Most of the problem here, I think, is that Frontier and a cable company are the only wired providers.
I hear nothing at all good about the cable company, I can't think of the name of it off hand but it's the one with Infinity or something like that.
When I moved here in 04 all I had was a dial up with directv for my tv, but after a bit I got dsl from frontier and it worked fantastic for years.
Then frontier started pushing cheap promotions $14.00 a month , people up in this secluded area I live in hopped on because it was cheaper to get a bundle from frontier than keep directv or cable, so everyone is on it.
Would you give a cable company $100+ a month, or $14 for everything, and that is what everybody did.
The only lines in the area where I live in belong to Frontier, I'm too far from any wifi hot spot behind good size mountains, I get better faster connections at Mcdonalds, I spend a few hours there everyday buying and selling cars and car parts, this keeps my brain alive because it is something I have done since I was a teenager.
I have been told that Verizon has done a lot of tower work behind the mountain where I live, when I get over this flu I'm going to check into getting one of there hot spots if I have to I keep frontier until my contract runs out next summer, and take on the added expense of the hotspot and use it just here at home.
I'll keep using Mcdonads during the day and only use the hot spot, I have 2 computers so I could use one on the hotspot exclusively for home.
From Betty:
Oh no! Another one with the flu! Everybody around me has caught it. I'm the only one I know locally who hasn't caught it yet. The flu going around here is an extra bad one. In my condition, if i catch it, it will put me in the hospital or kill me. People who even had their flu shot have caught it. I guess being unemployed most of the time has the advantage that I don't have sick people breathing & coughing on me all day, every day. Been getting some work around weekends but it's not much.
Get well soon.
Good thing I've always tried to keep Betty's low bandwidth. The servers don't load as fast as the fastest fios connections can handle, but on a slow connection, it loads faster than most. In the 90s when I had very low image size & story part limits, people with high speed whined. But I'm sure the half of our visitors who were still on dialup, even if they didn't understand why I had the limits, appreciated that Betty's ran well on their slow connection. I could never understand people who made high bandwidth consumption sites that only half their users could use, or for the other half were just too painfully slow on their connection. I always felt that everybody should be able to connect to Betty's no matter what connection they had.
5% of our visitors visit here from their phone. Some visit on a phone wireless plan, or a satellite connection... most of those plans have speeds that are only slightly better than a dialup connection. But for some towns or rural areas, it or dialup their only option. Many people from other countries or who lived in the city all their life don't realize that most of the USA & Canada are still rural, farming, or wilderness areas (Where do they think all their food comes from). Indeed, even in NY state, which is more that half the area of the UK, is mostly rural areas, small towns, farmland, & wilderness. The largest City is NYC. Far on the other end is the 2nd largest in the state, Buffalo. In between are a few smaller cities, Rochester, Syracuse, & Albany. The rest are just small towns.
On an average day, about 1/4 of our visitors are on some kind of data or satellite plan just a little faster than dialup (and expensive), or still on dialup, because there's nothing else available or affordable at home or work.
Car parts? You must be a motorhead. I used to do my own car work & restoration in my day. My pride was a 70 limo, & 70 Pontiac Catalina that I restored myself, including rebuilding the engines. The last car project was a pretty white VW Cabrio (convertible) that I restored the body, & turbocharged the engine because it was way too underpowered. Due to budget restraints those days are gone. Sold my old Ford Broco 4WD truck after the fire (I fixed that one up myself too). I sold it for more than I paid for it. My primary vehicle these days is my fold-up, 20", 1 speed bicycle.