​Alternative Wi-Fi

As someone who is getting their WiFi from Starlink, I can say that it is head and shoulders above Windstream. Starlink is stable, fast, and unfortunately, a bit expensive. Plus, it’s an Elon Musk company, so I get that it is not an ideal choice.

There are other options I have written about, like getting a hotspot from T-Mobile or Verizon, whichever works for you. AT&T also works for some folks out by the lake. I recently found another company called NMSurf. A friend of mine uses them and I was over at her home recently and found her WiF running at a little over 100Mbs. That was shockingly fast, I thought, for out here. She says it’s a wireless broadcast to her house, and she has a receiver that they installed.

It may be necessary to have line of sight to Black Mesa. She lives in Medanales, but just off 142, so I imagine that NMSurf would work for a lot of folks in that area. They are a lot less expensive than StarLink, and the speed is way faster than most of us need so it’s worth checking out.

Oddly, there was a NMSurf truck in front of my gate recently, so I wondered what he was doing there, but he left before I got out there. When I get home I’d like to see if they reach our house.
In addition to dumping Windstream for her internet, she also replaced them for her phone service. She now uses OOMA, a telephone service that uses the internet. Many people simply chucked their landlines, as smartphones are so ubiquitous these days, however, as you know living out here, cell phones don’t always work. With WiFi calling enabled on your phone, and decent WiFi in your home, you should still be able to use your cell phone, however, a Windstream landline will likely work even if the power goes off at your home, where the WiFi will probably not continue working unless you have some battery backup on that equipment.

Still, if you really want to get rid of Windstream altogether, then a “landline” alternative (VOIP) that might work for you could be OOMA. There are other internet based “landline” services as well, feel free to google them if you are so inclined. You can see some VOIP options at this LINK.