Off grid internet was a necessity when I moved into my tiny house. I can’t run survivalpunk without the internet. The idea of driving thirty miles to Starbucks to mooch while drinking coffee did occur. I spent a long time researching off grid internet. I was looking for the most bang for my buck. I have become spoiled with cheap and fast internet. I’ve had cable Internet for over 10 years. With that there’s no limits on data. With many of the off grid options you have data caps. What did I end up going with? Let me walk you through the decision.

Off Grid Internet Options

I might have missed some off grid internet options in my search. The big ones are cable, dsl, cellular, satellite and T1. I went down the list calling and checking who had what available. No cable companies go out there. Same for dsl. Att&t only has phone service.

No one has yet had reliable cell service on the land. An installer had some signal in the driveway with AT&T. Later I discovered I have service in the back up on a hill. So I’m looking into a yagi antenna to get service in the home.

A dedicated T1 line was an option. They were happy to run us one for over six hundred a month. Speed and data would be amazing. I don’t have that kind of cash though. So T1 is out too unfortunately.

My Solutions

Satellite Internet was the off grid solution I went with. Satellite internet has several providers to choose from. Hughes net and wild blue are the most well-known. All of them I looked at had similar packages. Very limited data in them all. Netflix and YouTube will be gone. With Streaming video using about a gig per hour of data. Services like Pandora which do streaming music are gone too. With 20 gigs of data a month I need it all to run Survivalpunk. I will upload Podcasts at Mikes to conserve.

I chose to go with Dish Network. The price for both internet and tv is the same as the internet only options. With it I get a DVR and music stations. 20 gigs of data a month should be just enough. Building the cell antenna would help out.

The speeds so far have been good enough. My cable internet is faster but Dish will work. Instead of watching the few shows I watch on Hulu I just DVR them now. The price increase in getting satellite tv and dropping Hulu and Netflix about balances out.

Is it the best Off Grid Internet option? It might be. Real world testing will show if it is enough.