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Comment by Thorrez | Hacker News Reader

>except WiFi

What type of internet do you think would be best? Cell? Traditional satellite? Low orbit satellite? Long range wireless? Cable? DSL? Fiber? Actual wifi from a very nearby neighbor?

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LTE in most places - we get 80Mbs down and 30 up here, and we are a long way from anywhere - having to use our own mast on a hilltop to get a signal.

LTE is limited to 21GB of higher speed transfer a month, at which point you get rate limited down to 2Mbps down and .5Mbps up.

Can't have Zoom calls on that garbage.

Would that not be dependent on the carrier?

Indeed. Last time I was forced on LTE in home at the states, the plan I described above was the best in the US. That was 5ish years ago when I was living in the stix.

You don't know what kind of contracts are available for the GP.

In EU, getting a lot more is usually not a problem

Not sure about the EU, but last time I was forced on LTE in home at the states, the plan I described above was the best in the US. That was 5ish years ago when I was living in the stix.

Cellular plans from the major US carriers change every couple months. Throw in all the resellers and you have new plans every week. Describing a cellular plan from 5 years ago is like talking about a 286.

In addition to plans changing all the time...

US plans have a tendency to be much worse than EU due to lower competition

Yeah, I'm in Portugal, and we pay €30 a month for unlimited (actually unlimited - no FUP or anything) data.

The ISP does do some traffic shaping, so they'll throttle video streaming at peak hours, but a €1 a month VPN busts around that no problem.

I would say at least 1 TB minimum for a home data plan, imo. I've used that much in a month just on Steam games, and each member of a family drives that up very linearly. Any less and you start "rationing" out something fundamentally unlimited.

If you don't have broadband, today, you pretty much have to make compromises. You don't play Steam games and you don't stream much video--probably get DirectTV. Cell is one option in many places. Satellite is another. Neither are great but that's sort of where you are until maybe Starlink arrives.

If you are going to spend hours playing online games / watching netflix then I can't imagine why you wouldn't just stay comfortable in the city or the suburbs. Living off grid you are going to spend a lot of your free time just living. If you've ever camped in a tent it's probably not dissimilar, by the time you've made breakfast and cleaned up afterwards its almost time to think about lunch, or at least it can feel that way.

The last time I was forced on LTE at home in the states, the plan I described above was the best in the US. That was 5ish years ago when I was living in the stix.

I used 150GB of LTE in the past three days and still going strong.

Starlink which is taking orders

I have a friend who is off-grid for everything except for the fiber to his house. He even has to haul his own water in as he doesn't have a well.

I only know people who tried hughesnet, none of them kept it. There are lots of mountains and trees here, so a WISP won't work. Distances are too great for DSL. Cell service (in this area) is lucky to be good enough to send a text.

With starlink this will be a lot easier. I think it comes down to fiber or starlink - and maybe a WISP if possible.

Things will presumably be better once Starlink or other next gen satellite systems are available. But the reality today in many rural areas is Hughesnet... or Hughesnet. None of the people I know who have it like it but it's the only choice some people have. So they just have to live with the data cost and performance and just not use Internet regularly for things like streaming video.

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