Suddenlink → WV service availability

I am looking to buy a house in the Elizabeth WV-Parkersburg-Ripley-Spencer area but I work from home, and HAVE to have cable or fiber with at least 15Mbps down and 4 Mbps up. I've read through a couple threads on here and you guys seem to know a lot about this stuff - way more than me. I was at the point of starting my own Suddenlink coverage map for the area, and may still. Anyways, my question is, do you think Suddenlink will be expanding the service area any? If not, what would be the best area to look? We want a property with as much land (10+ acres) as we can get, and as far out as we can get but Suddenlink or any cable provider is hard to come by for that. Any useful information is very welcome! Thanks in advance!

For residential service you have to go direct through Suddenlink, for a quick check (not always 100% correct) check out »order.suddenlink.com/Buy ··· Products

For business class services you can go direct or through an authorized partner/agent.

Thanks, I'm all too familiar with suddenlink availability tool and I've entered quite a few addresses as well as calling them to check addresses.

I'd really like to know what areas to even look for homes for sale because all addresses I've tried (15ish) have not had service.

It seems to be impossible to find a suddenlink serviced home with average.

Parkersburg and surrounding areas should have service. Ripley most likely has Comcast I would say. Comcast starts around the Teay Valley area and goes West on I64 so I Imagine they have built up. Comcast and Suddenlink have a majority of the state with Time Warner having some markets but they are legacy and have no signs of being upgraded. Shentel has a few too but seem to be Weston and parts near Virginia.

Thanks for that information, I didn't know Ripley had Comcast. I'll talk more with my friends there.

Not for sure if they do. But chances are if they don't have Suddenlink then they would have Comcast for the Coax provider. Use to do some IT work for a Burger King franchise based out of Parkersburg that had a store there but for some reason I can't recall who their ISP was at that location. It may have been Frontier even though they had broadband at all the other locations. I remember something weird about it there but can't remember what it was.

Just did a WhoIS lookup on the IP for that store (Ripley) and it is coming back registered to CAS Cable (»www.cascable.com/) out of Parkersburg. I don't recall their name but it may be a newer ISP in the area that purchased that cable network.

Looking back on old records they use to have a T1 through Lumos. It was the only option in that area for decent internet because that area did not have any coax provider. Of course in residential areas that may be different and the new cable provider may have taken over the area. But it does look like Ripley is a very limited choice option for internet.

I wouldn't count on any cable company building out to serve just one home. They tend to charge 10's of thousands of dollars for that kind of service.

Ripley doesn't have Comcast, Suddenlink and Frontier are their main providers.

I live in Jackson County and know the providers in this area. Frontier (phone/dsl), Suddenlink mostly in city limits or just outside of city limits and CAS (Community Antenna Service) which goes to the smaller neighborhoods and has expanded in the rural areas. CAS's main office is out of Parkersburg. They have expanded south all the way down into Kenna area and has come north into Sandyville area. I do not think they are in Elizabeth area though. I only know of Suddenlink and Frontier being in Elizabeth area. Frontier offers bonded service in many areas which is up to 24 MB (in actuality you get 21 MB) if your close enough to the DSLAM. If not you may only get 12 MB service. Frontier is the best bet of getting service if you are in more of a remote area. How far from Elizabeth is your property?

My house is only 10 minutes from Elizabeth but we have no providers other than satellite and Verizon LTE home internet.

Your ability to get fast, reliable coax based service is going to be severely limited, if it exists at all, on 10+ acres outside of city limits just about anywhere you look. I would be very surprised if any DSL service is even available on such a property, and speeds would likely be limited to the lower end of the scale if it is. Since you work from home, I highly recommend you look to a business class service wherever you decide upon, as the response time for residential service calls can be 3-5 days or longer in some areas. Business class should come with a better response time, usually same or next day regardless. Additionally, most providers stipulate no businesses on residential accounts and can be unsympathetic to such usage. Fair or not, that is the nature of things right now.