Donna Genie documents terrible cell service across New England and the Mid-Atlantic during an RV trip, showing how trees and storms kill the signal. She argues campground owners need to invest in Wi-Fi over cable or satellite, since remote workers and streamers need reliable internet more than traditional TV.
All right. I've been on a traveling trip all throughout the New England area of the United States of Mid Atlantic. I've been to nine states on this trip. And I gotta tell you, I'm frustrated. The Internet and the cell phone has been terrible throughout the entire trip. So let's focus on one of those first, the cell signal. If the cell signal from Verizon or AT&T, either one is not good at your park, guess what people need from you? They need WI fi. Now, many people don't have enough on their cell plans to cover using WI Fi. So everybody still needs WI Fi. But especially if your signal is bad, I'm not sure what it is. I've never seen it in my life. And it feels like I'm in a third world country here in the New England side of having horrible cell service. We can't even leave the campground without having our destination mapped out and kind of knowing where we're headed. Because you can't depend on cell signal to even focus on gps, let alone play music, even consider doing a zoom call from here. But as you see, I've got my handy Starlink in the background here. So we are still at work using our Starlink where we can. And here we happen to have clear enough skies to do that. But I've been in a couple of campgrounds that have had complete forests over us where Starlink can't pick up because the view is too obstructed. I can't stress it enough to tell you that WI fi is still very important in your campground. So please make sure that you do a couple of things for me. If your cell service sucks, check on Verizon towers, check on the AT&T towers, Check those. And if those are not fabulous, and I do mean fabulous, not just I got two bars or three, that's not really enough to do anything anymore. So you need to have fabulous cell service before you can decide that WI fi is not going to be an investment that you need to make at your campground. Having solid WI fi at your campground is such a big thing now. You don't understand how many people are out here on the road working from where they're at. I work every day, I'm looking at my business and making sure that everything is moving smoothly. And it's a complete hindrance to my vacation time if I don't have good Internet. Also, people stream for their TVs. I will tell you, we were in a campground in New York. Their WI FI went out. It wasn't their fault. It was a storm, the electric went out. We had no WI fi, no water because it was they were on a pump. We had no Internet because we couldn't do anything at all. Luckily for us, we have a generator, so we had electric. However, that doesn't make the WI fi any better. So big rainstorm, can't even watch tv because where do we get TV from? The Internet. Most people nowadays are streaming from their campers. So don't tell people not to stream. Just spend the money on the Internet system to make sure that it works. If you are contemplating like many campgrounds, do we even need cable anymore? I would venture to say you probably don't. Unless you have a really old demographic in your park. If you're talking that your only demographic really is retirees, and I gotta tell you, a lot of them are streaming too. I would focus your efforts not on table or dish, but but on Internet. Let the rest follow it. Even if you had to sell fire sticks in your camp store. Hey, there's another source of revenue. People will watch TV using streaming platforms for a lot of that now. So when it rains, not only does that make it more difficult for campers to have an enjoyable time, they also can't now watch tv. If you don't have any Internet, that works. So please make sure you prioritize your WI FI connection. Your campers want and need it.
