Three ways to set up rural Internet access using 4G LTE

This section shows three examples of how to I used 4G LTE networks to obtain rural Internet access:

Tethering to a cell phone. This is the simplest of the three systems. It took about an hour and $52.99 of equipment to set up. It’s ideal for short-term or backup configurations. This is currently my backup Internet connection.
An indoor installation that provides a middle-ground between the expensive, but fast outdoor installation, and inexpensive, but slower tethering configuration.
An outdoor installation that uses two external antennas. This has the fastest uploads the three configurations but was also the most expensive and labor-intensive to setup. This is currently my primary Internet connection. Similar configurations are suitable for those who live in areas that are so remote that an indoor installation doesn’t provide enough performance.

Here’s a table that compares these three Internet connection options to the ADSL lines that I used to use for Internet access:

Internet connection	Tethering to Cell	Indoor Install	Outdoor Install	2x ADSL lines
Download speed	15.01Mbps	99.08Mbps	20.23Mbps	9.83Mbps/line
Upload speed	0.44Mbps	1.78Mbps	12.27Mbps	0.97Mbps/line
Round-Trip Latency	39ms	29ms	44ms	42ms
Initial setup cost	$53	$207	$682	$300
Recurring costs	$10/GB	$400-$600/year	$90/month	$164/month

Notes:

The speed and latency figures above are the average (mean) of five tests run on each connection.
The costs are rounded to the nearest dollar.
Two ADSL lines used a load balancer, so each upload or download was limited to the speeds shown above. When there were multiple Internet requests active, their load was distributed over the two connections, creating maximum aggregate speeds of double these figures.

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