If you’ve relied on satellite internet for years because it was the only option in your area, you’re not alone — and you’re not stuck. Ethos Broadband is bringing ground-based internet, both fixed wireless and fiber, to rural communities across New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, and Utah faster than most residents realize. If any of the signs below sound familiar, it may be time to make the switch.
Why satellite internet made sense — until it didn’t
For a long time, satellite was the default answer for rural connectivity. When no line was running down your road, a dish pointed at the sky was better than nothing. It got a lot of homes and small businesses online who otherwise would have had none.
As daily life has moved online and become more bandwidth-hungry, satellite’s built-in limitations have begun to show. Ground-based internet — delivered either as a signal from a nearby tower (fixed wireless) or as light pulses through glass fiber lines — solves many of the problems a satellite thousands of miles overhead simply can’t.
Fixed wireless or fiber — what does that mean for you?
Ethos Broadband builds both technologies, and the right one for your address depends on what’s been built nearby. Here’s the short version:
| Fixed Wireless | Fiber | |
| How it works | A signal beamed from a nearby ground tower to a small receiver at your home or business | A physical glass line run directly to your home or business |
| Typical speeds | 25 Mbps up to 400 Mbps download | 50 Mbps up to 1 Gig, with symmetrical upload |
| Where it’s available | Across most of Ethos Broadband’s five-state footprint, reaching many homes fiber hasn’t reached yet | Growing, community by community — currently including areas like Apache County, AZ and Sierra County, NM |
| Good fit for | Households and businesses ready to leave satellite behind now, wherever fiber hasn’t arrived yet | Households and businesses with the heaviest bandwidth needs, or who want maximum future-proofing |
Both options are unlimited-data, low-latency, and dramatically more reliable than satellite. The fastest way to know which one is available at your address — or whether both are — is to check your coverage.
7 signs your satellite connection is holding you back
1. Video calls freeze, lag, or drop
Satellite signals need to travel roughly 22,000 miles up to a satellite and back down, which adds significant delay — known as latency — to every request your device makes. That’s why video calls over satellite often feel a half-second behind, with people talking over each other or frozen mid-sentence. Ethos Broadband’s fixed wireless and fiber networks are both ground-based, typically running 5–10 ms of latency instead, which is what makes real-time video calls feel responsive and fast.
2. Bad weather means no internet
Rain interference, heavy cloud cover, and even high winds can shift a dish out of alignment and knock out a satellite connection right when you need it most. Fiber lines run underground or on poles and aren’t affected by weather the way a rooftop dish is. Fixed wireless is also far more stable than satellite, since it’s a short hop from a local tower rather than a round trip to space — though, like any wireless signal, it still benefits from a clear line of sight to the tower, which our team checks before installation.
3. You’re paying more for a connection that delivers less
Many satellite customers see their promotional rate expire after the first year or two, with monthly costs rising while speeds stay flat. Ethos Broadband is a local provider built for rural markets, with fixed wireless plans starting around $50 a month and fiber plans — where available — starting in the same range, up to symmetrical 1 Gig. You get real, published speeds, not whatever signal happens to reach you that day.
4. You keep hitting data caps
Streaming, video calls, cloud backups, and smart-home devices all add up fast. If you’ve gotten a notice that you’re approaching a data cap every month, or noticed your speeds mysteriously slow down toward the end of the billing cycle, your plan is capping your household’s actual usage. Every Ethos Broadband plan — fixed wireless and fiber alike — comes with unlimited data.
5. Multiple devices slow everything down
One person streaming a show while another is on a video call and a third is gaming can overwhelm a satellite connection’s limited bandwidth. If your household has outgrown its connection and everything slows to a crawl the moment two people are online at once, that’s a clear sign your current plan has hit its ceiling. Ethos fixed wireless plans scale up to 400 Mbps, and fiber — where it’s available — scales all the way up to a symmetrical 1 Gig for the heaviest households.
6. You’ve started working or schooling from home
Satellite’s high latency can make for a poor fit for video conferencing, large file uploads, and syncing — things that have become routine for remote workers and students. If any of these are now part of your daily routine, a low-latency connection with real upload speed, whether fixed wireless or fiber, is a requirement, not a nice-to-have.
7. Ground-based internet is now available at your address
This is often the biggest sign of all: availability. Ethos Broadband’s fixed wireless and fiber build-outs have expanded significantly across the rural Southwest in the past few years, reaching communities that had no ground-based broadband option before. Many residents simply haven’t checked recently, assuming their only option is still satellite when fixed wireless or fiber may already be at the curb.
Ethos Broadband has built infrastructure specifically for communities larger providers have historically skipped over. Fixed wireless reaches across the broader footprint below, while fiber build-outs are underway community by community, including areas like Apache County, AZ and Sierra County, NM. Current service areas include:
| State | Service Areas |
| New Mexico | Sierra County · Rio Arriba County · Gallup · Grants · Cibola County · Mora County · and more |
| Arizona | Apache County · Navajo County · rural communities across eastern AZ |
| Colorado | Rural communities throughout southern & western CO |
| Nevada | Rural counties across northern & central NV |
| Utah | Rural communities across central & southern UT |
Because availability can vary block by block — and change month to month as new fiber segments go live — the most reliable way to know what’s ready at your address is to check directly.
→ Check coverage at my address ← or call: 833-650-0480
