Hey All;
I'm trying to sort internet out for my parents in Centralia, WA. Growing up about 8 miles west of town (about 9 from the central office) I ended up putting in One-Way DirecPC when I was a kid; over the years I switched them to WildBlue, then Excede a few years back. There is no cable, no cell signals, they live in a valley so no WiSP... option has always been satellite or a T1 for an oh-so-inexpensive $689 per month last time I checked a few years ago.
I'm trying to help them out with internet once again... they are tired of paying for satellite... it would also be nice to have a low-latency solution for a microcell cellular repeater... CenturyLink has now installed a DSLAM about 3 miles away; they are plastering everyone that high speed internet is available -- and it is... up until you get to about a mile away from their house. The online tool shows service starting at 80 megs near the DSLAM, and progressively gets slower until you get to 3 megs... then it cuts to no service. No 1.5, 512, or 256k options.
In all honesty, even if they could get 256k, they would be happy -- low latency and enough for basic surfing and e-mails, but better than dial-up. Especially if it's cheaper. CenturyLink says "nothing available"... but if they can have 3 megs a mile from the house, I'd assume they can still get 256k. I know it's no longer considered "broadband" -- but this is an internet-starved area, and they'd happily pay for it. I also heard of something called "IDSL" that basically was an always-on ISDN circuit at 128k -- but never could find anyone who knew anything about it.
I guess what I'm asking is -- how can I actually get someone to come out and test the line to see exactly what can be had on it? Does this even seem realistic that there may be service available on the line that they aren't selling because it's "too slow" for 2018?
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