Rural services

[crazyms]

This is somewhat a budget/finance concern but since it's for a rural area I thought it'd fit better here. We have rural property that we hope to be moving to soon and I'm trying to figure out service providers and an estimated budget once we move. So far I'm just looking at phone/internet to begin with and running into an issue.

We currently run off of cell phones only. I don't see that being feasible once we move since I'm sure cell phone service will be sketchy. I'm thinking we'll be better off with landline phone service and then a bare bones cell phone just for use when we go somewhere in case of emergency. I doubt (I'll be checking though) that we can get cable or dsl internet. I'm figuring our only options will be satellite - too expensive - or dial up. I'm thinking landline phone with dial up internet is going to be the best set up for us. I'm shocked at the prices though! Considering how cheap a cell phone plan unlimited everything can be had for I'm just sticker shocked at landline and dial up services. Who do you use? How much does your service run? Any other ideas that I'm not thinking of?

[Perdita_in_Ontario]

Keep in mind these are in CAD, so probably a little higher.

We have a land line and bare-bones cell phone. Our cell phone charges are $10/month each, and I think our land line (we have a $20/long distance plan) runs us around $60/month I think.

Dial-up is ridiculously expensive. We were stuck with it for years. Now we have rural broadband, which is about $60/month, plus satellite TV.

It's not cheap, but the dial-up out here was terrible (was getting 24-baud when all my colleagues were on high speed - kind of embarrassing).

[Caneel]

We have a cottage way in the middle of no where, miles from the closest cell phone reception spot.  We do have a land line and it runs us about $30 per month but that does include a couple of long distance calls to my mom a month. 

I am seriously considering upgrading to a phone (unlimited calling), internet (can't remember the speed but it was really good) and Dish for a bundled package of $99 per month.  I would prefer just the phone and internet service and need to call about that.  I am in the northeast, for price reference.

[eastmillcreekmama]

I live in a very rural area in northern California. We only have one possible land line service provider, Frontier Communications. Our bill is about $63 per month, and includes unlimited long distance and DSL internet. I can't remember how much the phone vs internet is. Satellite would be a bit more money. We are lucky to have DSL out here, though there are too many users now, and the data stream is slow, especially at high use times.

Hope that helps.

[annethcz]

Our cell phone service isn't too bad where we live.  I remember when we were searching for cell phone providers I found a website that showed all off the cell phone company coverage in different areas.  That helped us to choose.  Also, before I got a cell phone here and when I had friends visit I'd ask them how their cell phone service was at my house.  Based on that we chose a cell phone provider.  (FWIW, we have sprint).  For landline, we have Frontier, which is the only phone provider in the area.  We also have DSL.  DH works from home 1-2 days/week, and having reliable internet is important to us.  We live 7 miles from town.  While our internet isn't super fast, it works well enough for DH to telecommute and for us to stream videos (with usually at least one interruption for "buffering" because of the slowness of the connection).  Our phone/DSL bill is $99/month.