tried DSL, Verizon and ATT both say I'm not in their coverage zone.

Enc

Climb the management ladder at the phone line, or look up their construction wing's number on their website (usually these companies have directories on their top level corporate, non-consumer sites), or go down to the local office in person and ask for more information and don't leave until you have a number, or contact your local municipality and see who is in charge of utilities growth and development (that office likely will know who makes that call as well).

Riboflavin

You might try contacting business instead of residential service?

Different state but we had a commercial customer outside of coverage who was not satisfied with satellite internet. We contacted the cable company and negotiated a fee for them to dig a line. Mind you it was only about 100 yards and I wasn't the one who negotiated the fee so I can't say what they agreed to.

mightyjongyo

re: DSL - Is earthlink still around? My family used it for a short bit of time, they may cover your area.

hsu

galdon wrote: »

Even worse; my house is the second house on the street coming off a larger road that has service. and several blocks down my street also has service.

Call up your local DSL or cable company and try to talk to someone in person. Explain how you are just one house away from a service block. They might just string up a new line for you. That's what happened to me, and I was a block and a half away.

If your DSL or cable provider runs lines in the air, they tend to be far more amenable to the idea than if they string the lines underground.

Great Scott

Who is your local phone provider? DSL should definitely be an option unless it's a range issue. It's entirely possible that Verizon/ATT won't offer DSL, but the copper is in the ground and it could be as simple as changing your phone provider to one that will provide DSL.

That said, if Cable service is available less than a mile away, there should be a way to get that cable extended. You might have to contact the small business department of the cable company to make this happen, though.

fightinfilipino

dslreports.com / broadbandreports.com is a great site to look up local ISPs, and find out alternatives besides the big guys like Verizon and AT&T.

Tox

Check AT&T/Verizon for FiOS. It's...insanely better than cable.

galdon

@fightinfilipino those sites turned up no results for my house. The only results for my zip code were places I'd already tried.

@Tox: I had called them already with no luck.

Time warner said they will send someone to re-survey the area in a few days before the weekend. Don't know when they will actually do it.

godmode

fightinfilipino wrote: »

dslreports.com / broadbandreports.com is a great site to look up local ISPs, and find out alternatives besides the big guys like Verizon and AT&T.

With that said, it is common for the smaller ISPs to piggyback off of the main providers' lines, so I think an infrastructure change would go through the company that owns the lines anyway.

antherem

@galdon
Get a copy of your municipality's franchise agreement with the cable operator (if you have a city or town representative they'll be able to get this for you.) It will say something about population density thresholds; at a certain number of potential-subscribers-per-square-mile the cable operator may be required per their contract with your municipality to extend service. Also see if the representative can provide you with a coverage map, so that you can see where coverage stops and use the power of Google Maps to see if this might work for you. Even if the cable operator isn't contractually obligated to extend it for free, based on density and miles of cable required to connect you they may have a term in the contract where it can be prorated down to a reasonable extension amount (which you can then split among neighbors too!)

If you still feel that you're being treated unfairly, you can go "up the ladder" to the county or state agency (I'm making an assumption that you're in the United States) that deals with public services or utilities. Your congressperson is possibly also an option, they will at least be able to let you know places to contact.

Don't be immediately discouraged, this can take weeks or months to resolve.