Since the Internet Age has taught us to rely on an Internet connection for answers to everyday problems, we have taken the power the Internet has given to us for granted. While most of the country has high-speed, high-performance Wi-Fi connection at their fingertips, people in rural America have had to endure being shunned by many traditional Internet providers and not having the proper infrastructure for high-speed broadband Internet access. The problem has become so prominent that this July, the Biden-Harris administration has pledged $401 million to improve rural America’s infrastructure for high-speed Internet.
However, even before the government began laying the groundwork for these new improvements, rural residents have come to rely on alternative ways of providing Internet for rural areas. Some rural residents are comfortable reverting to older methods of connecting to the Internet, such as dial-up Internet. Others have relied on new technologies such as satellites orbiting the planet to provide unlimited satellite Internet to rural homes. There are also companies such as UbiFi that use cell towers located throughout rural America to transmit Internet signals into rural homes. All of these methods have provided high-speed Internet to rural homes, but they each have their strengths and weaknesses.
For example, satellite Internet is fast and reliable, but it suffers from high latency. Also, it is not ideal for rural residents who plan on using large amounts of data, since many satellite Internet providers use data caps and charge expensive overage fees if you surpass those data caps. On the other hand, mobile Internet providers like UbiFi offer unlimited 4G rural Internet with low latency and no overage fees, although the highest speeds under UbiFi may not be as fast as satellite Internet.
