jsncrso

I agree.  I think Sprint should offer a rural home ISP service.  One 20MHz carrier on rural sites can carry bootloads of rural customers.  The site next to my home in New Mexico would be greatly under utilized with a 20MHz TDD carrier.  At worst, it would probably run 10% of capacity.  However, the only terra-based ISP you can get in that area is Windstream DSL limited to 3-12Mbps, depending on how far you are from the DSLAM.  Sprint could sell a great service to those people without sacrificing performance to the mobile customers.

 

Robert

Robert, this is exactly what I hope would have happened with the Sprint/Clearwire merger, though I'm loosing faith. I'm about to live 1000 feet from a Sprint tower in a very rural area and I cannot get cable or DSL there. With Millenicom going under and Wireless n' Wifi downgrading their plan, my only decent option is the $120 a month EVDO Depot plan (I can't do satellite due to VPN). Sprint has boatloads of capacity in rural markets and I hope they bring something to the table similar to what Clearwire did with home ISP. I would rather have an unlimited 2-3Mbps connection than a blazing fast LTE connection that's metered (Verizon's Home Connect is a poor value for 30GB at $120 a month). C'mon Sprint!

Anyone have any information as to future Sprint LTE devices forthcoming? The hotspot is nice, but I need something with an Ethernet jack as well, and the USB dongle would work in an appropriate router, but it doesn't have an external antenna port.

Actually, it seems (waiting for AJ, Rob, et. al. to join in) cell sites broadcast an exceptionally small amount of power. The strongest signal I've ever seen is -60 dBm, which according to wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBm

is 1.0 nW, or 10^(-9) watts. Compare this to some of the handheld low-power ham radio equipment, which blasts out 5 Watts without thinking about it. Quick edit: funny, the same table actually includes handheld ham radio equipment at +37 dBm, or 5 Watts. Legal limit, ho!

 

Edit2: So, -60 dBm has the note of "The Earth receives one nanowatt per square metre from a magnitude +3.5 star." The Andromeda Galaxy, which is barely visible on a moonless night in an area with barely any light pollution, is magnitude 3.44. So being within a few hundred feet of a cell site hits you with the same amount of radiated power as a single star you can barely see.

Not true. The 10^-9 watts is the radiated power received by the total area of the cell phone antenna, not the transmitting power of the cell phone tower. You can stand next to a 100w transmitter and receive a signal several orders of magnitude lower than what is being transmitted, simply because that power is being radiated in many directions.

OK, so I'm looking at the Clearwire coverage map, and there are a bunch of cities that have coverage compared to last year. However, they show up as completely "light green" on the map. For example, go to http://www.clear.com/coverage and tpye in 27320 for the ZIP. Zoom out, and pan north to the town of Eden and you sill see what I mean. Does this mean Clearwire home internet will be using LTE soon? (when I go to confirm coverage, it says its not accepting new customers at this time)

Sorry if this is a noob question...I'm on lightning fast cable but will be moving to a very rural area soon with no wired broadband

Thanks for all of your help guys. While the NV updates have rolled out to the towers near that address, it appears that the Sprint 3G option is probably going to be to slow despite what they say on the websites. Too bad they wont open up the LTE for unlimited.

And my girlfriend, who lives at the house I might be moving to next summer, actually does have a Verizon 4G hotspot and gets 20mbps up and down, but as I use at least 50GB a month, so as much as I love Verizon, their options won't work.

I think my best option at this point is to use Exede 12 satellite at this point, since they have unmetered bandwidth overnight and I can schedule my downloads then, and they don't cut you off if you go over and also allow you to purchase more data.

Thank you all for your replies.

I was hoping to stay away from satellite if possible but I know it may not be an option. I also know Sprint itself does not offer unlimited home internet on LTE, but the providers I listed aren't Sprint, they just use their infrastructure from what I can tell. If their 3G is as crowded as it is, and these providers still offer unlimited bandwidth (they also offer 25 gigs for $99 a month), then they may do so with LTE as well. However, if they are only averaging 300-800k down, it would be very hard to go over 25-30 gigs a month regardless of how much you are downloading (and their 4G may very well be in reference to WiMAX). I'll contact several of them and see what they say.

Hey guys, I'd like your input on EVDO home intenet providers since they run off of the Sprint network.

I'm possibly moving to a rual part of northeast North Carolina in summer 2013 (ZIP 27973; Shawboro NC), and unfortunatley cable or DSL is not offered. Coming from a 30mb cable connection, I'd prefer not to have data caps. Anyway, I know some of the 3G EVDO providers also offer unlimited 4G speeds (where available) for around $120 a month. Are these services usually up to par? Sprint 4G is scheduled to be coming on line near that area over the next few months (Norfolk VA area), and I have no problem roof mounting a yagi anteanna to increase signal strenght (it's mostly swamp or farmland in that area). Is the service up to par for streaming Netflix and offering a 24/7 uninterrupted internet service? (I stream a 16kbps audio feed 24/7 to the internet) Any other thoughts or comments?

Here are a couple of providers I was considering:

http://www.ruralevdo.com/

www.evdointernet.com/