Internet Access article in the Library

Hi all.  I'm totally new to RVing and all of this.  We're still in the phase of deciding how it will work so we're a little ways off.  I joined your forums today to learn more about what's available and to learn from the collective wisdom of all of you. 

That said, I'm a computer consultant who travels a lot for work.  We've moved 15 times in 17 years of marriage, some times multiple times within a single year.  We are seriously considering going full time in a fifth wheel so I can always be near my family.  What I'll need, however, is reliable high-speed internet access for when I work from home.  I'm just started logging our internet traffic in our home (where it's unrestricted and "free") to see how much we use on average.  I look at the 20gb limits and 500ms latency of the satellite route and cringe, and the cost-prohibitive options via mifi based on overall traffic scares me. 

This brings me to my point.  While I weigh all the things I've read in multiple places, I read the articles listed on the library and it's woefully out of date.  Cingular closed as a company in 2007, no one supports unlimited data anymore, and from what I understand, the companies offering satellite service are dwindling (linky).  I'd offer to fix it myself but I'm still a newbie, and I see a ton of the same questions getting asked.  Can someone with some know-how revise that?  I know that I would have been greatly helped by that and if I would have been, so will others.

Thank you. 

The key word there is traveling. If you want to travel and use a lot of bandwidth it will cost you plenty. Your best bet is a more permanent site since hard wired Internet is dirt cheap and unlimited by comparison. Then do your traveling by car and motel.

You're right that some of those articles are out of date, including mine   We'll take a look at updating them, thanks for the nudge.

Satellite internet has been almost completely replaced with cellular, unless you need to be able to get online everywhere.  There are places where RVers like to go that have no, or poor, cell data service.  Campground WiFi internet varies from very good to unusable.  If you can live without streaming video and do large file transfers at coffee shops and libraries, then cellular is the best option.  If you're planning staying in one place for several months, then often you can get internet from the local cable company or telco, if the park is wired for it.

I'm fortunate in having an unlimited data plan grandfathered from Verizon, but know that even it will eventually go away.  Even so, during our summer stays in Milwaukee, we get Time-Warner cable service for the 3 months stay.

The hard thing for us is that we're a gaming/nerd family so we've all got all kinds of gadgets and computery bits around.  We have 5 handheld gaming systems, two playstations, three xboxes, three tablets, two laptops, and two full-size computer towers. 

We just found out two weeks ago that we're not yet moving to Nashville, but that may still be on the horizon.  Since I'm a total newbie, how does one pick a decent RV park and then find cable internet service?  We've been DirecTV customers since 2000 so that's a no-brainer for us, but we're open to all kinds of internet.  I was on a 10-month contract in Memphis while my family was here in Orlando, and I ran DSL there via Uverse (60mb/s) while we have Brighthouse (grr) here at 90mb/s. 

Also, how do you manage the contract with the local provider?  I assume it would be better if I owned my own modem.  Heck, Woot had them on sale today.

Really, we have been renting for so long that we've easily wasted well beyond the cost of a brick and mortar home.  We'd just like to have a home that we can take with us when the next long-term contract (12-18 mos) arrives and do some nearby travelling when available.

With the usage that you have described I think you will need to find an RV park that has a broadband provider that you can subscribe to individually--and you will want to check it out before committing. Realistically you won't find an RV park with included Wifi that will handle anything close to what you are looking for.

While on the road itself you will need some sort of mobile data plan and likewise adjust usage accordingly.




Mike

The last thing I would want to be is the harbinger of unacceptable news because I always believe the glass is half full. However...

I have spent the last five years on the road, full time, in a motorhome, managing a large infrastructure of software and hardware in a government contract. I have not been in my office in five years.

I have accomplished that using both AT&T and Verizon MiFi's, and an occasional park wifi or hardline. My first comment is, you have to pay to play. No way around it.  End of story. The upside of that is that I get to be where I want, doing what I want, when I want, and I find the cost tradeoff very much worth it. What's your family time worth?

That being said, you have elected to be in the stratosphere of bandwidth consumption by virtue of your equipment. No problem with that at all, but... you won't find satisfaction at that level without a hardwire connection and I have been in one park in five years where that was available. I have been in parks where you could pay all the connections fees and have your own phone service at the pedestal, but that was pretty rare.

The RV lifestyle is all about compromise. We run two laptops, a MacBook, two iPhones, and an iPad but we don't stream often, but we Skype grandkids and conduct all our personal and corporate business online. We have adapted to not streaming Netflix, U-verse, or Directv, but find we really don't need all that in the final analysis.

The adage that there is more than one way to skin a cat is certainly pertinent here and I think you will have to get creative and figure what you HAVE to have and what you WANT to have and how that makes your life work.

Our final analysis was that whatever it took to stay out on the road, we'd pay it gladly. Life's too short. After five years, it is a cheap price to pay for this much fun!

Good luck with your analysis and final resolution!

Kim

Call the parks in the area you want to stay in and ask what, if any, internet service is available.  It might be DSL from the local telco or cable internet from the local cable provider.  If cable, then I would get your own modem, we have a Motorola SB6141 that we use with TWC in the summer.  The first year we rented from TWC and it was such a pain to cancel the service and return the modem, I just bought one on Amazon.  TWC, at least, offers month-to-month service with no long term contract.  We turn it on in June and off at the end of August.

Kim,

This is why I'm tracking our data for the next month to see what it looks like.  We already know what house we want and will likely purchase it in a couple of months, but we want to be certain that we can make room for whatever we need, data included.  I was considering a couple MiFi accounts and weighing allowing the company who currently manages my contracts to pay for one of them.  We'll have to see what we get.

That said, I think that your path is exactly what I'll need.  We are going to take some time to pare down our stuff and that will include our devices.

Ned,

When in a single location, I think your option will work best for us.

ShepFam said:

Cingular closed as a company in 2007, no one supports unlimited data anymore,

Click to expand...

Cingular was always AT&T which is still very much in business.. Some FCC rules changed (a bad change in my opinion) so AT&T brought it back under the main name.

Sprint claims unlimited data
T-Moble still does unlimited but they throttle after the first 10 gigs.. Still you do not get gob smacked with a thousand dollar overage bill at the end of the month.

So yes, some updating does need to be done.

(Of course sprint's "Unlimited"comes with almost no towers to connect to compared to T-mobile which has only a tiny fraction of what AT&T and Verizon have).

We are always looking for volunteers to write or update library articles.  Wanna help?

Some of mine need updating, and I have a short list of new ones I would like to write, but I'd rather go RVing...

John,

Okay, okay. 

Cingular, which was its own entity from 2000-ish through 2007-ish was bought by AT&T's wireless division when AT&T was eating up telecom companies all over.  I know because I worked in telecom for a while.  AT&T rebranded itself as Cingular and then in mid 2007 started phasing itself back to AT&T when ppl started to forget that they're a huge telecom company (how?) and they could seem like some young upstart or something.  So yeah, Cingular still exists.  In the same way that Pontiac is still a car company because GM still makes cars.

I've had Sprint. We did that for four or five years and finally dropped it when I couldn't get calls on my business phone because my home was in an area that may or may not have coverage depending on the position of the heavenly bodies or how much grass was growing on the side of my fence or something.  Maybe it was a bunch of moths that got in the way of the signal.  Either way, I don't trust them. 

I love our AT&T service, but I'm getting nailed on a 10gb "family" plan now and for some reason Verizon's normally more-expensive-than-erry1 model is less expensive on a data only plan. 

Day 1 stats are in and we're averaging 300MB.  Not too shabby.  Let's see how it looks in 4 weeks.

Gary,

I hear you.  I do documentation for work and it's always an uphill battle.  I'd help but I know very little about RVing.  Heck, that's why I joined.    When I get some experience under my belt and wreck/repair a few things I'll be happy to help out!

I signed with AT&T, then suddenly it was singular, then AT&T again.. The reason for the name changes has more to do with FCC rules than anything else.. The FCC used to be concerned with folks getting a monolopy so they enforced anti-monolopy rules... That means that no single party could, for example, control all the radio, television, AND newspapers in a given town.

Today.. Many towns,, that condition exists due to relaxing of the anti-monolopy rules

Same applies to telecommunications.. AT&T just purchased DirecTV it seems giving them both Cable and Satellite delivery (They already own a cable company) and again,, not all that long ago the FCC and the SEC both would have nixed that buyout/merger.

Though I have to honor FCC rules.. .It really ticks me off that Big Money is getting away with the FCC equivalent of murder.

Somehow I don't think the FCC was misled by a name change. They may be bureaucrats, but I think they know who's who in the wireless business. And the company held the same share of the wireless market regardless of the name they put on their banner.  It was all about brand recognition, purely marketing.

Just my $0.02...

John,

We did the same thing (AT&T, Cingular, then AT&T).  We swapped to Sprint after we played the iPhone game, and upgraded to Android.  Now on Windows Phone we're back at AT&T and really like the service.  I'll probably just do the Verizon mifi as a standalone account.

I know all about the anti-monopoly/anti-trust laws.  I worked for Lucent which was forcibly broken free from AT&T due to those laws.  Other companies broken free were Bell Labs, and NCR.

We'll see how long this new merger lasts.  I have DirecTV service and AT&T so we'll see what they do.  I know that both Sprint and Verizon are working on TV via cellular technology so that may not be far down the road. 

In other news, I just heard that I'm likely to be in DC for 3 weeks.  That would be a great trip with my family as we'd have Fri-Sun to ourselves.  But, no RV yet.