Internet in the Sierra Foothills

This is to help people discover their choices for internet connections in my area. This includes the towns of Grass Valley, Nevada City, and the Nevada County region

• If you are very close to a town such as Grass Valley or Nevada City, you might be able to get cable internet from Comcast, or Optimum in the Southern Nevada County area. I hear people complain about poor customer service from Comcast, but it's one of the fastest connections you can get in this area.

• UVerse from AT&T would be a second choice, but it is not as available outside of the more densely populated areas, such as downtown Grass Valley or Nevada City. DSL from AT&T was previously available, but they have stopped offering it to new customers. If you already have it, you can continue to use it, but if you ever cancel it, you won't get it back. I have heard the AT&T would like to eliminate DSL completely, but they have not yet done that. DSL a slower service than most of the other options.

• If cable, U-verse, or DSL is not available (or DSL is too slow for you), you can check with SmarterBroadband, a wireless service, that may be able provide service in areas where the others cannot. There is also Digital Path, a similar wireless service. The wireless services can have large set up costs and long-term contracts. Check with both before making a decision.

• You can use your cell phone as a hot spot (like a wireless router), and connect your computers and other devices to it. The speed can be acceptable, but the cost could be higher than the other solutions. From my experience, Verizon has the best reception in the Nevada County area.

• Your last and worst choice would be satellite (except for Starlink, which is mentioned later). Some of the satellite companies are: Viasat, HughesNet, DirecTV, and Dish. They are not always reliable, and if you use too much bandwidth per month, they slow your connection down to an almost unusable speed.

Generally, a "wired" connection, such as cable, UVerse, or DSL, will be more reliable, and a better choice than any of the wireless services (SmarterBroadband, Digital Path, cell phone, satellite). But you will need to decide based on what's available, the minimum speed you need, and what you are willing to pay. If you are using digital phone lines (VOIP), reliability is an important factor, even though a typical call does not require a lot of speed.

★★★ Race Telecommunications is involved with distributing a high-speed wired connection throughout parts of our area (Nevada county). That connection promises to be the fastest and most reliable internet in our area, but it could be a long time before everyone can get it.

About Starlink

You may already know that Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has created another company called Starlink (www.starlink.com), that is providing internet access. They are launching thousands of satellites to provide fast internet service from almost any point on earth. They can offer download speeds of 100 Mbps or more with an extremely low latency (ping) of 20 milliseconds. This is great if you live in a more rural area with limited internet options. The other satellite providers (HughesNet, ViaSat, etc.), will not come close to providing what Starlink can. Service is available in most areas of the U.S., but right now (November 2024), there is a waiting list to get it in our area (Nevada County, California).

About SmarterBroadband

I have used SmarterBroadband, a local Grass Valley company, since 2015. I also have DSL service from AT&T. I got the DSL when AT&T was still offering it, and I use it as a backup in case there are problems with SmarterBroadband (SBB). SBB is a faster connection (12MB down, 2MB up) than the DSL (2.5MB down, .42MB up), but because the internet is so important to my business, I must have a backup.

Several years back , I was having problems with the SBB speed not being consistent. I was often not getting the download rate that I was paying for. The speed was often less than half of what it should have been, especially in the evenings. It's was not down too often, but when it was, it was anywhere from a few minutes to all day. The DSL rarely went down, and had a slow, but consistent speed, so I kept all my VOIP phones connected to that network, and used the SmarterBroadband for the computers, tablets, and phones. It was a bit frustrating for me to pay SmarterBroadband $89/month for service that has varying speeds that are often less than half of what I was paying for.

Update 02/11/2020:
SmarterBroadband sent out a technician, and they installed new equipment that gave me a faster speed (up to 12MB download and 2MB upload). Since the equipment is high up in a tree, I had to pay the first hour for the tree climber ($80), and they covered the remainder. The service is much better now, and I am getting up to 12MB downloads. However, I noticed that the service still tends to slow down every evening from about 6pm to 11pm. The upload does not slow down very much, only the download slows down (which is the more important direction for most things). At least when the speed reduces, it only goes down to 5MB or 6MB, which is still acceptable, compared to the previous service that would drop to 2MB or 3MB in the evenings.

Update October 2024:
For the past year or so, the speeds with SmarterBroadband have been much more consistent, and I can usually get the download and upload speeds I am paying for. I believe they did some upgrades to their equipment. Overall, I have been happy with SBB, and their customer service has always been good. However, at some point in the future, I might consider switching to Starlink. It would cost me $120/month instead of $89/month with SBB, but it would be much faster. If I do that, I would probably cancel my DSL service and use SBB as my backup service, dropping down to the lowest cost SBB plan of $49/month for the 6MB service.

I have performed various SmarterBroadband speed tests. I wanted to see what was really happening over various time periods. Below are the results.

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