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.
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.
As a small business (just me) I just started an ISP inside of an RV Park in Colorado. I pulled over 3 miles of fiber optic so that every site can have it's own 1 Gig internet hook up. I think this is probably VERY rare, but I hope to see this grow as more people are moving into RV Parks long-term and need high speed internet for work, education, medical support and entertainment.
At my RV Park guests can expect speeds up to 1 Gigabit upload and 1 Gigabit download. I provide WiFi routers so no equipment is required and it's less than $100.00 per month. This is a very competitive option in my opinion.
And I hope to create a standard around RV Parks offering wired Ethernet ports at each site. Some day at the pedestal there will be electric, water, sewer AND Ethernet ports.
Other internet parks that I've seen with "high speed internet" partner with an ISP that places an antenna on the RV, there is often significant setup cost and the speed is affected by wind and rain. Speeds are around 25/5mbps.
The state of Colorado has an initiate called Advance Colorado that has millions of dollars in grant funding to grow broadband internet access to underserved and unserved areas. They do not consider wireless or satellite service as "served" and categorize anything under 25mbps as unserved. So by that standard I would consider all RV Parks as being unserved.
In my research, I looked at every RV Park within 50 miles of Evans Colorado. We looked at reviews of the internet access on Google and other ranking services. As a rule RV Parks all advertise that they have free WiFi, but the Wifi is typically terrible and only accessible in some areas of the RV Park, 25mbps download and 3mbps upload.
Parks with good coverage often are thwarted by RVs with aluminum siding which wreaks havoc on WiFi signals. Even with modern WiFi technology, the most expensive antenna cannot overcome physics. More devices, more walls, weather, all contribute to signal loss and packet loss.
Anecdotally, a Comcast service technician related to me that in one park they serve with outdoor WiFi access points, when an Airstream trailer would come into the park it would take out the WiFi for ALL guests within that area of the park.
I believe that the only reasonable solution is to offer wired internet access that allows guests to put the WiFi signal INSIDE of their RVs.
When the WiFi can originate inside of the vehicle, this makes a huge difference.
I should add something about service. If you're living the nomadic lifestyle and working remotely I don't think that you should be expected to sign a term contract to have access to excellent internet. You should be able to pay your fee and get to work.
