[jawstang]

As some of you know I have been trying to find a good ISP.Living in the sticks there is no Cable or DSL.Has anyone used SWBC for an ISP?If yes how do you like them?I am very limited on my choices here.Any other ideas who I could use?This is one of the few downfalls of living in a rural area. ::

 

[Baseballman2188]

I have AOL, and I like it, especially the instant message feature. Kinda expensive, but I like it.

Travis

 

[GypsyR]

You might see if these guys have anything close to you:
Highstream
I have 2 unlimited accounts with them (one for the kids) for less than the price of one with AOL.
I couldn't say about support, I've yet to have a problem in a year of use. Sort of a barebones thing, I haven't really looked into the extras. I'm only interested in a net connection, I'm not interested in extra email, web pages, and hand-holding. I would suppose Highstream has given me an email address as part of my account, I've never bothered to look.
Not the right choice for everybody, but I have noticed higher connection speeds with them than any of my previous 6 ISP's.
Mindspring/Earthlink was OK until they raised their rates. AT&T I had some technical troubles with occasionally and found their tech support clueless on "hard tech"-repeatedly.
Then they decided to change my price plan without telling me. I paid $19.95 (or so) a month and suddenly received a bill for $110. I was a bit upset about that. Paid and terminated my account the same day. Again they were clueless as to what exactly had happened while being adamant that I HAD to pay that bill. Nevermind that I had not authorized or been notified of the billing change.
I'd rather be shot than go near AOL. I've been around long enough to remember when those guys were "Quantum Link", a Commodore 64 BBS.

 

[Gene_J]

Earthlink for Dial up which I use a lot on the road. No complaints.

 

[67shelby]

I have DSL from SWBell or SBC or whatever. It sucks, as does their service. I'm getting ready to move and won't have access to cable or DSL so I'm going to go with Directway from DirectTV. I've heard it is ok from one person so far...

 

[jawstang]

I can get the direct tv dish but its my understanding its $500 for the receiver dish and $60 a month for the service.....

 

[kstuck]

Does anyone in your area offer high speed wireless? I have a 256k wireless service from a local providor and have been very happy with it. $40 per month.

I know some REC's offer this service if you are getting electricity from them. Here is another startup service that looks to be offered through participating REC's. wireless click on the wildblue link in the lower left corner for information. Don't know much about this service or its cost. Sometimes these things work and sometime they don't.

Good luck.

 

[sbryant]

I have DirecWay. If DSL or cable had been available I would have with one of them because they tend to be faster, have lower lag times (better for online gaming), are cheaper, and don't have the "fair access policy" (FAP).

The FAP basically limites how many megabytes you can download within a certain amount of time. Not an issue if all you do is surf the web, but get into alot of mp3s/videos/applications/etc and you can hit the FAP. If you hit it they "temporarily restrict throughput" (slow you waaaay down) for several hours. There's a program called FapBuster that monitors your downloading activity as compared to the FAP thresholds so you know when to give it a rest for a while. You can read about the FAP on the DirecWay website.

So far I've been very pleased (8 months in). I've not had any service outages, aside from in intense thunderstorms when to be honest I probably shouldn't have been on the computer anyway.

If they still have it, there's a "$99.99" plan where you pay $99.99 per month for a year then it goes to $60/month. That basically lets you finance the equipment ($40/month for the equipment) instead of having to cough it up at once. That's the route I went.

If you can't get DSL/cable, DirecWay is still gonna be alot faster than dialup. If you have any specific questons post 'em here or PM me. Good luck whatever you decide

Shane