Staying for the week at an AirBnB in Rochester, MN. This is what I just found out I'm stuck with.

Flying Squid@lemmy.world to Mildly Infuriating@lemmy.world – 489 points –

How is this even possible in 2024? I realize Rochester isn't exactly a major metropolis, but we're in the middle of town! It's not like they're relying on Hughesnet or something.

Also, it's not that they're cheaping out on us either. The owners live upstairs. This is a duplex.

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This is your ISP's pricing list:

https://www.radiolinkinternet.com/Plans.html

$55

15mbps down / 5mbps up

$65

22mbps down / 7mbps up

$85

30mbps down / 10mbps up

Call

-other speeds up to 1000mbps Wireless are available-

They're a rural fixed wireless provider. I don't understand why they would try to serve the middle of the town.

I would personally consider getting a refund, but the hotels there aren't that much better for speeds. The city /does/ have good internet access available, i don't understand why nobody purchases it :(

Holy highway robbery.

It is and it isn't, those are pretty standard fixed wireless rates. It's largely used in pretty rural areas where you wouldn't be able to get fiber or cable or often even DSL. They compete against things like hughesnet that's more expensive and has something like a 15gb data cap. Or starlink for $150 a month and $500 of equipment and the weight on your soul of giving Elon money.

They often run wireless backhauls for tens of miles across multiple towers so bandwidth is pretty limited and setup and maintenance is somewhat specialized. Like yeah if you can get cable or fiber do that it's way better. But when there's no other option is not that bad all things considered.

Its still expensive. I get better speeds from 5g/LTE. I live in very rural farm town usa. My LTE is through T-Mobile for $45/mo and average speeds of 80x20mpbs. Peaks around 200mbps down and 180upload.

I do have the antenna pointed directly at the tower above the tree line.

Wave form antenna kit - $400 Spitz modem - $400 But my only alternative was starlink so the ROI on this setup was real fast compared. I also have a Verizon simcard as a hot fail over. But that Sim is data capped. I work from home in IT so I need the Internets.

Ive thought about side hustling my setup and selling it to my neighbors. But it would just congest my tower more... Lol

Often they serve areas where there's basically no cell coverage. That's why we used them when we did after trying a number of antennas and boosters. We've had neighbors put up 12m towers in conjunction with the WISP to get service.

I don't get it either. I am doing a little better tethering my notebook to my phone using the local data, although I don't think it's 5G. Unfortunately, I have an iPhone and a Linux notebook and I can't seem to figure out a way to get the notebook to connect to the iPhone via WiFi. I can only use it tethered via USB. Which means that if I want to go into another room and not lose internet, I need to carry them both around. Annoying, but at least the internet is faster. I should have thought of it earlier.

This is bizarre, I looked and Rochester Minnesota has multiple high speed providers, including two that offer fiber.

And the isp you have is a wireless isp that doesn't even list Rochester as within its coverage area, they're intended to serve more rural areas west of the city. On their map it gets close to but not quite in Rochester, but maybe they're still able to access it (slowly) since it's a wireless provider.

I'm guessing this is a whoever owns your Airbnb problem rather than a Rochester Minnesota problem. I don't understand why they would be paying for this rather than use any of the readily available high speed options there.