Hello, new member not new to site

[MTINMO]

Hi all. I've been using this site for a looong time after becoming obsessed with my speeds on first Wild Blue and then Hughes Net. I work from home in the boonies of Missouri and dialup and satellite have been my only options. I just want to say a big Thank You! for this site. I recently started seeing 3G show up on my AT&T cell phone, so when my upgrade rolled around I bought an HTC Inspire 4G with the tethering data package to try to use for work. When it works right, I love it. When it doesn't work right, that's another story. Fortunately it seems to work well about 3 weeks out of the month so far.

[CA3LE]

Hi all. I've been using this site for a looong time after becoming obsessed with my speeds on first Wild Blue and then Hughes Net. I work from home in the boonies of Missouri and dialup and satellite have been my only options. I just want to say a big Thank You! for this site. I recently started seeing 3G show up on my AT&T cell phone, so when my upgrade rolled around I bought an HTC Inspire 4G with the tethering data package to try to use for work. When it works right, I love it. When it doesn't work right, that's another story. Fortunately it seems to work well about 3 weeks out of the month so far.

Congrats on getting broadband. There's a reason that the slowest providers list is dominated by satellite providers. But hey, sometimes that's you're only choice. What really kills satellite is the latency, the signal has to reach out to orbit... then back to earth. Here's a post where I did the math. Direcway / Wildblue Satellite Orbit

Your welcome for the website. I feel happy and humbled that so many people find my tools so useful. Thank you for using my services for so long, very cool.

Your stats look very decent... incredible for 3G, especially your upload. I'm sure you feel like your on a whole different level of internet compared to satellite... because you are. Rural America is starting to get wireless upgrades. I think people in small towns will be seeing more and more 3G and 4G soon. Setting up WiFi costs allot less than wiring a town, it's becoming easier and easier for providers to deliver the data... Most of the land mass in the United States has 3rd world internet speeds, so it's about time.

I wonder why your 3G only works 3/4 of the time... that's not right. Does it drop out completely or drop you to 1X? You also may want to think about getting a USB modem from AT&T, go there and click USB Modems... Right now the Shockwave 4G looks like the one to go with. I think you'll get a more reliable connection using a dedicated modem... If I were using 3G/4G as my primary connection I would definitely get one, at the very least for the convenience of having it already connected all the time. I also don't like burning myself when I answer the phone...

[MTINMO]

I appreciate your reply. I am not sure why I don't always have 3G - I am literally "bathed in dark blue" on the AT&T coverage map. It's very strange. I started out with the Motorola Atrix 4G (loved that phone) but after 2 days of 3G speeds, it suddenly reversed the upload and download speeds. Very strange. It stayed like that for over a week with them trying to "relocate" me to a different tower several times. It finally eventually went back to normal, but we thought maybe it was a 4G phone/3G area problem, so I went to the Captivate (hated that phone). That worked well for a week, but I have to have the phone in my upstairs window and I work down in the basement. It kept randomly shutting off the Wifi Hotspot on its own and I was constantly running up and down the stairs turning it back on. Took it back and got the HTC Inspire 4G. It worked great for about 10 days and then started doing the same thing the Atrix did, only I would have very slow download and upload for 1 day, then go with the reversed speeds (download around 300, upload around 1.6 or up). That lasted for about a week and it went back to normal. AT&T is stumped. However, I did find that even at the 300 download speed, it still worked better with the program I work with than my satellite did at 1.7 download because of the latency issue.

I thought seriously about the AT&T modem, I really did. However, it's cheaper for me to use my phone as a modem and I have to keep the satellite anyway for the kids. I have a 12 yo son that loves YouTube and he has run me over several times on my 500 MB per day satellite allowance, so I don't dare let him use my AT&T connection. I'm hoping that one of these days we will have some type of broadband out here that I can put all the computers in the house on, but for now that's not going to happen. Our phone company is CenturyTel and they basically told us we will never have DSL.

Thanks again for the site. It has been my go-to site every time I've had speed issues and wanted to see what I'm actually running. I'm just loving being able to come out of the Dark Ages, even if only on one computer.

[CA3LE]

I thought seriously about the AT&T modem, I really did. However, it's cheaper for me to use my phone as a modem and I have to keep the satellite anyway for the kids. I have a 12 yo son that loves YouTube and he has run me over several times on my 500 MB per day satellite allowance, so I don't dare let him use my AT&T connection. I'm hoping that one of these days we will have some type of broadband out here that I can put all the computers in the house on, but for now that's not going to happen. Our phone company is CenturyTel and they basically told us we will never have DSL.

I see, if he's like my 11 yo son I can see how you'd hit your cap quickly. Youtube is like crack for kids. My son used to have a limit of 200 MB on his phone. He did very well managing it, still did all the same stuff but he made sure he was on a wifi connection before doing anything bandwidth intensive. If he did it on all his phone he would have hit his cap in a day or two, lol. He's on an unlimited plan with T-Mobile now. --- this is why Google's stock is trading at $600 a share.

Thanks again for the site. It has been my go-to site every time I've had speed issues and wanted to see what I'm actually running. I'm just loving being able to come out of the Dark Ages, even if only on one computer.

Thanks for using my site. I really appreciate your comments as well.