Looking to move to Southeast Tennessee

[Aloha8]

23 hours ago, Erik88 said:

Have you spent much time up in that area? It's a beautiful part of the state but it's extremely poor. We go hiking/camping/off-roading in that corner near Ducktown and there is nothing there. It's hard to even find a grocery store in some of those towns. I understand wanting to get away from people, but you may want to try and be a bit closer to Chattanooga. I don't think you will find fast internet in most of that area. I wouldn't want to live there full time but it would be nice to have a cabin there. 

Actually, I have and really like the Ducktown and Copperhill area, which I know well (I was the Venue Technology Manager at the Ocoee Whitewater Center during the 1996 Olympics). But that's too far east -- Hwy 64 would not be a viable drive home from the Chattanooga airport late at night after a week on the road . And, as you note, there's no truly high speed internet available around there.

[Aloha8]

17 hours ago, RED333 said:

I do not cafe where y’all from or where y’all move to in TN. Just please behave y’all’s self, and welcome to TGO.

Thanks Red!

[Aloha8]

16 hours ago, A516 said:

Look up on Flat Top mountain

Thanks for the suggestion. I used to know that area, or did in 1960s. It might be too far west, but certainly worth a look.

[Aloha8]

14 hours ago, Dirtshooter said:

Aloha8, you will just have to come and look with your own 2 eyes. There are some really nice places out in the sticks, some have nice neighbors some have crack shacks and meth labs. But most anyplace has those nowadays. Just take a few 3 day weekends and start searching, although there are lots of nice pretty areas such as Gatlinburg, well it also has 4 million plus visitors on the roads, so you have to take all the things into consideration. Pm me if you want a few tips. Most anyplace in Tennessee will beat the rat race in Hotlanta!!

Thanks Dirtshooter, and thanks for the PM too. Oh yes, we have to see, in detail, any potential properties and the surrounding areas, and we plan to spend Saturdays and maybe weekends looking, as we have been since last month. I'm well familiar with the tourist and outdoor recreation areas and how the crowds build up as the weather gets better; that's a serious consideration too. I recall several times when I just wanted to stop in Gburg for a burger and a beer after a weekend hiking on the AT and it seemed to take a hour just to get to a restaurant.

Anyway, totally agree that any of that is better than what the Atlanta area has become!

Edited March 23, 2021 by ALoha8

[Aloha8]

13 hours ago, Murgatroy said:

To the OP, I don't know your budget, but look at some of the smaller towns just outside of Knoxville or Chattanooga, anything along the I-75 Corridor. I have a buddy I went to school with that owns a fairly successful Real Estate company out that way, he specializes in the area. East Tennessee Properties, 423-453-5722. He might be able to help you in your search.

Good suggestions. We are actually looking along, and mostly east of, Hwy 411 from Old Fort up to Maryville... but not east of Ocoee more or less.

Thanks for the contact information, we'll call him.

[Mamba]

Having "survived" living in rural N Middle TN and work-from-home on an expensive AT&T wireless hot-spot for a couple years all I can say is...good luck. Luckily this was pre-2020 so vid-meetings were only a couple times per week.  Even then, we spent many hours at the nearest public library to sponge off their free faster bandwidth to save on our meager allotment. Loved the country life, but eventually had to move to Nashville for family reasons and can't say that I miss the hot-spot. lol
As Mark said, ya might keep an eye on Starlink...not in TN yet; they have up-coming competition so pricing should drop eventually too.

[MacGyver]

If you're wanting real internet - getting within the service range of EPB in Chattanooga is about your most reliable bet.

I've got people in Oak Ridge who have reasonable internet - but it's nothing to write home about.

[Aloha8]

1 hour ago, Mamba said:

Having "survived" living in rural N Middle TN and work-from-home on an expensive AT&T wireless hot-spot for a couple years all I can say is...good luck. Luckily this was pre-2020 so vid-meetings were only a couple times per week.  Even then, we spent many hours at the nearest public library to sponge off their free faster bandwidth to save on our meager allotment. Loved the country life, but eventually had to move to Nashville for family reasons and can't say that I miss the hot-spot. lol

Thanks. Good luck is what we'll need

51 minutes ago, MacGyver said:

If you're wanting real internet - getting within the service range of EPB in Chattanooga is about your most reliable bet.

I wish Chattanooga EPB internet was an option. Their coverage area just doesn't get us away from crowds and urban sprawl, sadly.

We've found a couple of possibilities that have AT&T gigabit fiber available, and we'll keep looking until we find what we need. High speed internet is one requirement that we can't compromise on. My wife, the road warrior (hence the need to be fairly close to an airport) frequently works with clients from her home office and I instruct on-line classes. DSL with its unreliable speeds, satellite with data caps and latency, and fixed wireless just won't cut it. So... looking and looking continues.

[Aloha8]

Sorry that I'm late with this:

Thanks to everyone for the responses and suggestions... the search continues!

[Randall53]

On 3/22/2021 at 8:53 AM, Mark A said:

Well, you've picked a nice area in general. As far as high speed internet, I'm afraid you may be out of luck at the moment. We use (2) Cellular routers with external antennas. One for the house and one for my office. Speeds aren't great but that gives me an excuse to keep my camera off during video calls. It is fast enough to stream most of the time.

I sent my Star Link deposit in a couple of months ago. I should have equipment in the next 6-8 weeks (I hope). It remains to be seen if this will be the savior of rural internet the hype promises. I am optimistic anyway...

 

Mark

Mark, please let us know how the Star Link works out for you. I have no service for phone or internet and had to resort to Viasat for internet which S-U-C-K-S.....and they know it. They just don’t give a crap. Customer Service sucks just as much or more than the pitiful thing they call a signal. I have Viasat, dish network, and a home phone to be able to have a phone at all if there’s an emergency and these items total over $300 a month.  

[Mamba]

6 minutes ago, Randall53 said:

Mark, please let us know how the Star Link works out for you.

For SL news I keep an eye on Lon's YT channel, he has real-world experience with it.
Yah, Hughes and the other sat venders have horrible reviews, enough to save me from traveling that road back when we lived "in the frick'n forest" as my wife called it. The AT&T hotspot service ran $150/mo via an eBay vendor, data cap was 50GB as I recall. We had decent bandwidth & latency....could stream a movie but rarely did due to the cap, saved that for Zoom. I did game online regularly which uses minimal data but needs sub-100ms latency. Weather did impact signal-strength. 

[ReeferMac]

Part of the problem is your two requests are mutually exclusive. Most high speed service is distance limited, either due to technology limitations (dsl) or cost of cabling (fiber). Rural = distance = putting wires on lots of poles (or underground, etc.). 

If you truly want rural AND speed, you may want to search for a nugget of privacy near a main road, route, college, civilization, etc., and budget for running a line to your property at your own cost.

You may be able to do point to point microwave, but again you'll be distance limited to proximities of larger cities.

[billmeek]

In very rural southern middle TN and just switched today from Spectrum (aka Charter) cablemodem rated for 200Mb/s (nomally see about 125 down and 11 up) to JTM fiber and am currently getting 885.91 down and 818.96 up with a ping of 1ms.

[Mamba]

11 hours ago, billmeek said:

In very rural southern middle TN and just switched today from Spectrum (aka Charter) cablemodem rated for 200Mb/s (nomally see about 125 down and 11 up) to JTM fiber...

"JTM Broadband is a family owned business that was started by two brothers who wanted to create a more reliable Internet network in their rural community."
Great to see local SMB solutions step up to fill the gaps. Finding options like this is often only accomplished via word-of-mouth or luck. The latter was our case with the hot-spot solution.

Edited March 26, 2021 by Mamba

[Aloha8]

19 hours ago, ReeferMac said:

Part of the problem is your two requests are mutually exclusive. Most high speed service is distance limited, either due to technology limitations (dsl) or cost of cabling (fiber). Rural = distance = putting wires on lots of poles (or underground, etc.). 

If you truly want rural AND speed, you may want to search for a nugget of privacy near a main road, route, college, civilization, etc., and budget for running a line to your property at your own cost.

You may be able to do point to point microwave, but again you'll be distance limited to proximities of larger cities.

Thanks Mac. Yep, that's the rub indeed. Fortunately, some developers - a rare few so far, actually 3 that we've found from Old Fort up to Townsend! - are arranging for fiber internet in their developments. The search continues...

[Aloha8]

20 hours ago, Mamba said:

... Hughes and the other sat venders have horrible reviews ...

And the FCC definition of "high speed" is interesting as well. "Sure, we have high speed internet..." is often the answer; just a bit of research shows it to be DSL (good luck) or satellite, neither of which meets our needs, not even close. Add you observation of lousy, no-caring service and, well, just leave it at we're not impressed or interested.

[Mamba]

32 minutes ago, ALoha8 said:

"Sure, we have high speed internet..." is often the answer

Yah, and sometimes there's other issues. One reason that we went ahead with the rural home purchase near Portland, TN back in '16 was that the owner worked-from-home via DSL. Not thrilled with DSL but figured it would be the best we could do and was workable. Well, when that owner closed her account, turns out she only had phone & DSL service at all because she was grandfathered in when AT&T had bought out the local provider. So when we moved in, that was all shut-down. Had to scramble for a solution. At least these days looks like there are more options in that area, and hopefully rural TN in general.

[Aloha8]

2 hours ago, Mamba said:

...and sometimes there's other issues...

I just saw a report that AT&T officially ended DSL support last October; I think it was that they won't take new accounts, even if you move into a house that already has AT&T DSL. TDS still offers DSL but I heard from several of their subscribers that it's marginally better than nothing. AT&T left a bunch of people out in the internet cold. No wonder Musk with StarLink sees a real opportunity.

[Mamba]

2 hours ago, ALoha8 said:

I just saw a report that AT&T officially ended DSL support last October...

Yep, they decided that DSL was out-mode'd tech that they didn't want to deal with any longer so they effectively pulled the plug in situations like mine. Didn't matter to them that I couldn't be a broadband customer due to no existing or planned rural infrastructure, and even for wireless I had to track down my own one-off solution.
Carpe diem Elon....

[billmeek]

3 hours ago, ALoha8 said:

TDS still offers DSL but I heard from several of their subscribers that it's marginally better than nothing.

I've replaced TDS DSL at a couple of locations with Verizon hotspots and the LTE is a lot faster... even with a marginal signal.

[Mamba]

I ran across a YT video on Nomad Internet. Glowing review tho' the homesteaders giving the review had only used it for a couple months at the time. Worked great for them after they added external antennas on the roof. Looks like Nomad also caters to RV gypsies. I would ask them about carrier caps, as some (like Verizon) are known to throttle their 4g after 15gb or so.

[Aloha8]

4 hours ago, Mamba said:

I ran across a YT video on Nomad Internet.

Thanks Mamba. I'll look into them.

[Aloha8]

4 hours ago, Mamba said:

I ran across a YT video on Nomad Internet.

Nomad is interesting and I can see that they will do pretty well for an under served group, a growing group I'm guessing. The monthly charge is rather high, but if you can't get it and need it, the price may be worth it.

Sadly, for us, 150 Mbps download just won't work. Our experience has shown that we need 400 Mbps minimum.

Thanks again for the information.

[Mamba]

2 minutes ago, ALoha8 said:

Sadly, for us, 150 Mbps download just won't work

No worries. Sure wish I'd known about them back when, however they likely didn't exist that long ago. Good luck with your search.

[Aloha8]

13 hours ago, Mamba said:

Good luck with your search.

Thanks. So far, we've found 3 possibilities but eyes on is the trick.