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Comment by tnorthcutt | Hacker News Reader

It's cheaper to do point to point relays from that far.

I would encourage you to look into this more, if you haven't already. I set up such a connection for my in-laws who live in rural Oklahoma, and it's been a resounding success. It still has issues, but it's worlds better than the antiquated satellite options they had before.

They'll likely transition to using Starlink when it's available as the point to point connection (3 hops for them) is difficult to troubleshoot since I'm a thousand miles away, but if Starlink isn't an option for you for some reason, a point to point connection can be a great choice.

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I prepaid for Starlink 4 or 5 months ago and just waiting for my turn to get it.

We did talk about setting up a community point to point system but the 'old guys' that run the area are more interested in getting (forcing) more people on to 'city' water than anything actually useful because city water fees are the only thing keeping this town alive.

If good broadband is so important to you why did to move to an area where it's not available?

It's common for folks to have tightly constrained moving choices.

We recently moved into our one and only choice. We beat lottery odds to get it and it was one more choice than most here have (doz-100s applicants for each listing).

Because I also have a wife that wanted to live in the country? Where people live is rarely about 1 single thing, it's a compromise between all the needs and wants. For us, living in the country on a small farm checked an awful lot of boxes. And we were "told" that there was decent internet here - 25Mb was normal. After moving we found out that 2 or 3 was normal and TDS just flat lies about their offers.

Ah bummer! But I hope Starlink works out really well for you.

If you don’t mind, could you provide any more info on how to find providers for point to point relays? I didn’t even know this was an option and I’m having a tough time finding any information that isn’t specific to large businesses.

In my case (very small town), we shared a connection with a local business (feed store) that had a tall structure we could mount a pair of radios on (grain elevator), so we're not really using a "provider".

Sorry to not have better info for you, but hopefully someone else will see this and chime in!

Not the OP, but the people I've seen this do it DIY have all done it with Ubiquiti products. A single link can get a mile of range with clear LoS. Depending on how far out you are, that lets you connect to a "real" internet connection for cheap.

Mikrotik products are very popular among people running WISPs, and their product range reflects this, with a whole range designed specifically for that purpose.

Even their standard wall/ceiling-mount AP is weatherproof and comes with pole mount attachments.

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