Travel Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for road warriors and seasoned travelers. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
Do people who RV in the U.S. have to make do with 4G cellular data services, or are there high-speed internet services generally available in motor-home parks?
ETA: In the U.S., "high-speed internet" generally means "significantly faster than reliable cellular data speeds." Presently, this would be reliable low-latency bandwidth on the order of at least 50Mbps down and 10Mbps up, preferably WiFi.
I've been full timing in my RV across the US this past year, and I work online, so this is my personal experience.
99% of the RV parks will have free, shared internet access. I run speedtests at each site and these are generally < 1Mbps and barely usable to surf or check email. A few have 'premium' internet you can upgrade to which will get you up to ~10Mbps. In all these cases I just ended up using the mobile hotspot included with my Verizon plan for 25Mbps+ speeds and up to 10 gigs of transfer.
If you're staying long term at an RV park (6+ months) you can ask to have the local internet provider set up an account for you. In Florida I ended up with Comcast's Xfinity for ~$30/mo with 25+ Mbps speed, no transfer limit. You can pay a little more for higher speeds.
Hope that helps.
Generally, yes. WiFi, and consequently high-speed internet, is widely available and expected at RV Parks. 50Mbps might be asking a lot, but 10+ is well within reason. Also, consider that it's shared so 30 people streaming HD Netflix might be noticeable.
Keep in mind, this if for RV Parks, which are different than what would generally be referred to as a Campground. While Campgrounds, many of which do welcome RVs, are very likely to have WiFi, speed and accessibility could be of less quality than an RV Park. Meaning, there's WiFi by office and Comfort Station/Bathhouse, but not in the remote areas.
There are also many boondocking locations which are popular, and crowded, but provide no services whatsoever.
If you're looking at specific locations, this will generally be listed under an Amenities section, but not always...go figure. Any location near to popular tourist spots will have WiFi like any nearby hotel.
I agree with @johnh10, I've been a fulltime RVer for the past 3 years (living in my camper and traveling the country with my family). I work a normal 9-5 job doing programming work.
RV park wifi is generally abysmal. I almost never connect to it any longer and instead use my cellular hotspots (I carry both AT&T and Verizon hotspots tied to unlimited data plans).
I've also paid for "premium" wifi at a couple of parks with no cellular service. In one case, I was getting 2-3 Mbps download speeds and 1 Mbps upload speeds and also had the joy that it disconnected me every 45-60 minutes for 5-7 minutes at a time. I paid $50 for 3 weeks of that experience. In another case, I paid and the connection was solid, but it was still only 5-7 Mbps download speeds.
There was 1 park, if you hung out at the pool that you would see 50-60 Mbps speeds. But the wifi in the rest of the RV park was 3-4 MBps. We tried narrowing down on that network and using my WiFi booster to connect straight to it.
