I know you’ve all heard me talk before about how we have no Internet choices here in the country. I love country life but as far as technology goes we’re still in the Stone Age. It’s only been in the last 10 years that we’ve had push button phones. I know it sounds silly but we still had to put our finger in each hole and dial.
I’ve been searching for years for something that works at our place without draining the family fortune once a month just to pay the bill. We’ve lived in our small village (population 1,000) for 44 years now and we’ve never had up to the minute anything as far as technology goes. It’s only been in the last 3 years that cell phones have worked out our house. The most recent Internet service for us was provided by Verizon and worked off a cell phone tower. Our bill steadily got larger and larger each month and when it hit $700 per month I decided enough was enough something had to happen. With all that being said, I set out on a mission to pay whatever upfront cost had to happen to finally get Internet.
The only options to the general public are mifi that operate from cell phone data or satellite Internet. What I did was finally seek out business Internet options since I run our family business from my home office. I ended up going with a T1 line, which is dedicated only to our home so no one else is using the line, and here’s where it all became frustrating. I placed the order on October 2, 2015 and the Internet connection never happened until February 20, 2016. Now to me that’s horrible customer service, Nitel is who I worked with and DON’T recommend. After more phone calls than I can count, dozens of emails, and appointments they made and never showed up for I finally have it resolved and am paying $300 a month.
Before it was all working I had put in a complaint with the Attorney General trying to get Nitel to follow through with the hookup. I feel 5 months in an unacceptable time frame to make someone wait, and the best part was they had my money the whole time and I couldn’t get a refund. I told hubby I was going to seek mental help before it’s all over, the stress of it all was about to push me over the edge. I explained to Nitel that I owned a company and would never think to treat my customers the way I’ve been treated or expect them to wait 5 months for a service. If they’d have told me up front how long it would take I probably wouldn’t have went through with it all.
And then to top it all off they never informed me that T1 lines are hardwired and wireless isn’t an option. My response to that was who in this day doesn’t use strictly wireless? So there I was back to pulling my hair out again. After the install date I decided I was determined to make things work wirelessly so after 8 hours of messing with code I finally cracked it and was able to reconfigure a wireless router to work. By the end of the day my brain was fried but we had wireless, lol.
On the upside because we pay a flat rate we can use as much data as we want, we can now stream tv, movies, and music from Netfilix and Amazon. I still haven’t decided if it’s all been worth it yet since we haven’t had enough time to see but if you live in a rural area like me and are willing to wait for months for an install a T1 line is an option and for us a more affordable option.
Okay I’m done complaining! Have a great day everyone, and enjoy the blizzard if you’re in the storm zone like we are.
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What a huge headache for you. I’m so sorry you had to go through all of this. When we sold our house near Roanoke, VA three years ago that had wonderful internet service, finding a home in the country that had good service was an issue. We found a really neat house, but it had horrible internet service which is what kept us from buying it. My husband has a home business that requires him to upload and download files of coding for companies. This makes good service a must. We finally found the home that we are now in. It’s on a road with numerous other houses and we are the last house on this road to have great internet service….. the people that live in homes further down from us have to do things like use a hotspot from their cell phone. It’s crazy, and the internet company has no plans to run the service to those homes…. a couple of them are million dollar homes!! It’s just crazy considering it’s 2016. I’m happy for you that you finally have the service you need…. makes life so much nicer in the country. xo
Diane I’ve said I’d never move to another house that has this issue, but if we want to stay in the area it happens to be the price we have to pay. I would think companies would want the rural business and capitalize on it, but apparently not.
Way to go Dawn for cracking the system. I had to so something similar with our service, which is satellite. We bought a new router and the tech guy couldn’t figure a way around the system to get all our products to work. We use Apple Extreme with Mac computers, Playstation and Netflix and he didn’t know anything about them, he just knew Windows. But I played with it, figured out how to change the IP address and override their blocking system. I promptly wrote it all down and emailed it to the company saying that I hoped this would help if they ever came across an Apple system again!!!!!
Hope your internet connection continues to be good. These companies need us techy women 🙂
Linda how do you use Netflix with satelite? We never could it raised our bill in the thousands? I did the same once I cracked it I did a screen shot to remember what I did.
We don’t use Netflix a lot, hubby uses it more in the afternoon outside of peak times, but it is certainly working much better now after my little fix.
Linda that’s great if my hubby is home he’s watching tv.
Oh my……I have to let my sister know of this T1 line….as she is out in the country too and uses satellite internet and is slow and expensive…..and I am not surprised that you cracked that code!….good for you!!….So glad you got this resolved!….Can’t imagine the frustration you had for so long!
Shirley it’s hard to get in contact with someone about a T1 but just tell her to call her local phone company and start there.
I read Dianes comment and I’m very happy that I live in the city, what a headache and it is 2016! Dang it! 700! Good luck with your new carrier. Hey! I remember the stone age! Remember just a regular phone bill? But boy, long distance cost though!
Having a warm Spring day, think El Nino went north, Kathleen in Az
Kathleen, lol you’d never know it’s 2016 where I live. Ha ha yes I remember having to pay more for long distance.
Have you tried Hughes Net -Gen4 ? They are supposed to be good and a friend who has it out in the country loves it.
Hopefully this will work out for you !
Diana yes and they were horrible and pricy and didn’t work half the time. We also couldn’t stream anything or hardly operate my blog.
I’ll never complain about my internet bill again $40@ month! Sounds like you had quite the time. Glad the headache is over ! Stay inside and keep warm.
Lynell I would drop over with excitement for a $40 internet bill. Gotta pay big when you live in the stix.
$700 a month !!! Crazy.
Ann don’t I know, that’s just nuts and Im not sure how they get away with it.
I’m totally frustrated just reading this. .. Wow! Glad all worked out.
Melissa me too and I feel like they get your money and you don’t get what you paid for. Very frustrating but Im locked in for 2 years now 🙁
Dawn, I thought that I lived in the sticks/bush. Our community is 170 people in the summer with the tourist. We live 40 kms, from the nearest town and yet we get a better deal on internet than living in the big town offers. We pay under $60. a month for unlimited data and internet…super high speed.
Totally unexcepetable to expect someone to wait 5 months for anything. I would have been totally over the edge, and drinking straight from a bottle !!
LOL Cheryl I should have tried that drinking thing, maybe it would have helped. Im so cracking up right now 🙂 You made my morning!!!!