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One of the reasons Gratiot County is a nice place to live, work, and grow old is because we’ve got fast internet.
Today we're talking about Home Internet options for Gratiot County residents. I collected in-town availability and pricing samples from official company websites on June 2023, by entering real Gratiot County street addresses.
Remember, don't buy things you don't need, especially when it's a large one-time payment or recurring subscription, as is the case with most home internet plans. Home internet is good for people who want to connect a computer to the internet from inside their house. It's good for people who have multiple devices that use internet inside their home. If you live alone and have a phone, you could get by with just the phone's data plan, and the phone's hotspot. Make sure you need home internet before you buy home internet.
In June 2023, the fastest residential fiber internet connection you can buy is 1 GBPS, that 1000 MBPS - one gigabyte per second equals one-thousand megabytes per second. That’s Gratiot’s fastest home internet connection today, only available through fiber, so only available when fiber is available at your home address.
I’m (blessed enough to be) connecting to you from my home via Point’s fastest today. With a mesh router and their $60/month plan, my iPhone is running in the 200s and 300s MBPS download speeds on mobile nice and fast, and 400s to 600s MBPS on desktop.
This is months after I switched my address from Spectrum to Point. I saw news that Point is digging those high-speed internet wires all around Mid-Michigan, and was tickled to learn Point’s brand new 1 GBPS internet highway runs right through hometown Gratiot.
When US-127 bumped from 70 MPH to 75 MPH except around Ithaca, we all rejoiced. Gratiot County’s got a need for speed.
In the cases of Spectrum and Point, they tell you their speed right away. They can brag because their Cable/Fiber connection in select Gratiot County areas is the fastest available.
But other providers like Frontier and ISP Management Inc. make it hard to find their speed. That’s because they’re slow compared to the Cable/Fiber connection frontrunners. It’s not fair to compare Cable and Fiber (faster) to DSL and wireless (slower).
These data are gathered from other websites specific to Gratiot County internet speeds in June 2023. They demonstrate how you need to think about buying home internet. First you need to know what’s the fastest connection type available at your address, then find the service with the best price.
In terms of Gratiot County’s residential internet technologies, Cable is the incumbent of lines, Fiber is the future of lines, and DSL is old hat; Wireless is the remote rural dweller’s only option, where 6G is the future of wireless, 5G is the incumbent of wireless, and or Fixed Wireless is old hat.
You never (and will never truly) know which internet service providers are co-sharing cables in the ground or a towers in the sky, so just look for the internet that’s fastest within your price range.
This is Gratiot County's best list of Gratiot County's best home internet service providers because it is the result of my circumstantial scrutiny.
Website spectrum.com
Review: Spectrum offers 1 Gbps, more expensive than Point Broadband’s Gbps, so I’d only choose Spectrum Home Internet if I need my Spectrum Home TV Channels. If a TV bundle isn’t important to you, then Point Broadband’s Fiber is the same (or faster) internet speeds, so Point Broadband is the clear winner for people just looking for speedy and low-cost internet in Gratiot County. Both Spectrum and Point Broadband offer great speed and service.
Website point-broadband.com
Review: Point Broadband is 2023 Gratiot County’s lowest-cost 1 Gbps home internet, so its Fiber connection the best deal of all in my opinion.
Product Promotion (#ad): If you click here (my referral link) to buy Point Internet Services, then you get a $100 gift card after installation and I do too.
Website frontier.com
Review: It’s simple and works in Gratiot. It’s not the fastest, but with the free Amazon eero mesh router included in your 2-year price, it’s actually a somewhat attractive deal for the casual internet user. Good cross-county coverage indicates Frontier is a safe bet. I use Point Fiber, and Frontier DSL is estimated to be 85% slower than Point Fiber, so I’m leaving that Frontier behind.
Website: cmsinter.net
Review: More expensive than Point for residential Fiber, and more limited Gratiot County service area. Maybe it’ll become more competitive to homeowners seeking internet in the years to come, as Fiber gradually becomes the standard commodity in tech-savvy Gratiot Country.
Website: ispmgt.com
Review: They’ve got dozens of broadcast locations in Mid-Michigan only (nowhere else), and they show you a map with all of them, so ISP Management is ideal for people who want a real local ISP, when your household is located adjacent to one of them. Another reason I like ISP Management is the unusual full-pagers they show you when you click the website navigation’s Contact link. It surprises me every time what’s in that undertab!
Website: earthlink.net
Review: Offers only wireless in Gratiot County, so nothing special at that price.
Major mobile phone networks like T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T serve Gratiot County smartphone users with phone plans, including mobile data plans and hotspot devices which let you take the internet with you on the go. It’s called mobile.
These days, the companies you know for “Mobile Internet Services”, now also have “Home Internet Services”.
You don’t see T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T on Gratiot County’s list of recommended home internet service providers - because I checked - and they don’t offer home internet in most Gratiot County locations. I went to the website on June 13 to check availability in St. Louis, Alma, and Ithaca. Only one home in St. Louis came up with - BINGO - T-Mobile offers home internet service at your address.
I do not recommend using any of these 3 big networks for home internet. Likely, the speed will be just as good as your phone gets, but will seem even slower, since you’ll be using the same bandwidth on a computer or TV with higher bandwidth demands. It takes more internet juice to stream high-definition movies, for example.
HughesNet, Viasat, LAKENET LLC, SKYWEB, Winn Telecom, BrightSpeed, LakeNet, Casair? You would go to these if you don’t have any options except these to pick from. For example, when you live far away from Gratiot’s cities and towns and availability is your biggest obstacle.
