My parents live about 10 minutes, maybe less out of Tulsa, but are unable to access any highspeed internet. Their options are to hotspot a phone or pay AT&T for 1.5meg service at about what I pay for 1gig. There are some wireless internet providers but they neighborhood is behind a hill from all those current providers. I am trying to figure out how to change this.
The two major telcos are AT&T and COX, both of which I have spoken with. the ironic part is that my folks have AT&T buried in their yard (and I think it is fiber too). I got someone from AT&T to come out a few years ago and check.
I just don’t know where to really start. My dad has to bring his computer over to my house to do updates, thankfully it is a minisforum. They can’t access streaming services etc. Its real dumb.
If there is buried infrastructure and no ISPs offer service in the area, that suggests to me that they used to but pulled out because it wasn’t profitable enough. Anecdotally, you can pay an ISP to run something to you at ~100/ft from the nearest hub, but that’s going to vary a lot.
How about a satellite based solution like starlink? My mother has it out in the wild west of texas and is perfectly happy with it.
I think what is buried is just running elsewhere. I told my dad to “do some yard work” and when they come to fix it, ask them to hook his house up.
I have thought about buying StarLink for them for Christmas or something. I just f-ing hate that major telecom companies have received billions of dollars and still nothing. It isn’t like this is the middle of nowhere. I need to stop of I am going to get up on my soapbox and keep typing until my fingers hurt. I shouldn’t need to spend more money to make up for their failings.
Just a shot: how about starting your own ISP just for your parents neighbourhood? (if that’s legal anyway?) Outdoor-rated fibre isn’t that expensive anymore and you need a space for running the local data centre that connects to both main ISP’s, but from there, anything goes as you want it
Do you know anyone with property on the hill with line-of-sight to your parents? If so see if they and one of the WISPs are willing to install service at that house and then do a point to point link to your parents house from there. (I run a small WISP in Arkansas and have done this sort of thing before)
That is kind of what I was thinking. Oklahoma has its own internet connectivity map and as soon as you get out of Tulsa there is almost NOTHING. It’s almost as if they don’t want the indians (Osage county) to have access to the internet, jobs etc.
Thanks. I have thought about this as well as wired. I am just not sure how to start.
I just remembered, from when I used to work at an electric utility, that working in Osage county can be a pain sometimes. The tribe owns the mineral rights to the whole county. WISP would probably be easier and then branch out into fiber if needed.
If I remember correctly, there was another utility company rebuilding towers in their ROW. That was fine. But was sued and lost by the Osage for backfilling the holes with what was dug out. That was using the tribes minerals without compensation. I read Killers of the Flower Moon on my flight to Korea a while back and I understand that attitude a lot better than I did 10 years ago.
How tall is this hill exactly? The term means vastly different things depending on who you talk to and where they are from. Ive heard Oklahoma has a lot of flat area, so this hill might be pretty small. Im just thinking as long as hill means smallish mound of mostly dirt, and not some big huge thing that is really thick with tons of rock you may be able to go through it or around it enough with a wireless bridge.
Maybe try a PowerBeam AC unit with a 5ghz antenna and see if you can get a signal between your house and theirs. I have a friend that uses those units to shoot their internet 4.2 miles (about a 10-15 minute drive) between locations, without mounting them on towers., They are just mounted on a pole above the building’s roof. The signal has to go through dozens of trees, other buildings, and power lines including some other concrete warehouses and they still manage to get around 150mbit speed while doing that. You can always try it and return the units if it turns out not to work. Just be sure and try out the ones with the largest dish, the 620mm models. When configuring them after alignment for max signal to noise be sure and set them up with the smallest channel width which gives the slowest speed but most stable signal. Then after everything is successful move up on channel width and do more testing as you go. Also, use the lowest channel frequency you can for the most penetration. I know it sounds weird to even consider trying to wifi your way miles away through a hill, but I wouldn’t have believed my friend could reliably do it with his internet either and they have been using it for 3 years now.
About 150’ to the north and west and 200’ across the south. Eastern Oklahoma isn’t like where I grew up but it isn’t flat. That is like Oklahoma City and further west.
I will check out that hardware. If I can find somewhere east to provide service from, it might be doable. That would also be in a different county.
I also realized that I am an a-hole and people are a problem. Running an ISP, I would not be so good at the customer service part.
You might be able to shoot through trees or even small wood framed buildings if your link is short enough but going through dirt at all is a no-go. If you have a 100’+ hill in the middle of your link you will need to set up a back-to-back PTP relay on top for your signal to get over it.
I’ve found that people don’t seem to mind too much if you’re the guy bringing decent internet to their house.
Yeah, users can be pretty stupid some times. That’s the main reason I’ve kept my WISP operation small with just enough users to pay for bandwidth and maintenance.
A while back, I came across this video of a guy that started his own Fiber ISP. Might be worth a watch if you’re interested in their experience. I also found some more recent articles about it, if you’re interested in the follow up.
Jared Mauch - Getting Fiber To My Town (NLNOG Live! September 2020)
. I had a tower in town for another business and the DSL at my house never worked right.