Farm Fail Friday: Who Needs Internet?

Welcome to our first farm fail Friday! This segment will run on the third Friday of each month and will cover some kind of “fail” that we’ve overcome in the month.

Coming from the city, something we forgot would be important was technology accessibility living in the great-white north. We drew up our offer on the Pembroke property, put it in, it was accepted, and it wasn’t until the move planning that we remembered we should probably look into internet. Especially, the feasibility of me (Holly) continuing to work in IT, remotely, in the house while starting up our homestead.

Boy was I in for a surprise when I found out there was only one provider that wasn’t a cellphone carrier that offered internet in my area, and that this provider was a satellite internet provider with no guaranteed speeds. If you want to see a tech nerd sweat, tell them they won’t be able to get on the internet for a few days. Jokes aside, I went into extreme panic mode, Googling all of the major players for internet in the area. I was met with screen after screen of “Sorry, but this internet package is not available in your area” or “we cannot guarantee service in your area”.

So, what did I do? I immediately looked at the best cellphone service in the area, which happened to be Bell. They were launching their 5G phone service in the areas around the new house. Even though I was with Rogers, I invested in a secondary SIM card (the card that goes into your phone to register you on the network) and a basic plan to test the speeds at the new house once we took possession and then I went back to work researching.

Our Internet Options

In rural Ontario, you have 4 options for internet service if you are not able to get traditional cable or fibre service with one of the big Internet Service Providers (ISPs). These options are:

• Wireless Internet – Uses isolated LTE towers to “beam” internet to your house
• Satellite Internet – Uses traditional satellites that orbit the earth
• Cellular Internet – The very same as you use for your cellphone
• STARLINK – Low orbit satellite internet that is on a waiting list

Our new property is surrounded by mountains, beautiful old trees and water. This is wonderful and so nourishing for your soul, but it’s TERRIBLE for any kind of wireless internet so unfortunately we only have 3 options. I’ve detailed these options below.

What are we doing?

So which option did we pick? We immediately signed up for Starlink and were told that we would get our service in late 2021 (Since pushed to mid-2022 because of COVID). With Sylas working remotely in technology, upload speeds of 1Mbps and high latency will not work well for him, so our only option is cellular.

When I say that Canada is SO far behind the rest of the world in our cellphone plan offerings, I mean it! In Canada you will be hard pressed to find a plan that offers more than 60GB/mo shared data for less than $115/mo. This would work for Sylas’ work but definitely would mean no more video streaming for fun.

Lucky for us, Sylas is American and we have access to a US Unlimited cellphone plan that includes TRULY unlimited bandwidth with no throttling. It’s available to use in the USA, Mexico and CANADA all for $129.00 USD per month. It’s expensive, but still cheaper than XPLORNET and much faster.

Using my Bell SIM card while I waited for the US SIM card, I setup a test network to make sure this proof of concept would work and then I tested, somewhat obsessively, to make sure we would be able to get our network functioning acceptably. We are able to pretty consistently get 30Mbps download and 5Mbps upload. It was quite the process to get everything setup, so I’ve included a bit on the process below.

The Process

My proof of concept for the network involved using a Cellular Booster (Remember those trees?), Cellular LTE Modem and a high-speed wired and mesh Wireless network setup on the property. I’ve included a bit of an overview of each of the devices we purchased below and also a brief explanation of its purpose and setup. You can click any of the images below to be taken to Amazon to view the listings there.

How we set it up:

1. Install SIM card from Cellular Service Provider
2. Turn on device and confirm SIM card is registered
3. Turn off internal Wireless (Because I’m using my own and the internal antennas on this thing are kinda crappy)
4. Confirm unit is working by plugging into it with ethernet cable
5. Set custom user/password and ip address for security reasons.

How we set it up:

• Confirm the best location for the unit. Ideally you want to point the roof antenna toward the cell tower that is closest. THIS REQUIRES WORKING AT HEIGHTS. To find the closest cell tower, use a map like THIS ONE.
• Install the unit and run the COAXIAL cable inside
• Connect internal unit BEHIND the external unit to limit interference
• Confirm with LTE testing app that you are seeing improved cellular signal. For example, we were able to see a change from -110dBm to -60dBm. Usable cell signal is anything above -80dBm with 0 being ideal right at the tower.

How we set it up:

• Setup one unit in the house with the LTE modem using Ethernet and the other in our external garage wirelessly
• Configure an IP address that will not conflict
• Set the wireless network name (SSID) and password
• Confirm connectivity throughout.

In Summary

Don’t be afraid to pursue your dream of country living just because you’re worried about the lack of technological availability. There is always a workaround, but DO plan in advance. Luckily the Ontario government also has a goal of providing high-speed internet to rural communities, or as they put it:

We are making an investment of nearly $4 billion to help connect all Ontarians to high-speed internet by the end of 2025.

https://www.ontario.ca/page/ontario-connects-making-high-speed-internet-accessible-in-every-community

STARLINK Feature

One of the big things that makes Starlink amazing is that it’s allowing for greater connectivity in remote communitites. Check out this video!