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