The Ultimate Guide to Working from Home in Rural America

The new “work from home” paradigm imposed by the Coronavirus crisis outlines the Internet issues all across the world. That’s because remote work today needs more than just a poor satellite, DSL or cable connection:

• video conferencing (Zoom, Google Meet, Skype, etc.) is used not only for business purposes, but also for education;
• manipulating large files is very common for lots of employees;
• live streaming and gaming are also there, as you also have your other family members using the same connection.

So, all of a sudden, the burden on the already-flimsy slow and unreliable rural Internet increased. Working from home in rural America can be a real challenge. As reported by CNN, almost one third of rural American households don’t have access to broadband Internet. Plus – two thirds don’t have access to a symmetrical high-speed Internet connection. That means highly skewed download and upload rates – with downloads usually performing much better.

All in all, Internet in rural areas is very different than in the city. It very much varies from region to region, but there are a few common coordinates:

• penetration of broadband Internet services is limited;
• choice of Internet service providers is scarce;
• connectivity infrastructure is old or even non existent.

So – how can you get faster and more reliable Internet in rural America? Keep reading to find out.

As always, it’s all about the return on investment. Broadband infrastructure has costs associated to it which Internet service providers are not yet willing to spend. Broadband lobby groups are arguing that Internet service is similar to utilities such as electricity, gas distribution, roads, and water and sewer networks. So, the government should give ISPs more money.

The most frequent Internet services you can use when working from home in rural America are satellite and/or DSL. Each of them has their pros and cons. Bottom line: do you want to be able to do video conferencing on Zoom, handle large files, surf, play online games or stream without any issues? Then, you must get 2 or more connections when remote working from rural America. Using them both simultaneously can easily be done with channel bonding software like Speedify.

Speedify is a fast bonding VPN that uses channel bonding technology to combine 2 or more Internet connections at once. This delivers more bandwidth, increased connection reliability and protects your private data.

In order to be able to work from home in rural America, you should have at least two Internet connections available. These can be from the same ISP or different ones:

• 2 DSL lines
• DSL and satellite
• 2 satellite connections
• DSL and cellular
• satellite and cellular

Basically, any combination of Internet connections will work – see below how we combined 10 connections at once.