My Life-changing internet from Truestream.
This month, we’re welcoming guest blogger, Jessica Searles!
Not long ago on my rural road in northern Emmet County, the only two internet options available to me were satellite and dial-up. Yes, that dial-up, the one that makes the funny noises when you sign on and requires you to have a landline so that you can check your AOL email account. My neighbor actually used dial-up right up until 2019.
I’m a marketing manager for Altair Software, a company headquartered near Miami, and I need internet to do my job. As you might imagine, dial-up wouldn’t cut it. I paid for satellite internet, at a cost of almost $120/mo. If you’ve ever had to suffer with satellite internet, then you already know about its leading characteristics:
- Outages – Forget storms. If a heavy, dark cloud traveled overhead I could lose signal. Rain doesn’t care if you have an important meeting.
- Latency – Because the signal must travel some 23,000 miles from earth up to the satellite and then the same distance back down again, it causes a delay of roughly 700 to 1200 milliseconds. That doesn’t sound like much, but as a telecommuter, I attended several virtual meetings a week. In a typical conversation the gap between speakers taking turns is only 200 milliseconds. The delay meant we were talking over each other constantly. I would dial in via phone because conversation was impossible.
- Data Caps – When the month’s data allotment was used up, I went to the Pellston airport to use their internet. Really. I wasn’t the only one, either. There were several regulars. I once encountered a woman who had brought in her entire desktop computer and set it up at one of the airport work stations.
May 8, 2019, marked a massive change when I became one of the earliest Truestreamers. Telecommuting is old school. I’m a fibercommuter now. I have been working from home for a while, but recent COVID-19 regulations highlight the need for Truestream in our area.
Working from home, shopping online for necessities, and having access to online educational resources are becoming the new norm for everyone. With the new, recent demands at my house, there is NO WAY satellite could have kept up.
Truestream, by comparison:
- Outages – I haven’t experienced a single outage. In cases where we lose power, which is rare, we have a backup battery to keep our internet running smoothly.
- Latency – My 1-gigabit connection means that I engage with colleagues face-to-face via video conferencing. If there’s a lag, it’s because the internet traffic at the office is a little congested.
- Data Caps – Data caps, what data caps? They are a thing of the past.
Truestream has changed the way I work from home. Now, if I go to the Pellston airport, it’s because I’m picking up a to-go meal to support a local restaurant during the shutdown, not because I’m desperate for internet.
-Jessica Searles
If you’re new to working from home, CHECK OUT THESE FIVE TIPS to ease the transition.