Eventually I got the new job I wanted and began working out of my home. Without MIMO, it's unlikely I could have made this workable. The flagstone walls of my basement office were mostly cellphone-proof, so I repurposed the pine tree antenna by mounting it to the roof and running the booster down to "the hole", as it was affectionately named. I still have hopes of true broadband, the kind found in towns and cities, somehow finding its way to my neighborhood.
I'm not holding my breath.
Until then, we country folk will have to be creative, just as we are with so many other amenities taken for granted by city slickers...like pizza delivery, but that's a web rant for another time.
Update January 2023
The T-Mobile internet worked right up to the point when it didn't. For reasons forever to remain a mystery, one day the trashcan stopped receiving signal. After a couple hours speaking with customer service, they concluded I was too far from the T-Mobile cell tower. But what about yesterday, and all the days before that, I asked. Something had clearly changed and I would never know how or why. All I knew was I couldn't do the work which paid me, unless I used my mobile device as a hotspot. While desperately searching for alternatives, I hot-spotted through our data cap in about an hour. This was getting expensive.
Back on the Reddit rural internet forum, I happened upon an individual who found a Verizon home internet workaround. In response to T-Mobile's unlimited home internet package, Verizon came out with a similar program. Of course this service wasn't available in my area. The Reddit person had the same problem and found a creative solution. Instead of entering his home address to search availability, he plugged in the address of a friend who lived in a Verizon service area. After submitting the service order, a home internet package arrived (I don't recall if it showed up at his home address or his friend's). He fired up the Verizon gateway and it worked.
I decided to try the same. One of my sisters lived where Verizon offered the service, so I filled out the order with her address. It all checked out and I was officially a Verizon home internet customer. To avoid suspicion, I picked up the gateway from a Verizon store inside a coverage area about an hour from my home. It was like winning an NCAA office pool, only to realize you're supposed to buy everyone lunch to celebrate. When I fired up the gateway at home, it didn't work. I wondered if Verizon had geo-locked the unit to prevent it from functioning outside designated coverage areas.
No worries, though. The next day was the start of a multi-day business trip, and I brought along the gateway to exchange at a Verizon retail location in the city I visited. At a store near my hotel, the sales rep walked the gateway behind a large wall and disappeared for a time...a good, long time. He eventually returned with a question: "Why is your billing address different from the address of the gateway?"
I was busted.
I came clean.
I pleaded with the young man. Verizon was my only viable option to keep my work-from-home job...which for the first time in my 30-year career I could honestly say was a job I loved. Please, please...allow me to have the gateway.
Again, he disappeared behind the wall for a good, long time.
He eventually reappeared, with a proposition. He'd consulted with his manager, told her my sob story and decided they would note in my account I was using the gateway only at my sister's address (he also mentioned the gateway I'd picked up at the other Verizon store was the wrong model, which was why it didn't work).
I thanked this young man as if he'd donated me a kidney. Back at home, the gateway worked just fine and consistently delivered 20-40 mbps download speeds. This was almost 10 times the T-Mobile speeds. Streaming was better. Video calls were better. I'd since moved my home office out of the basement and up to a little second floor nook with windows in perfect sight of the Verizon cell tower 2.5 miles away. The gateway lived on my desk and life was good again.
Update April 2026
Over the years, as the metaverse consumed more and more bandwidth, I began noticing problems with Teams meetings at work. Voices sometimes cut in and out, and my image would occasionally freeze up. Certain streaming services had always been a little spotty, depending on the time of day and who else happened to be pulling data from our local cell tower. Verizon had not rolled with the changes.
Thus began another quest for better rural internet.
The best local line-of-site ISP still couldn't reach us down in our valley, so that wasn't an option. The fiber optic cable in our front yard remained forever buried. No other cell providers offered anything better than Verizon.
But then, one Elon Musk came to the rescue. His satellites now covered our area, and Starlink's prices had come down considerably. So much lower, in fact, that its residential-lite service was about the same price as Verizon. A 30-day free trial was offered and I accepted.
For $22, Starlink shipped us a receiver and modem. I set it up on the deck for a test drive, and it worked flawlessly. Advertised as "up to" 80 mbps download speeds, we got 40-50 consistently. Verizon was usually in the 20-30 mbps range. The biggest difference was upload speeds. Verizon almost always delivered around 10% of download speeds. Starlink upload speeds consistently exceeded 20 mbps. For Teams meetings, this was a game changer. My wrinkles and graying hair would be projected with crystal clarity.
We were sold. The Verizon gateway was returned.
Now came the tricky part: Where to mount the Starlink receiver. The best location on the house, near the unsightly TV antenna and the old MIMO from our T-Mobile days, was blocked by the same 60-foot pine trees to which I'd once mounted a cell booster tower. The Starlink mobile app helped me find a better location on a different part of the roof, but in April, the 60-foot maple tree nearby had just produced buds. When the leaves popped, I wondered about satellite reception.
The barn roof was an option, but I didn't have a ladder tall enough to reach the peak and heaven forbid I should actually pay someone to mount the receiver. So I settled on a loafing shed on the edge of our property. Under the shed was an electrical junction box for the heated waterer and overhead lights.
Electricity: check.
Through Amazon Vines, I'd received a free receiver wall mount kit. All I had to do was write a review for it at some point.
Mounting: check.
Our Wifi mesh system, a TP-Link setup, had a compatible outdoor module that plugged in directly to the Starlink receiver. I could bypass the Starlink modem/router and use the TP-Link module as the main unit for the whole system. The loafing shed was close enough to the house for good communication with the rest of the mesh system.
Wifi signal: check.
Back at the loafing shed, I installed a weather-resistant electrical outlet, bolted on the receiver mount and ran the cords and wires to their necessary locations. The free Amazon mount got a 2-star review for its ridiculous amount of wobbling back and forth because of play where the mounting arm attaches to the wall brace. Safety wire fixed that, and a hose clamp beefed up the pipe junction where rotation alignment adjustments are made. Yes, it was a free mount...at a small cost. On my own dime, I would have bought something better.
Overall, performance is improved and the monthly price is about the same. It's a win in the Stichnoth household. Verizon and T-Mobile were more convenient for the simplicity of a totally wireless system. I spent the better part of a day mounting the Starlink receiver, whereas the cell service gateways were up and running in about 10 minutes. Tradeoffs, friends.
