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Cherry asked: “I live just outside the city limits and there is no high speed internet available that I am aware of. How would I go about increasing my Internet speed. I am currently with a small cable company and when I was living in town, I had AT&T DSL and there is no comparison. I would like to watch YouTube videos like I used to. Right now I’m paying $150 a month and I still can’t watch a YouTube video.”
Cherry, there’s not much you can do. Your internet access is just another utility, if you’re not being piped good, fast service, you can’t just make it happen.
Your options typically are: internet through your cable company, internet through your phone company, internet through your cell phone service provider, and internet through satellite.
Of those: satellite is typically slow and expensive, mobile internet providers can be fast but tend to cap your data or make it hard to run a whole house’s worth of devices off of their services, your phone company’s DSL is probably slow, and cable is typically a faster option.
Some areas have independent fiber optics-based providers, like Google Fiber, or may get fiber optics services through their cable or phone companies, but that’s clearly not your case.
If you can’t get better service from any of those sources, there’s not much you can do other than complain and see if anyone will offer a better option.
Unfortunately, rural areas tend to be of very low priority to Internet Service Providers, they have a to spend a lot on infrastructure for fewer clients than they might get in a single block at a town or city, and that doesn’t make that kind of business appealing to them.