Off the beaten path?

Steph in MT · #1 01/12/12, 12:44 PM

Howdy all~
My husband and I were talking the other night and he was asking me how many people on this board lived reeeeeaaaaalllly off the beaten path. I told him there are thousands of folks here so I'm sure some do. His dream would be to live miles and miles from any sort of civilization. Currently we live just 12 miles out from a small rural town. His main question was, to those that live way out in the boonies, how do you access the internet?

I told him I would ask...

Steph

sassafras manor · #2 01/12/12, 01:29 PM

We are 6 miles from a town of 700 and we do not have a phone line where we are and use satellite for internet access.

olivehill · #3 01/12/12, 01:40 PM

Hughes Net is all we can get where we're at.

sirquack · #4 01/12/12, 02:37 PM

I live about 8 miles from the closest thing I would call a city, but the phone company was nice enough to put in phone lines that run run across the front of my property. So I can get DSL (up to about 12 MB line speed) like most people in the city.
It is due to them having a lot of rural customers in our general area. So they laid down the lines when they were putting in the roads.

unioncreek · #5 01/12/12, 03:09 PM

Off the beaten path depends on who you talk to. I consider it being on a road whether it's private or public that gets very little traffic.

Bobg

Old Vet · #6 01/12/12, 03:21 PM

I live 8 miles from a town with 32 people and about 15 miles from a town with 1000 people. I live on a road that only gets 3 cars a day in the off season and one of of the cars is a mail man. I get DSL form my telephone people. I am the last one on this road but most all telephone companies are getting DSL in rural areas to be in compliance with the rules they live under.

sisterpine · #7 01/12/12, 03:31 PM

I think most places that are way off away from towns, like in the wilds of Alaska, Montana, North Dakota and such places get their internet via satellite. It is not great but sure is better than having no net during the long winters! Course when we broke something during the winter the tech would not come up to replace the modem as he was afraid to ride a snowmobile the 7 miles from parking to our house LOL

Ozarks Tom · #8 01/12/12, 03:58 PM

We're at the end of 1 1/2 miles of gravel road, 8 miles from anything you could call a highway. If you end up in my driveway you either had good directions, or you've been lost for a half hour. Luckily, the phone service for the entire area comes up from the valley in front of us, almost to our front door. We don't have a land line, but do use the DSL.

pheasantplucker · #9 01/12/12, 04:34 PM

Thing is...IMO it's not so much about being away from other folks as it is being self reliant, and using what you have to learn and grow. My wife and I are about 4.5 miles from the nearest town (of about 100 people)...We're about 25 miles from the nearest truly big town. I like being away from people but I don't think it's absolutely necessary for one to think of themselves as a homesteader...

geo in mi · #10 01/12/12, 04:44 PM

I can truthfully say I live OFF the beaten path. I live about one third of a mile away from I-94 between Detroit and Chicago.......now, that's a beaten path, truck after truck. Only quiet at midnight Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve.

I-94 noise is my barometer of the nation's economy.......

geo

big rockpile · #11 01/12/12, 06:11 PM

When after years we got Electric we got Hughes Net.Then after we got Phone Service and we had New Lines we were able to get DSL unlike the people that had Phone for years because they had the Old Line.

big rockpile

wvstuck · #12 01/12/12, 06:22 PM

We are too far out for telephone lines, it is 35 minutes from here to a one gas station town. One way in and one way out sorta thing. But because we are on a ridge we get really good cellular service for some reason. We use an AT&T MiFi for wireless Internet. 5 gigs a month for $50.00 - It is very fast compared to satellite if you are lucky enough to catch a cell signal where you are.

ErinP · #13 01/12/12, 06:23 PM

To me, "boonies" means anything where you're too far out for mail to be delivered daily...

When we lived on ranches like that, we had dialup internet. However, were we there now, I'd probably have Hughes Net like I do here.

Steph in MT · #14 01/12/12, 07:21 PM

Thanks everyone!
It sounds like satellite is the option for when you live where the phone lines end.

For now living 12 miles out of a town of 1100 is gonna be what our life is but maybe once we retire and have gotten real good of providing most of what we need to live, we can explore really getting out there. Ya never know where life is going to take you!

Steph

oregon woodsmok · #15 01/12/12, 08:17 PM

Please point out to your husband that if you are homesteading that it is possible to have farm related accidents. If it is serious, you have to consider how long it will take to get medical help.

The older you get, the more important that becomes. If you buy a homestead, I assume the plan would be to stay put and not move again. That means you will end up old at some point.

How long do you want to wait for an ambulance if hubby has a heart attack? How long to get to the hospital? At least discuss it with him. If you've got children, you might have to override his desire to live where it would take 12 hours to get your child to a doctor when he gets kicked in the head by a horse.

chewie · #16 01/12/12, 10:13 PM

hehe, we were part of an experiement, they put fiber optics in our area years ago--before some others I know in much bigger areas! sorry, not much help to you!

Steph in MT · #17 01/13/12, 11:07 AM

All good points and we have talked about them.

There are no kids, but true, we're not getting younger either. It's a trade-off living close to medical care or living somewhere we (think we would) really enjoy. All stuff to consider for sure.
Take care~
Steph

Quote:

Originally Posted by oregon woodsmok

Please point out to your husband that if you are homesteading that it is possible to have farm related accidents. If it is serious, you have to consider how long it will take to get medical help.

The older you get, the more important that becomes. If you buy a homestead, I assume the plan would be to stay put and not move again. That means you will end up old at some point.

How long do you want to wait for an ambulance if hubby has a heart attack? How long to get to the hospital? At least discuss it with him. If you've got children, you might have to override his desire to live where it would take 12 hours to get your child to a doctor when he gets kicked in the head by a horse.

big rockpile · #18 01/13/12, 11:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by oregon woodsmok

Please point out to your husband that if you are homesteading that it is possible to have farm related accidents. If it is serious, you have to consider how long it will take to get medical help.

The older you get, the more important that becomes. If you buy a homestead, I assume the plan would be to stay put and not move again. That means you will end up old at some point.

How long do you want to wait for an ambulance if hubby has a heart attack? How long to get to the hospital? At least discuss it with him. If you've got children, you might have to override his desire to live where it would take 12 hours to get your child to a doctor when he gets kicked in the head by a horse.

Yea it took 1 1/2 Hours just to get Medical to me and that long to get to an Ambulance one time.Fire department or Law Enforcement couldn't get back in there.

big rockpile

Dusky Beauty · #19 01/13/12, 02:30 PM

The downside to satellite internet is not the lack of speed (which drives me batty, down is ok but up is slower than dial up.) But the price (90$ a month half an hour away from Phoenix) and the content limits. You are corralled in to a cap of internet volume you can use each month. When we had it the teenagers had a brilliant idea to watch streaming TV shows for 3 days straight one summer and we couldn't use the internet for 3 months until it "refreshed" our cap amount.
Wild Blue (Hughesnet competitor) we caught in the act falsifying our usage to lock us into the highest cap and it's rate.

We now use something called "wireless broadband"-- it doesn't hold a candle to DSL or Cable, but its decently quick, steady up/down speed, unlimited per month @ $50, and is available to anyone in line of sight of the antenna on the mountaintop.

The entire point of internet in the country is to bring the world's knowledge and entertainment to you. What good is it if you aren't allowed to see more than a certain amount a month?

braggscowboy · #20 01/13/12, 02:37 PM

There is sometime something else available. I have broadband from my water tower. I did away with dial up and was looking for a satilite and went a place that sold them and she was using her computer and I said, boy that is fast, are you using a satilite? She said no, she was using a broad band there in town. I went them and talked to the person about getting it and he did not think I could get it (25) miles as the crow flies from town. He said if I could get permission to place equipment on the water tower in the country, rural tower,that he would. Convinced the powers to be and in about 2 months I had broadband. Love it, lighting sometimes knocks it off, other than that, it is great.