Help A Family Get Needed Internet

Hello World,

My name is Amanda Lonas and I live in the small college town of Athens, OH with my husband Justin Lonas and my 3 year old sweetheart of a son, Damon Lonas. We are both work from home parents and work in the field of Online Education. My husband is a Web Application Developer and develops/maintains software for the company we both work for. I, myself, am a Helpdesk Representative and deal daily with students as well as faculty from various colleges to help them troubleshoot technical issues they may have.

We have recently become home owners and have gone through all the necessary steps to ensure that the move was as smooth as possible and budgeted correctly as deciding to buy a family home is always a hectic and expensive.

Before we even went through the process of putting an offer down on the place we now call home, we contacted our Internet Service Provider (Time Warner Cable) to see if they serviced our address. The customer representative over the phone stated that nearly all of our neighbors have TWC and thus we definitely should as well. We double checked by asking if they were sure and they reassured us. 

We made sure this was the very first step as both of our careers rely on a steady internet connection that can withstand constant calls through my computer and the many tasks that my husband has to do development wise. Without this we would be sitting ducks and greatly crippled. This would also put our son at a disadvantage as well as he had been using educational websites to further his education and development.

A week before everything was set for us to close and move in, after spending money on every step towards getting this house, we attempted to setup service connection for the residence only to find out to our dismay that our residence was not in their database but, again, the neighbors all had TWC so we should be able to get setup as well.

They went ahead and put the order in anyways to see where it went and we eventually got an email that they would need to come and survey the house in the event that we would need to get hardware in. They stated that a payment plan was possible if a contribution was required. They stated this process would take up to 7-10 business days... we waited patiently. 

I took a week off of work so that I could get everything moved in and settled into the new home and, since my husbands time is a bit more flexible, he worked via mobile hotspot between moving things in, fixing things and dealing with other household necessities.

Eventually we got a call that they did survey the land and the closest connection was 628 FT from our house! The cost? $3625... this was a hard hit but... we thought... if there is a payment plan and we tighten our belts financially, we should be able to do it. We asked when they could start. They said... after the entire amount is paid off. So the payment plan was pointless as we would just save on our own and didn't solve our issue. 

The cut out square to the right is the area just outside of servicable area where our residence resides:

We were beyond dissappointed as we need this to ensure we could work optimally and... now my husband was nearing his data limit which he did eventually reach.
We decided to look around for other alternatives only to find that DirectTV slots were taken up in our area, intelliwave could not service our residence and only one company was left to look into. Frontier. 

We decided to see what plan we could get on with Frontier. At first we believed we at least could get something that would have fit us just fine within the 7-12 Mbps range but were told that we would only be able to get 1.6 Mbps down. As a last resort, we decided to go through with it. It took them a good week to get out to us to set things up and the first day we had serious issues. We are unable to both be doing heavy work at the same time and must shift schedules to accomidate. On top of this, if anything at all is streamed, downloaded, etc it greatly hinders our work as well. 

If we were able to pay for the hardware installation, this would greatly enhance our ability to provide quality work so that we may continue to prosper in our career but also provide our son with the ability to dig into the learning that he craves through online sources as we all know is a bountiful source of learning. We would be incredibly grateful for any contribution no matter how small that may be. Even while we strive to hit our goal, we will continue to save until we can afford it.

Thank You,

Lonas Family