I have sent your feedback to our KOA WiFi Consultant to discuss with Lake Livingstong/Onalaska KOA. Thank you.
I disagree or have an updated view of this problem. I live and travel in my rig 365 days a year and have had many different experiences. The problem of signal strength has been largely solved with cheap outdoor equipment. Signal is no longer the problem. Its the back end pipe and the bottleneck services like Tengo (they do suck). But the primary problem was noticed when a comparison to Starbucks was made. Starbucks is a modern, professional forward thinking corporation. RV parks are owned by opinionated, head strong, their way or the highway, old people who don't have a clue what it takes to survive in the modern world. Talking to them about this issue is like giving a calculator to a cat. Add to that, the majority of the clientele, is just like the owners. I was in a park last week that thought it was a good idea to just give people a 500 megabyte total limit. These knuckle-draggers don't know that 10 photos of their facility sent to a friend telling them how great their place is could be 10% of that limit. The park I am in, Poulsbo WA, through out the cable company that offered high speed data and now expect you to be happy with their Tengo Crap. They don't get it. This industry needs to consolidate and taken over by people who understand that INTERNET now has the same importance as ELECTRICITY. Unfortunately. I think we are going to have to wait until these owners sell and are replaced by a generation who really understand the problem.
I couldn't disagree with you more. Bandwidth accessibility is a big problem still today. There are RV parks & campgrounds that can't get DSL internet nevermind fiber or Cable. Which will automatically lower than bandwidth to 25Mpbs or less, which is far below recommended levels when you have 75 site property or more. I use those bandwidth speeds in my personal home for just myself! How did you come the conclusion signal is no longer a problem? I would like to understand that better. Often is a park has satellite for an ISP they have data limits and will have throttle guests as well. I want to be clear that if the cable company offered high-speed internet, we would almost always say it's in their best interest to move forward with that and use it to supply the WiFi network to deliver to the guests. I agree that there has to a paradigm shift of education for RV Park and Campground owners, but the same should be done for modern travels. Additionally, we are working on a variety of ways to educate guests and properties as to what WiFi service levels are available at each park. For instance, you'll see on most websites "FREE WIFI!" Great, what does that mean free ok WiFi? Free bad WiFi, Free fantastic WiFi? We some fantastic shifts coming in coming months to address that. P.S.- The calculator to Cat note is pretty good and I gave it a sincere LOL, thank you for that! With warm regards,
Ok, some clarification: I have been specifically crawling up the West Coast for the past 2 months. Im sure there are places in this beautiful country where bandwidth may be constricted. But we don't even need to go there because I lived at a park in Newport Beach CA that just couldn't get it done. However, my point falls into, where there is a will there is a way category. These owners don't have the will because they don't understand. Coverage in the park (signal from the office to the sites) is now cheap and easy. Backbones provided by cable companies are also cheap. I would argue that owners have the opportunity to spend more and charge more, but choose not to because of a generational, non Starbucks understanding of the issue. Can you imagine this industry if RV parks offered consistent, communicative, effective bandwidth, (not necessarily, high definition Netflix), but at least 5 MB so you can keep your Quickbooks online working? They have the opportunity to give the country geographical independence. These parks might get as crowded as well.......Starbucks. Of course another solution is for the cell phone companies to step up and stop gouging with their limitations. I don't know if this posted because I am in a crap tengo park that through out charter because it was too "expensive".
Not sure if you have read my other posts, but I do work for TengoInternet. So I know that we would not recommend a park to throw out Charter for Tengo. As they are the ISP and we are the WiFi. We are dependent on each other. However, as a whole, you points make sense, even I don't necessary agree with your wording. Park operators truly want to deliver the best. Your dead on with the 5MB, which is more than enough to stream Netflix! However, at this time we not all properties have the infrastructure to deliver that even if they want to. That is a fact. You would be very surprised at how limited bandwidth is. I can speak from first-hand experience that I was. I'm originally from the North East, and the thought of not having the internet wasn't fathomable, but it's a very real issue. Check out these links they may help: http://tengointernet.com/2016/06/09/isp_wifi_vblog/ http://tengointernet.com/2016/06/09/what-bandwidth-speeds-do-i-need/ If you have specific questions feel free to ask or email me directly @ adelman@tengoInternet.com
Yep, Starbucks and an RV park are great comparisons. Starbucks are almost all located in cities. RV parks are most often rural. A Starbucks might have 1500 square feet to cover, a small RV park well over 100,000. There might be 10 people in a Starbucks on the internet, and probably none are trying to stream a movie. RV parks can easily have 100 plus connections at one time and many are attempting to stream, videochat or upload their recent HD video of the day's vacation activities. Starbucks and RV Parks, two peas in a pod. Then you go on to slam park owners as "opinionated, head strong, their way or the highway, old people who don't have a clue what it takes to survive in the modern world." On top of that you say the vast majority of our customers are the same. Funny, but my customers somehow had the ability to make enough money to afford million dollar plus RVs, travel the country at will without having to work. My customers are Doctors, Lawyers, executives, politicians as well as truck drivers, electricians and plumbers. And you know what else, almost all them, myself included, have done well enough in the modern world to not only be able afford our own internet service via cellular data plans, we are so well versed in the ways of the modern world that we realize that it is sometimes required. Maybe you would do a bit better in life if you quit looking down your nose at your fellow man. Heck, maybe if you tried, you could work smarter and harder and be able to afford a data plan and not be forced to rely on us old, opinionated, headstrong, our way or the highway, old people to provide wifi for you.
As an old person who don't have a clue what it takes to survive in the modern world. as an old person who don't have a clue what it takes to survive in the modern world.I must say I have grand kids who too think we,the working successful should provide for you.Sorry pal but if this is such a need for you "YOU "must find a way" hot spot wifi from you cell phone"or other way to conduct you business or what ever you do for income.Grow up and do what this old generation has done to get us here.We have a 25 spot Park and it got so bad for people not getting on that we just took WIFI off what we offer.I sleep better,do not worry about someone chasing me down and tell me how hard it was to down load this or that.One told me they were moving out because they can not run their business without more power.So not to rude ,be responsible and handle you own life. Love; the once again TranQuil guy.
I appreciate the frustration of NewportViking in that he wants reliable, easy to use internet access that is reasonably fast. To some extent, I believe RV park owners that are going to advertise internet access have an implied responsibility to make sure their campers have such access, to an extent. By this I mean checking email, reading Facebook, posting to RV Park Reviews, etc. Notice that the high bandwidth options of video chat, streaming video or running a business are not included. No camper should have any reasonable expectation of being able to hog the limited total bandwidth available to the park for these and other high bandwidth needs. If you want/need to do something like that, use your own data plan. Thank you very much, westernrvparkowner, for bringing some much needed perspective to this issue from the standpoint of the provider. Your points are both excellent and valid. One thing you touched on but I think it needs further examination. We recently stayed at a park that offered WiFi but it was very slow. I talked with the owners about it and found that they were so limited on their options due to the location of the park. They have internet via satellite which has the dual benefits of being very dependent on the weather and slow. They checked with the local cable company who was perfectly willing to offer them faster, cheaper and more reliable service, as long as the camp paid to have cable run the 10 or so miles to the park! This made the decision easy, there was no way the owners could justify the expense when internet access was included in the price of the night's stay without effectively doubling their rate. Even then, the ROI was lengthy and the benefits were so tenuous. They have chosen to continue with their current offering and wait for the cable company to inch their way further towards the camp, something that may never happen. I feel the pain of both parties but can offer little but sympathy. Please take a little time and consider the whole problem, not just your side of it.
Just want to say Thank You to Arron from Tengo for his insight into this issue with internet services at campgrounds. I have been workamping for 9 years and yes internet is a priority, more so than cable. Mostly I do rely on the campground provided wifi, but if I need to get something done I have my phone set up as a hotspot. For anyone that conducts business out of their RV you should never expect the campground to provide internet access for you. If you had a regular business in a sticks and bricks location, would you expect to your neighbors to provide internet service? So do not get mad at the camp hosts and get your own internet service! The same goes for those that insist on streaming movies.
We are Apple Mac, iPad,IPhone based and take long trips, so we invested in a cell network booster antenna and use the iPhones as hot spots. Otherwise, if we can get WiFi, we have a dual Airport Express set up where one is configured to the park's WiFi and the second one is hard wired to the first and configured as a WiFi station. It helps. Apple Forums has the connection sequences.
With the low cost high and unlimited cell data plans currently available, there's little reason for at least long term RV'ers not to provide their own Internet connectivity instead of relying on usually slow RV park WiFi. We currently have one AT&T plan and device that gives us 250GB/mo of 4G/LTE data plus unlimited "home" phone service in our motorhome for just $60/mo. I haven't put it in service yet, but we also have an AT&T Mobley Connected Car device that's activated with a $20/mo unlimited data plan with the first 22GB at full 4G/LTE speeds, with the additional data subject to "deprioritizing", where it temporarily slows more than normal on congested towers. When the congestion clears up, it goes back to full speed. The device is intended for use plugged into your car's OBD2 port for power, but there are other power options readily available for USB, 12-volt, and 120-volt sources. Verizon also has an unlimited data plan available at a higher cost for phones and hotspots, and Sprint and T-Mobile also have unlimited plans, but their reduced coverage means you'll need to make sure it'll work where you travel more so than AT&T or Verizon.
To add to what NYDutch posted, if you haven't been following what has happened over the past ~2 months in the cellular pricing business, there is no longer any reason IMO to settle for plans that provided unlimited streaming to phones at 480p resolution. With our new AT&T plan we've been able to stream ~90GB in our first month, more than half of it for HD video. I now have essentially unlimited service from both AT&T and Verizon for significantly less money per month than I was paying to Verizon alone.
Great info. Thanks. We will need to upgrade our ATT plan when we return to the US for our next 3 month trip in June momdoc
Hi, I was not going to sign up to post but I read some things I wanted to address. First not all RV Parks etc are owned by old people with no clue. Even if an old person who does not know a lot about technology does own the property they probably have children and grandchildren trying to make sure they stay up to date as possible. Now as a campground tech I agree with one of the eariler posters that no matter what we try to do is never enough. As for the property it is on 30 + acres. We do have commercial equipment. We pay for 2 50/50 connections dedicated to just the customers. That is a total of 100 Mbps. We have 16 access points with 8 on each of the 50/50 connections. We upgrade equipment all of the time. Since 2008 we have had 3 total equipment replacements and are upgrading once again. This upgrade included the addition of new towers to shorten the distances between. Nobody is more than 200 or so feet from one or more towers. With all we do it still is not enough. Complaints will continue. Before next season I will have the equipment installed to be able to see where the load is going and adjust my limits accordingly. I will also be doubling the available bandwidth if possible. Still I expect some complaints. Aside from other things mentioned like trees and over users you now have to consider this has to be outdoor equipment. The humidity sometimes plays a part, the number of rvs and the material material they are made from will play a part. Park next to a metal RV and see what happens to the signal. So now add in some other factors such as all of the personal internet devices and the long term customers that buy connections from the local isp all sharing the same limited air space. This does not even include all of the automobiles that now have built in internet. Before anyone says I get good internet at the family park and it is outside, don't forget an RV Park with 300 sites will most likely have 300 or more cars in addition to the RVs. It really is a daunting task to provide outdoor internet in such an ever changing enviroment. Nothing we can do will ever be enough. Thousands of dollars are spent on equipment all the time. And there will still be issues. Now for my little comment about Tengo. I can't say how they are now I am a past customer and will never use their services again. Thier equipment is over priced and there support at least when we used them always blamed the end user or the property owners. Yes some places may have too little bandwidth but Tengo also tells you what you need sells that to you. Yes their equipment can reach the rest of thier equipment but it really does not matter, because a customer may be able to hear the signal from a tower but not have a stong enough radio to talk back. Espically hand held devices. If you were told exactly what you needed the price would so expensive the owners would go without. We actually had customers who would not return as long as we had Tengo. There are also customers that ask in advance if you are using Tengo. I look at Tengo as being the Walmart of RV Park internet. They are the company everyone knows. Thats all. Please excuse typos. This is done on a tablet and I hate touch screens. Almost forgot if old campground owners don't have a clue why am I doing all of this. Our owners are in thier 70's..
Well said User1 - Even I as a dummy when it comes to all this kind of discussion, I was able to decipher most of what you said and actually understood it. We aren't big into all this stuff, we have our cellphones and my extremely significant other has her tablet and does text and email, etc. while we are on the road but she never uses the park's services as her Verizon plan allows her all she requires so she's a happy camper. I can certainly understand what you say about "never being able to please them all" because that's just a fact of life. Some folks are never happy unless they have something to either gripe or complain about. Again, well stated and well said. The dummy I am welcomes you to the forum and hope we see some more posts in the future from you........... All the best, BankShot.................(aka Terry)
A good friend of mine opened a new 125 site RV park about 5 years ago. At that time he had a shared OC3 (fiber 155.5 Mbps) arrangement with a local manufacturing company where the park got about 1/3 of the total capacity from 8-5 weekdays, and 2/3 the rest of the time. The park has 15 high end access points, all professionally installed. In the first two years of operation, the most common complaint was slow WiFi. He now has TWO dedicated bonded OC3's (311 Mbps). The most common complaint now? Yep, still slow WiFi...
IMHO he needs to invest in software that creates channels for users so big users can't grab an unfair share. Has he tried anything like that?
