AFFORDABLE High Speed Internet Anywhere - My RURAL INTERNET Setup Revealed!!

this video was sponsored by just answer a better way to reach professionals anytime you need help how's that for cellular internet 396 down and 68 meg up but today's video is a little bit different but it's still going to be about diy it's about helping you get internet when you don't really have any options or you don't think you have any options now i bought this house i've shared with you guys in my videos recently needs a ton of work but i love where it is i've got the view of the mountain behind me but anytime you get in a spot like that that usually means you're not going to get internet now the people who lived here before me did have phone service and they were using dsl and if you've ever used that it's probably the worst internet you can get you're lucky if you get about three or four megabit download and the upload is abysmal when you're doing things on wireless internet it really is a whole other world so a great resource is this other youtube channel called the internet resource center it's a husband and wife team these guys know everything about mobile internet i watched a ton of their videos that really helped guide me but the one message you're going to get from them is that there is no single solution for everybody many people are going to look at starlink like this and think this is definitely it i ordered one of these immediately when i moved here and figured for sure this is going to be what i would be living on now if you can get starlink it's pretty much a guaranteed thing that it's going to give you a pretty good service you'll get great speed and the price is somewhat reasonable at about 110 dollars a month now the issue with starlink is everybody can't get it but this is actually not in use in fact this thing has been in my garage since i bought it because i've got a better solution that worked for me so there are two ways to get the internet in a rural location you can do something like satellite like starlink which is a great option and if you can get it that's kind of the easy way to go and it's probably going to be your best choice but if you can't get starlink or you want to do something more mobile the second part is going to be what's really going to interest you so now with all that buildup what am i actually using so i'm going to jump to the end this little contraption that i have right here that's all wired into this antenna this is not a satellite antenna this is actually a cellular antenna that faces in a direction and i'm going to talk about antennas in a minute because it's really important to understand that if you ever want to get good internet the device that's underneath a lot of you noticed it in the comments this is actually a t-mobile box this called their home internet now the thing that's amazing about this is they're selling this right now it's 50 bucks a month for unlimited data it's not sort of unlimited it's completely unlimited now the problem is this is not available everywhere and that i went into one of the stores and i told the person that i was moving told them where and they said oh it's not available but they said if you want to try it we can sell you one and you can have two weeks i think it was to try it out i really nothing to lose i bought it brought it up here and tried it out and it worked i could not believe it i was getting about 80 meg down and about five meg up i personally hated t-mobile none of these companies have anything to do with this video in fact i thought t-mobile was probably the worst carrier on the planet because they were kind of like sprint reincarnated and sprint was never very good i have completely changed because this t-mobile box for me has ended up being the best solution so now you're at your rural location you want to figure out what can you do so you grab your phone you start doing speed tests it doesn't really tell you anything because there's a problem and this is what most people miss inside your phone is an antenna to pick up cellular data but the antenna is what's called omnidirectional that means that it picks up signals all around it now the fundamental problem with all antennas is you can't have an antenna that can just pick up everything without losing some signal so when you have what's called an omnidirectional that can listen everywhere the signal is going to be reduced every part of the country there is actually cellular data now i know many of you say nope it's all dead there's no way i can get it but that's because you're using your phone this is an omnidirectional antenna you can only listen the next thing you want to figure out is what cell towers are around you you can ask your neighbors friends everybody has a different answer and most of them are wrong you can also get these great apps on your phone they're going to tell you where those cell towers are and they are wrong don't download them don't even bother i got them downloaded them i wasted so much time thinking there were towers all over the place i don't know how the information is so bad and this is what you're going to need this is what is called the directional antenna now what this does is it will pick up a cellular signal from all the carriers but in a specific direction if i point it right at the camera it will only pick up what's coming from there so the problem with these are they're very powerful but if you have it pointed even slightly off and that's the signal you will not get as good a speed so what that means for you from the internet instead of getting 100 meg download you might get 30. so with a little bit of effort you can really increase your speed and my end result went from getting about 100 meg down and 10 meg up i ultimately ended up with 400 meg down and 40 meg up and the next most important thing isn't just the directional antenna it's the fact that you will need to use an antenna don't get a device and just leave it sitting on your counter because you're giving up internet speed and you don't have to you want to get a data plan that gives you unlimited data or enough that you're happy with it and then you want to maximize the speed i don't care that i had unlimited data i wanted a lot of megabits so that we could do streaming and the kids could use their games and they wouldn't really notice the difference this one can be a little bit harder to use i'm going to show you a better alternative i bought the device knowing that i could bring it back i brought it up here to test it and i could not believe i was getting a signal i was getting about 80 megabit down and four meg up now that's not really great but if you have no internet that's actually pretty amazing for fifty dollars a month so i was pretty excited and i figured hey this is what i'm going to use and then i started to think about a little bit was really bugging me that i could only get 80 meg and four because i kept thinking there's got to be that cell tower is out there somewhere and in my case it's on the side of the mountain which might seem obvious but that's not always the case you can be looking at a tower and you might not actually have the antenna that you think you do there so you have to figure out where that tower is and remember this directional antenna has to be pointed exactly at the tower like with extreme accuracy and that is one of the downfalls but there's an easy way to do it these routers including this t-mobile have the ability or sort of to have an external antenna and this device that i showed in my community post sitting on this piece of wood is actually the t-mobile device it's the second one opened up inside that i tapped into the antennas now you're not breaking you might be breaking a warranty but you're not doing anything illegal all you're doing is amplifying the ability to get a better signal but this antenna is different it's kind of like a semi-directional directionals can be really tricky to set up because the difference between pointing it this way versus like this you could lose like 50 meg on your internet speed where this antenna is directional but it's broader it has a wider ability and you will get a much better signal and that means more speed for you so i'm going to say this again if you get any type of an internet router whether it's this this is a another small one an insigo they've all got some ability to connect an antenna if you don't use it you are losing internet speed adding it in adding an antenna will typically double your speed maybe even more now the downside is you are gonna have to poke a wire put it outside your house now the next question is what carrier to go with what's available it doesn't really matter what you've got your phone and your phone keep whatever carry you want your data can be different in fact my phone is at t right now through t-mobile the only real data solution they have is their home internet so if this will work for you and it's available in your area i highly recommend checking this one out because i think for 50 something bucks a month this is an absolute steal for unlimited data i'm hoping the other carriers also come out with something similar verizon currently has a home internet box as well i couldn't find anybody who actually owns it so i don't know if they're just advertising in a couple of areas now at t has a bunch of different data plans you can buy a router 18t is a little bit more complicated you might have to use a router like this this device is called a pep wave and these are really popular these take a sim just like your cell phone but i will warn you att doesn't really offer any kind of unlimited data unless you're a business so if you have a business you can get an unlimited data plan but they say right in the terms and agreement that you're not really supposed to use it for streaming there's all these weird sort of rules that i don't really think they monitor it but that's sort of you taking your own chances if you want to go that route start with t-mobile because it's the best deal cheapest plan you can get for the most throughput second choice would be at t if you have a business if you don't have a business you may have to look at some other solutions like nomad internet you'll find a list of those at that internet resource center i'll link them in my description below you want to push that data as fast as possible because that's going to be your experience that means streaming your kids can play games whatever you want so no matter which device you get you've got to get some type of antenna now i'm going to link the company i got this antenna from these guys are pretty cool all they do is antennas and they know all about them i actually asked them a bunch of questions they were really helpful they even sold this kit for the t-mobile device they gave me all the adapters in the box now this is not ultimately how i'm gonna leave this i just did this so that i could quickly move it adjust it and then i could use my phone to do speed tests so i would connect my phone to the t-mobile box and then i would do a wi-fi speed test i would point it in this direction then you can easily move it a little bit and keep going in a full circle now yes this is boring it's not exciting but once you get the answer the speed you will get is worth it so right now i've got this antenna pointed this way i'm actually using my little ecoflow to run it so i'm going to go in here and i'm going to do a speed test with this antenna pointed this way and maybe it works fine now we can see we're getting 322 down and 48 up now you might be thinking who cares that speed's still excellent you're paying for unlimited data so why would you want anything slower than the absolute maximum you could get so if we try to move the antenna a little bit differently let's change the position a bit more now we'll change it just slightly now when you do this when you're first getting set up it pays to either put it on a tripod or just make sure that you're turning it in a kind of set way so that you can kind of track where it is how's that for cellular internet 396 down and 68 meg up that's pretty amazing a lot of people don't even get that on a landline carrier part of the reason the speed is so great right now is because the antenna is outside this is why you have to put antennas outside your house you obviously don't keep the router out here you'd wire it through but when you're first getting started you can build a little test rig like this easy enough and that's how this test works you'll point your antenna starting in one direction connect your phone to it and do a speed test this is going to be data that's real it's coming to your phone so you can see exactly the results for yourself that you're getting then you'll rotate the antenna about a fourth of the way do the same test again rotate it again do the same test again and you'll do it probably a dozen times as you're going around and eventually you're going to start to notice something with the numbers they're either going to get better or worse now you might even have two towers so keep going all the way around and see what you get but then once you've done this for a while you're eventually going to find the hot spot and in my case it's actually not the peak of the mountain which is over here the peak of the mountain is here and that's what i thought i would get the best signal with in fact i can see a little tower in the top it's actually in this direction so that tells me that there must be a tower that i just don't see maybe it's inside of a building this is why it is so critical that you try your own test use your own data and make your own decision another trick is if you're really short on money this is what you can do you want to check out each carrier if you've got friends that might have a phone that are on their specific carrier you can ask people to borrow a phone bring up an att phone bring up a verizon phone or bring up a t-mobile the other thing you can do is if you need a phone and you really can't get one go buy a pay-as-you-go phone pay for one month get the cheapest phone you can get that has data that you can run an app on like an android or something buy that pay-as-you-go phone for one month bring it to your location and test it out so that's the hard part that most people can't get a grip on they'll bring up their phone they'll get kind of lousy service and say oh there's no way i can get cellular data but you have to plan to go that step further if you've got any cellular data at all you've got to then maximize the signal and that's where these antennas come into play you could live on this thing without an antenna forever and maybe the speed's awful but why would you you're paying the same amount of money per month now yeah this antenna costs 400 bucks it's a ton of money but it's there's no moving parts it's not going to break once you've bought it and put it up you're going to get great speed forever so an antenna is a pain in the ass to put in there's just no other way around it but once you do it you will have such an impact on the speed of your data it is worth every bit of effort every carrier told me there was nothing available here test it for yourself get individual phones and once you get any hint of cellular data see what might be available for you and then go ahead and spend some money test out a t-mobile device see if you can get an att device or verizon buy an antenna remember with antenna cell towers don't generally move once they're up they're going to be there so once you find the magic location of where that thing is now you can point the semi-directional antenna at it or if you want to go hardcore you can get a truly directional antenna and once you get it aimed perfectly this will give you the best signal but either antenna is still going to boost what you're going to get huge makes a giant difference and most people don't do an antenna and have a really bad experience and they just say that there's no cellular data the last benefit of doing this is that many of your phones if you go the same carrier will allow you to make your voice calls over that wi-fi or ultimately the cellular data so you can actually make your phone calls better as well without bothering to go out and buy one of those cellular repeaters the other thing you're probably wondering is like why don't i just use my style link like i'm paying 110 bucks a month well i could end up on this eventually if t-mobile kind of messes up but the reason i'm not is styling does have a couple of glitches the speed varies a lot and they do have a little bit of higher latency and latency is just the amount of time that when you kind of transmit information how long it takes before it comes back now starlink is still excellent and for most people it's great and again if you want a turnkey solution just get starlink if it's available but the reason i'm still keeping the sellers my primary is because my latency is like 40 millisecond which is really really good and satellite is definitely a little bit slower than that and for the moment i feel like my 400 meg download is actually going to be way better than what i get on starlink in most cases i am absolutely thrilled with the results i'm getting the internet speed is so much better than i expected we stream on multiple devices i can upload my youtube videos so the bottom line is it took me months to come up with what i just told you and maybe you're impressed by it or maybe you're not but in the world of cellular data people make mistakes over and over in fact it's like all i.t everybody thinks they're an expert but a lot of times it just doesn't work so start by forgetting everything you know forget about the carriers that you think stink start off check each one of them get a phone for each carry if you can for your location do a pay as you go if you get any amount of a sell signal whatsoever that tells you there is cellular data and these antennas are the secret weapon for boosting those horrible amounts of cellular data they can make all the difference now there are lots of other internet solutions that you can get and for those things i'd recommend checking out that internet resource center again those guys keep tabs on everything i wish that rural incident was an exact science but it isn't that's why i asked you guys in the community post if you actually wanted me to make this video because it is just a tricky topic to discuss but the lessons i learned were shared in this video and i hope it makes your life a little bit easier and maybe it allows you to live somewhere that you didn't think you could actually get service and gives you some good internet speed for the long run in life if you ask 10 different people a question you'll get 10 different answers and unfortunately when it's something about home improvement electrical or even a legal question you can't risk getting a wrong answer and that's what today's sponsor can help just answer is a service that connects you to thousands of professionals across the u.s they've got certifications and licenses and these aren't just people that you meet online these are doctors lawyers people with real credentials that have been vetted out to give you the right information when you need it you can learn more about the service and what it can do for you by clicking on the link in the video or in the description below

Channel: Silver Cymbal

Views: 193,301

Keywords: rural internet, tmobile review, t-mobile, t-mobile home internet, cellular internet, unlimied data

Id: T6qgFtgzu8o

Length: 16min 7sec (967 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 03 2022