May 13, 2024

Bonding LTE Bands for Rural & RV Broadband

 

It was a cold, dark night and the wind was blowing harder than Epstein's concubines. As we sat on our couch unwinding after a long week of work with our jobs and our toddler children, trying to watch the latest Netflix show available, our internet stopped working. It seems to do this when we need it most, although this time at least it only interfered with our ability to ingest what we probably shouldn’t be ingesting anyways. I got up and did what everyone knows is the first step of troubleshooting for all technology; bang it against the wall a few times and try to use it again. When that didn’t work, I did what all of the tech support people always say and power cycled the modem router. What does it take to find an OK rural internet provider?

To give a little more perspective, we love where we live. Absolutely as far away from other humans as possible. In the middle of rural Nevada. At least 30 miles to get to the nearest gas station. It's beautiful out here. Overlooking some of the neatest mountain ranges in the world, our views are to die for. That being said, we also enjoy some of the same things most city folk enjoy such as amazon, google, gaming, and streaming. Luckily for us, we have been able to get internet from a satellite company that at least brings us our emails and allows us to search google for “how to” information. Our options for internet providers are few. Actually, let's be honest, zilch. The only wired and satellite internet provider available at our humble rural home is really slow, has terrible quality, and costs more than urban city internet providers by sometimes 4X the cost.

So I went on a mission. I did it for my family. Ok, ok, I did it for mostly personal gain, but hey, my family will benefit too right?! As I started searching far and wide, and by that, I mean many google searches at my coffee table laptop, for something, ANYTHING, other than the current provider I had, I finally searched for rural internet providers and RV internet providers. My thinking was, how do all of these full-time RV youtuber’s live stream content while driving down the highway. In particular, MY highway, less than a mile away from my driveway?

I couldn’t see why I could get 55mbps download speeds on my cellphone but not more than 3mb from any other provider. And why can’t I just use the hotspot on my iphone? Why do they HATE me.

Finally, after searching far and wide, I found a new type of company that I had never heard of before while searching for RV internet providers. Most of the reviews were amazing about how people just like me were now able to stream, game, and do all of the things without buffering after talking with ispMint. I am a little techy and I understand all companies have glitches, but this would be amazing if we could switch to this new provider. Shoot, we would even save more than $100/mo if we could just cancel our Direct TV and switch to Amazon and Netflix a la carte streaming.

So we did it. And boy are we stoked that we did. We FINALLY have broadband at our rural home in the middle of the desert, and we stream on it EVERY day, ALL day.

Have you ever wondered how Cellular Carriers are able to get blazing-fast bandwidth speeds up to 200mbps WITHOUT 5g? 

 

It is very cool, and quite a simple concept really. 

 

We mostly all carry cellphones around now and know that the further out of the city we go, the less speed we are able to get. In fact, some rural areas literally have zero internet options including cellular. 

 

Many times rural broadband internet customers can only get fast internet service from satellite companies, and even then, sometimes they can't. For those clients, thank God that satellite works well enough to get emails and do google searches. Especially when they have no other options available. 

 

Let’s face it, Satellite internet simply can't perform for people who want to use streaming services, gaming, and video calls due to the miles and miles the signal has to travel into our atmosphere before returning back to the satellite and then back down to earth again. This includes even Starlink's satellite option which breaks connection every 5 minutes or so for a few hours per day.

 

So we would love to use our cellphone's data plan to stream and use internet, but cellphones are small devices and don't always get service at our homes already. And they all want to throttle you or give you unusable amounts of data. If not, we would all be using it right? Hotspotting every day! 

 

So, how do these cellular based companies manage to get Unlimited, High-Speed Internet to homes, RV clients, and businesses nowadays?

 

There are three key points to how this feat is accomplished. 

 

First is the concept of aggregate OR "bonding" multiple cellular connections from the same tower together. Basically, every cell tower has multiple "sectors" (panels that point north/south/east/west) and each of these "sectors" broadcast multiple frequencies of service. Each of these "frequencies" or "bands" provides the data that our rural broadband internet clients use to stream their favorite Netflix and Amazon shows. While your phone has the ability to receive these bands, our modems have "receivers" that can sometimes receive up to 500% more bands than our cellphones have. Which brings us back to the "bonding" I spoke about above. 

 

LTE data only devices provide rural broadband internet by receiving multiple "bands'' and adding them all together. So, if one frequency or band is providing 5mb, the next is 11mb and the third band is 18mb, our cell phones might only get the band with 11mb while ispMint modems will add them all together so our clients end up seeing speed tests that are around 34mb. (This is just an example. While speeds change based on location and saturation, the "bonding" still happens. We have speed tests that show 190mb sometimes. Even more now with 5g devices.) We have some RV internet clients that get 400mb while driving around in national parks.

 

Secondly, while some of these bands can reach really far away with smaller speeds (sometimes as far as 10 miles), rural broadband internet can be received as far as 15 miles away from a tower when adding basic cellular Yagi full-band antennas. These antennas are fairly inexpensive and can be bought directly from ispMint with our 100% guarantee, or online through amazon or others. (Always be sure to get cellular yagi's that receive frequencies between 600-2700mhz so you can get as many bands as possible.) We have even seen a highly directional cellular yagi antenna get internet as far as 30 miles away!

 

It is pretty impressive to see businesses RV internet and rural broadband internet clients in the middle of the desert or forest. Far from most other people. 

 

ispMint has upped the game even further through one other amazing third technique that allows us to bring BETTER THAN FIBER and MPLS quality to those people and businesses that need super high-quality connections to stream zoom call meetings, VoIP calls, and Movies. The technology called SDWAN has invented a few years ago that actually allows ispMint to further "bond" not only the cellular bands but ALSO many different carriers together at the same time. Put simply, ispMint brings multiple carriers like at&t, Verizon, t-mobile, spectrum, cox, Starlink, frontier, quest, us cellular, etc. to the same location, and then add them all together to give massive bandwidth and the highest quality connections to rural broadband internet clients. This service allows clients to achieve 99.999% uptime connections almost anywhere in the world. 

 

Most home and RV clients will only need one connection and usually don't even need to get Yagi antennas. But when someone REALLY needs GREAT internet in the middle of nowhere, ispMint provides those connections. All the way to the moon!!! 

We have clients that use our services in hunting cams powered by solar with our little sim plugged in the middle of the forest and other RV internet clients that travel from Canada to Mexico who is able to constantly stream both up and down while watching or creating TV. Furthermore, YouTubers can live stream while on lakes, camping or backpacking in the hardest to reach places.

Here at ispMint, we have a team specifically dedicated to keeping ispMint rural internet clients at the forefront of technology. This means, whether you currently have service with us or are a prospective customer, we are constantly coming out with more and more products and services every month to better serve our large number of clients. This goes for everything from antennas to modems, routers, wifi extenders, and cellular amplifiers.

 

We always say if you love your current internet, KEEP IT! However, if you are someone who wants to be able to stream TV and movies, Zoom call, game, use VoIP, and you think you can't because your current connection buffers with the spinning wheel of death all the time, then you have found your answer! We service Homes, RV or Mobile, Construction sites, Off-Grid Cameras and Business backup, and primary customers.

Visit us at ispMint.com or give us a call at 1-866-844-5111, and join our family of 10's of THOUSANDS of happy clients that receive their rural broadband internet from us!