In Dec. 2002, our household subscribed to Verizon DSL for the first time. This marked to first telecommunications company to offer high-speed internet in our rural county. (Since that time, the telecommunications landscape has changed; Cable TV and cellular internet are also available.) The DSL service is connected via a Nextell DSL modem. (The modem has a "Bell Atlantic" decal on its face; so it must be several years old; Bell Atlantic was reorganized as Verizon years earlier.) Of course, we were amazed at the improvement in our internet connection at the time.
A couple of years later, we ditched most of the Ethernet cables strung throughout our home and installed an Airport base station (round). The white Hershey's Kiss served us well for about ten years. We had problems about five years back, so we bought a refurbished rectangular Airport Extreme. It worked, but we were disappointed that some of our older hardware and software was not compatible with the newer WiFi.
We also began having connection brown-outs from Verizon. We are also very unhappy with Verizon's outsources technical support. We have tolerated the situation ever since.
We are now wondering about the new WiFi 6 and our equipment. Our dissatisfaction with Verizon also figures into this.
Here is the flow of our current setup:
Outside phone line enters house... --> Verizon's Westell DSL modem (original from 2002)... --> Ethernet cable from modem to Airport Extreme nearby (Airport base station is connected to old HP LaserJet printer via Ethernet, and a refurb Dymo LabelWriter 320 via USB)... ) ) ) WiFi ) ) ) my late-2013 iMac, also a 13-inch MacBook Pro, an iPad Mini, and two Motorola Android smartphones.
At some point, we are going to have to look at modernizing our equipment. I would like to avoid doing all of it at once, even though there are obvious advantages. At this moment, to my knowledge, none of our Apple hardware (or any succeeding models) support WiFi 6... yet...
Verizon has nickeled-and-dimed our phone bill over the years, intensifying our irritation. I was wondering about eliminating the Verizon landline entirely. Currently in our neighborhood, there are at least four possibilities:
Currently, our Motorola (Android) smartphones are Tracfones. (Pay-as-you-go, minutes-based service that is offered around here on AT&T / GSM circuits). We do get signal with our cellular here at the house, but no always the best. Towers in this area tend to be either GSM or CDMA (Verizon), but not both. So there are places were GSM devices have a good connection, other places where CDMA devices have a good connection, and plenty of other places that are "dead zones". To this day, I'm not sure which zone our neighborhood would be classified as.
The easiest choice would be to switch to Atlantic Broadband. They would be more expensive than Verizon for the total package, which would likely make them too expensive for us. Also we've watched the local cable TV office change hands numerous times over the last 35 years due to mergers and acquisitions. What our service could be like 5 or 10 years from now, we have no idea. Could be better, could be as bad as Verizon.
Then there are those cellular possibilities. We're in a rural area, so I do not know how quickly the towers would be updated around here to the latest hyper-boardband cellular specs. I assume we're 4G around here, but have no idea how you confirm that. I also do not know which towers (GSM vs. CDMA) offer the best line-of-sight for this neighborhood. So, to this day, I don't know which cellular provider would offer the best "bang-for-the-buck". Cellular could **potentially** offer the ultimate cord-cutters' opportunity for superior internet and TV service, but I generally do not like the local voice-telephony quality on cellular or the numerous dead-zones.
I'm at a quandary here because I do not know where to begin my research. I don't even know what information sources are available to me. How do I find out how to determine which cellular service is best in this neighborhood? If we do buy a standard cellular contract service, what equipment would be need to set up a WiFi hotspot? And how would we be able to get out existing hardware and accessories to work on it? I want to occasionally upload video to the cloud; Verizon DSL is too much of a pain to do this now. What cellular contracts are on the market that would be more useful.
I wonder how common our local situation is across the USA...
A couple of years later, we ditched most of the Ethernet cables strung throughout our home and installed an Airport base station (round). The white Hershey's Kiss served us well for about ten years. We had problems about five years back, so we bought a refurbished rectangular Airport Extreme. It worked, but we were disappointed that some of our older hardware and software was not compatible with the newer WiFi.
We also began having connection brown-outs from Verizon. We are also very unhappy with Verizon's outsources technical support. We have tolerated the situation ever since.
We are now wondering about the new WiFi 6 and our equipment. Our dissatisfaction with Verizon also figures into this.
Here is the flow of our current setup:
Outside phone line enters house... --> Verizon's Westell DSL modem (original from 2002)... --> Ethernet cable from modem to Airport Extreme nearby (Airport base station is connected to old HP LaserJet printer via Ethernet, and a refurb Dymo LabelWriter 320 via USB)... ) ) ) WiFi ) ) ) my late-2013 iMac, also a 13-inch MacBook Pro, an iPad Mini, and two Motorola Android smartphones.
At some point, we are going to have to look at modernizing our equipment. I would like to avoid doing all of it at once, even though there are obvious advantages. At this moment, to my knowledge, none of our Apple hardware (or any succeeding models) support WiFi 6... yet...
Verizon has nickeled-and-dimed our phone bill over the years, intensifying our irritation. I was wondering about eliminating the Verizon landline entirely. Currently in our neighborhood, there are at least four possibilities:
- Verizon landline with DSL
- Atlantic Broadband cable TV + phone + internet (I have seen superior performance while using a friend's WiFi, but I do not know if we could justify the higher cost over Verizon phone + DSL. We dropped the cable TV-only service with this outfit in 2007 when we switched to satellite; both DirecTV and Dish are rip-offs in our opinion.)
- Cellular via AT&T
- Cellular via Verizon Wireless
Currently, our Motorola (Android) smartphones are Tracfones. (Pay-as-you-go, minutes-based service that is offered around here on AT&T / GSM circuits). We do get signal with our cellular here at the house, but no always the best. Towers in this area tend to be either GSM or CDMA (Verizon), but not both. So there are places were GSM devices have a good connection, other places where CDMA devices have a good connection, and plenty of other places that are "dead zones". To this day, I'm not sure which zone our neighborhood would be classified as.
The easiest choice would be to switch to Atlantic Broadband. They would be more expensive than Verizon for the total package, which would likely make them too expensive for us. Also we've watched the local cable TV office change hands numerous times over the last 35 years due to mergers and acquisitions. What our service could be like 5 or 10 years from now, we have no idea. Could be better, could be as bad as Verizon.
Then there are those cellular possibilities. We're in a rural area, so I do not know how quickly the towers would be updated around here to the latest hyper-boardband cellular specs. I assume we're 4G around here, but have no idea how you confirm that. I also do not know which towers (GSM vs. CDMA) offer the best line-of-sight for this neighborhood. So, to this day, I don't know which cellular provider would offer the best "bang-for-the-buck". Cellular could **potentially** offer the ultimate cord-cutters' opportunity for superior internet and TV service, but I generally do not like the local voice-telephony quality on cellular or the numerous dead-zones.
I'm at a quandary here because I do not know where to begin my research. I don't even know what information sources are available to me. How do I find out how to determine which cellular service is best in this neighborhood? If we do buy a standard cellular contract service, what equipment would be need to set up a WiFi hotspot? And how would we be able to get out existing hardware and accessories to work on it? I want to occasionally upload video to the cloud; Verizon DSL is too much of a pain to do this now. What cellular contracts are on the market that would be more useful.
I wonder how common our local situation is across the USA...
