In response to recent letters that discussed slow internet speeds in Ocala/Marion County, more residents wrote in to share their thoughts on this topic.
“I totally agree with Anthony resident Annette Lennox. I live in southeast Ocala, not too far from Maricamp. Since we have Spectrum, we have good internet most of the time. I have a friend who lives in Summerfield. She is a registered nurse and wants to work from home for a medical insurance company, but she can’t take the job because she has terrible internet service. She was in an automobile wreck, which was not her fault, so therefore she can’t stand for long periods of time as a nurse would require. But she could work from home if she had excellent internet service,” says Ocala resident Gail Bradley.
“Marion County really does need to start offering better internet service. My husband and I have lived in Summerfield since 1997, and we have also operated our Insurance Agency from home since 1998. With everything being internet-based these days, and Marion County growing at the rate it is, there needs to be more available options for the residents that live outside of the city area. CenturyLink only offers a maximum of 10mbps, and when working from home, this slows down our workflow tremendously. Then you add in the outages and problems with the service and there are days that we just can’t work at all. This results in a major loss of income, not to mention the lack of being able to service our clients fully. We hope that this changes in the near future for the residents in the areas where there is only one option. This also goes for cable as we only have either DirectTV or Dish, and we lose service when the wind blows the wrong way,” says Barbara Peterson, Summerfield resident.
“I just read the letter about the poor internet service from an Anthony resident. I was shocked to see that she has 10mbps internet service. We are within Ocala, not far from Anthony, and we can only get up to 3 mbps service from CenturyLink, and I stress the words ‘up to’ because it is rarely at 3mbps. I also work from home and don’t trust satellite for the same reason: it is not reliable in all weather,” says Ocala resident Rita Mateo.
Would you like to share your thoughts with us? Share them in a comment or by writing a Letter to the Editor.