harveyc

At home I've got two ISPs for now, just to make sure I have dependable service. The first, with pretty slow DSL (fastest is about 600Kbps down and 120 Kbps up) runs about $80 with two phone lines (second line is free) and unlimited long distance. We got a wireless service a few months ago that has been fairly reliable and runs $35. It ranges from 600 Kbps to 1.5 Mbps down and 200-600 Kbps up. That is the fastest we can get in our rural area. Someone looked at bringing 4G here but just can't justify it due to the small population.

We have a second home we recently purchased in Stockton. Comcast is our fastest service available here and the rate is subsidized for a while but runs up to $62.95. I bought my own cable modem for about $80 to avoid their monthly $7 rental fee. Service was tested by the installer to be 24 Mbps up but I only get up to a little over 4 Mbps when I run the speedtest through DSLreports. That's fast enough for me to make me happy. Gets slower when kids get out of school. Upload is sometimes as fast.

I use an Ooma tele device here for free VOIP (pay taxes of a little under $4). There are other devices out there but this seems to provide the best quality and reliability and doesn't rely on a Google voice account. My wife uses our second home as a tele-commute office while our son attends school across the street (40 minutes from our farm so avoids double commute). Home prices are low enough here to make it worth owning to save the time and expense of extra driving.

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