Cellular Phone Service and Home Internet in Placid Bay Estates and Colonial Beach
Overview
For home internet in Placid Bay Estates and Colonial Beach, Breezeline is the only realistic option. Starlink Roam also works but is considerably more expensive.
Verizon has the best coverage for cellular phone service, followed by AT&T. Due to the rural geography, the area has no high-band 5G antennas. Therefore, we do not recommend paying extra for 5G service.
Internet
Three types of home internet are available in this region: cable, satellite, and cellular. The cellular towers are too far away for Placid Bay Estates and Colonial Beach residents to make cellular a viable home internet option.
Dish, HughesNet, ViaSat and Starlink are available in this area. Dish, HughesNet, and ViaSat use geostationary satellites located over 20,000 miles away from Earth. Therefore, they have relatively lower-quality bandwidth, latency, and reliability.
In the author's opinion, ViaSat is a viable option if you do not play online video games and internet reliability is not critical.
Starlink uses low-earth-orbit satellites, which have a latency that is 1/20th of their upper-orbit competitors. At this time, Starlink does not offer residential service in this area. However, you can get their "RV" service, Starlink Roam, at a premium price. Starlink's reliability is high, bandwidth is currently between 20-100 Mbps, and the latency is similar to cable. To clarify, Starlink Roam is a great, but costly option.
The only cable internet operator in the area is Breezeline. When Breezeline Internet works, it is a high-bandwidth, good-latency service for reasonable prices. However, Breezeline has a reputation for going offline often and being unreliable.
Providers will often attempt to sell you higher-bandwidth plans than you need. In reality, 100 Mbps is sufficient for 99.99% of households, even if you have five family members streaming or gaming simultaneously.
We suggest that you purchase your own modems and wi-fi routers instead of renting.
Helpful terms for evaluating home internet options
Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the amount of data that can be transferred over a network in a given amount of time. For most households, 100 Mbps is sufficient bandwidth.
Latency: Latency is the time it takes for a signal to travel from one point to another. A lower latency means that a signal will travel faster. Low latency is critical for online gaming.
Reliability: Reliability is the likelihood that a service will be available when you need it.
Cellular Phone Service
There are three companies operating cellular towers in Virginia: Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile. All other mobile phone services, such as SmartTalk, rent access from the "Big 3".
Currently, Verizon has the best coverage in Placid Bay Estates and Colonial Beach. The Verizon tower is near Big Timber Road and is not local enough to provide reliable data services. AT&T is a close second for coverage in the area. T-Mobile needs better coverage in this area.
5G cellular communications come in low/mid-band and high-band. These 5G services are branded with different names by the carriers. For example, Verizon calls 5G high-band the "Ultra-Wide Band." In rural areas, 5G high-band does not work. Therefore, there are no 5G high-band antennas in this area. A regular cellular phone plan usually includes 5G Low/Mid-band. Do not pay extra for the high-band 5G services, as they are unavailable in this area.
Information in this article provided by Colonial Beach iPhone Repair