In response to a recent letter from an Ocklawaha resident who stated that the city needs better roads and internet service as the community grows, another resident wrote in to share his thoughts on the topic.
“Hello, I moved to Ocklawaha a little over a year ago after being awarded a house for earning a purple heart in Iraq. It’s a very beautiful home and area, but as a lot of the residents are saying, the only internet providers in my area are HughesNet (satellite) and CenturyLink (DSL), in which both of their services are terrible.
The price that I pay for bad service is the same price for the high speed 300 Mbps internet that Spectrum offers, which is a rip-off. I have called every internet provider that I can think of, and nobody is willing to provide service where I am. Spectrum stops two blocks from my house, and even after I told them that I would pay them to run a line to my house, they said they can’t do that. So, I’m stuck with the service I have, but hopefully it gets better soon because I stream everything.
Verizon is the only cellphone provider that works in my area, but the towers are so far away that I can’t even have a five minute call without it disconnecting. I have called them, and the first option that they gave me was to purchase a signal booster, which costs over $300 for the cheapest one, and install it on my house.
The second option was to find a neighbor willing to sign a contract to put a tower on their property. The problem with that is that I only have two neighbors on my street, and no one else lives on my street.
The last option was to use a network extender, which they provided for free. However, it has to have good internet to work properly, which is not in my area. So, I asked them if they could provide me with internet and was told they do not provide internet service in my area. It’s so bad that I have been thinking of future plans to move to a better-covered area even though I love where I live.
As far as the driving and road conditions, it takes me at least 30 minutes to get out of Ocklawaha. It is a downer, but I like to drive so it really doesn’t bother me much. It would be nice to not have to drive 30 minutes to the grocery store though. I really hope this gets better because it really is a great place to live.”
James Lipscomb
Ocklawaha resident