[jonbiggums22]

Had a similar experience. I grew up in a rural area and broadband penetration was late. Later when I bought a house I was lied to by comcast about availability and ended up dialup again. (My fault for believing them tbh) Most of the tricks I used to make the most out of a dialup connection (disable images, disable flash player, load multiple pages so they could be browsed offline) didn't make a difference anymore. In the case of loading multiple pages, lazy loading meant this didn't really work. It was a much more brutal experience than the first go around.

The worst part was how little actual content actually makes up the bloat. Sure video was right out, but I was often struggling to load pages that were mostly text.

The only other option at the time was Hugesnet. After doing the math I determined the data caps were so low dialup was actually cheaper at MBs/month and had less latency issues. Realistically the next best available step up wasn't Hughesnet it was shotgunned 56K.

[peterleiser]

I grew up in a town that did not get broadband internet access until 2017. Before that people had little to no high-speed internet service other than the town library (and they would park or sit outside the library to use the wifi when it was closed). They would also use cell phone data plans.

[RiverCrochet]

A firm I used to do network work for had Hughesnet as failover Internet for a couple locations. I always knew they were on it by the 500ms+ pings. Better than nothing though for sure. And I'd also believe that's typical of any non-Starlink Internet around the end of the 2010s.

[MarkusWandel]

Heh. I know someone who uses VoIP via geostationary satellite internet connection. He tried Starlink as an upgrade, however, the 100W continuous power draw was a dealbreaker with his off-grid solar setup. This is off-grid enough not to have cell coverage.

Anyway talking with him on the phone you pretty much have to use a "over" / "over and out" kind of protocol because of the long latency.

[nicoburns]

The starlink mini is in the 20w (idle) to 40w (active) range if that might help.

[andersa]

I feel like finding out a house you bought doesn't actually have internet after the fact makes it worthless in the modern world and should be a valid reason to reverse the purchase.

[Xss3]

It should be part of the buyers due diligence. No sale reversal.

[GolfPopper]

Is there a way to truly do due diligence on that front? Some independent authority that will guarantee available connectivity with a bond or something? You certainly cannot trust the ISPs. Even if their salespeople don't lie to you out of greed, poor tooling, or incompetence, unless there's a working connection already, you run the risk of "sure, you're in our footprint, but we can't physically connect you because reasons" at installation time.

The closest I can think of off the top of my head is requiring a working (and testable) fiber connection before signing, and refuse to close if there isn't one. I have no idea how that would impact trying to buy a home today.

[Xss3]

A qualified surveyor should be able to tell you if a fibre line is connected to your home.

Here in the UK at least companies are not allowed to lie about which houses can and cant get service, and there is a regulatory body (ofcom) that regulates this and other telecommunications service aspects.

[Xss3]

Just to add (cant edit). They also regulate speed and can receive fines for over promising and under delivering. As a consumer i can raise this with the ombudsman to force action or remediation.