FUUUUUUUUCK SPECTRUM. FUCK THEM SO MUCH. FUCK.
They wanted 26,000$ to extend the Cable line 1000feet, from the end of their line, from our neighbors house to ours. This was in a rural town in NY that was supposed to get 100% access to spectrum (only other option is phone line Frontier). The state gave them a ridiculous amount of money to do this, and nope can’t be bothered. It’s 2024 we still have the same phone line Internet there that we had in 1998…
If youre friendly with your neighbor, point to point wifi is cheap and very effective. You can share their interent if they are okay with it.
You buy 2 wifi antennas for $200, set one up at the point of origin and line it up with the other at the end point. Plug each end into a router and you’re all set.
You dont even need perfect line of sight, although it does help. Range is 5 miles, so 1000ft shouldn’t be a challenge. They are preconfigured, so basically just plug and play.
Edit : they have an even better set for $400 if you want 1.5x the speed above.
My mom is in a rural area, and her internet is basically just a wifi connection to a tower on a hill nearby.
Very common in rural areas. She is most likely a customer of a WISP, or a wireless ISP. They will often partner with a township to set up on a water tower or grain silo or some other high point, then have a fiber internet line brought to that tower.
From there, they will deploy pretty much this exact device for each client, sometimes piggy backing on client sites to extend their range.
5G cell service modems and starlink are making wisps less common, but they are still out there.
Here’s a great older article about a home grown WISP setup in the rural islands near Seattle. After years of terrible and unreliable internet service, the neighbors got together, paid for a microwave tower internet stream from the mainland, and rigged up relays and wireless access points in trees in order to get good, reliable internet to everyone involved. Most everything described here would be considerably easier today.