Advice, tips, tricks, and troubleshooting for people in rural areas trying to get a stable internet connection when they have no options.
Straight Talk Wireless Home Internet
Hey all, does anyone have any experience with Straight Talk's $45/month wireless internet plan? My wife and I live in a fairly rural area in east TX (just past Duck Cove, right off the south side of Lake Tawakoni) that, at this time, has no DSL/broadband (let alone fiber) ISPs, and we aren't able to use fixed wireless providers either due to no direct "line of sight" because of our home being surrounded by a ton of large trees. We were looking into Trifecta Wireless (since they "seem" to offer a decent solution), but their "membership fee" and monthly rate is pretty steep. Also considered T-Mobile's home internet but our area gets zero reception from them. We've been currently making do with using our phone hotspots (we're on AT&T however, so at best we each have a 50GB cap on our current plan before bandwidth tanks to basically dial-up speeds). I personally refuse to get satellite internet, I'd rather us stick with our phones than pay the same price regular internet goes for just to have 700-1000ms ping and a data cap on something that should be unlimited. Anyway, I think Verizon also has coverage out here but they've previously told us we're not covered by their home wireless service as well. Ironically AT&T said the same thing, despite us having our cell service thru them. So I'm kinda at a loss, but when I looked into Straight Talk it says they use AT&T towers for their cell service. So at this point we're considering trying their home internet option out, but I wanted to see if anybody else has tried it out and if whether or not it's worth it. Thanks to anyone who takes the time to read & give some feedback, I appreciate it!
Ive had the Straight talk internet for about 5 months now. I used an address that it was available at as my account address and it activated and is being used at my home. It uses Verizon towers, I had good Verizon coverage in the fairly rural area I live in with regular cell service.
That's an amazing idea, idk why I never thought of doing that with any of the other providers I mentioned (cause I'm an idiot, likely). My other question would be what all do you use it for primarily? We'd be looking to stream from 1-3 devices give or take (480p is good enough for us -- except for my PC, I'd prefer 1080p with that at least lol) along with some online gaming (no battle royales, maybe just some light multiplayer games) and lastly we'd like to get a "smart" home system setup with a ring doorbell cam or something similar.
I’ve been looking into ST home internet and was curious if you could give me some details on it ie. Price/data/capping/pros/cons for streaming & gaming ect…assuming my location is to rural for ST home internet could I just have the internet activated at say my parents house who live in town and then bring the internet box out to my place?
Got nothing helpful to say, but my aunt and uncle had a house out past duck cove when I was a kid. All I remember about it was big boys pizza in that old a-frame house lol
I'm not sure if it's still there, I only recently moved out here and I'm still getting to know my way around. I grew up in Dallas, but as I got older I learned that I really don't like being around a ton of people (plus the traffic sucks ass lol). The cost of living is also way cheaper too; literally have a 3 bed/2 bath for less than half of what it'd cost just 20 miles west of where we're at now. The internet/cell reception predicament does suck, but in all honesty I've just been looking to get something reliable enough so that my wife can work from home and make more money as she's currently "over worked & under paid" (aren't we all haha) as an administrative assistant for a local building wholesaler. But that seems to be the norm for east TX; housing is cheaper but so are salaries/wages.
If you have a great view of the northern sky. Starlink would work as well, LEO satellite so more like 50ms (or less) back to earth. But they might be a waitlist.
We've checked them out, sadly earliest ETA for our area is "sometime 2023", which could be as late as December knowing Elon lol. Cause otherwise that is the one satellite provider that's actually worth considering to me honestly.
Is the straight talk cheat code still working? Lol
I can’t get any address to be accepted as available. My house only gets 1Mbs with DSL. The only other options according to the FCC website is star link. I have Verizon on my phone and it works very well, about 35Mbs but ST will NOT accept my address or any of the other tricks I’ve seen posted.
I’ve loved mine so far no issues great speed running multiple devices and steaming