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Recreational Vehicle Use Way up in 2020, As Is the Need for RV Internet

Travel and fun during our pandemic summer shifted to the ground, as more and more flights were canceled; many people took to their "home" on the road for fun—and work.

Eric Griffith
 & Eric Griffith Senior Editor, Features

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SatelliteInternet.com, a site that helps people find exactly what the URL promises, has an article about How to Get Satellite Internet for Your RV. The site recently updated the story with results from a new survey.

The results would be shocking in any year that didn't have a COVID-19 pandemic shutdown/quarantine, but they seem almost tame when you consider how hard it is even to get out of the house these days. Overall, 41 percent of Americans increased their travel options this year by opting for road trips, camping trips, and buying or renting RVs this summer.

The story even cites a recent New York Times article that makes this summer sound like the true heyday of RVing. No shock when 56 percent of respondents said they'd bought or rented their RV this summer, due to COVID-19. Which is hard to do, since RV sales are up 170 percent from last year.

Other interesting stats are listed above. Key among them: 84 percent of people want an internet connection in the RV. That's not impossible thanks to satellite internet and the two existing US-based services, ViaSat and HughesNet. But as many who've used those services (even in a house without wheels) can attest, the days of 1990s dial-up connections are almost preferable. Help might be on the way from low-earth-orbit satellite internet services to come from Amazon (Project Kuiper) and Elon Musk (Starlink), but those might take years to arrive. So even SatelliteInternet.com recommends that RV travelers try mobile hotspots, or turn their phones into mobile hotspots, to get that desperately needed internet fix.

Eighty percent of survey respondents are bringing tech with them in the RV, internet or not.

Airlines are who we should feel sorry for. Just 34 percent say they'd feel safe traveling that way—or even staying in a hotel. Almost half, 47 percent, canceled some kind of airline trip they had planned for the summer of 2020. Then again, it's hard to feel sorry for airlines.

Here's the best news of all for people working from home: 59 percent of respondents say they've done some telecommuting from the RV. If you can find a spot that can deliver the internet you need, maybe the RV is all the space you'll need for a work-from-home future.

Related

Here's a video primer on how satellite internet works via SatelliteInternet.com.

Further Reading

About Our Expert

Eric Griffith

Eric Griffith

Senior Editor, Features

My Experience

I've been writing about computers, the internet, and technology professionally since 1992, more than half of that time with PCMag. I arrived at the end of the print era of PC Magazine as a senior writer. I served for a time as managing editor of business coverage before settling back into the features team for the last decade and a half. I write features on all tech topics, plus I handle several special projects, including the Readers' Choice and Business Choice surveys and yearly coverage of the Best ISPs and Best Gaming ISPs, Best Products of the Year, and Best Brands (plus the Best Brands for Tech Support, Longevity, and Reliability).

I started in tech publishing right out of college, writing and editing stories about hardware and development tools. I migrated to software and hardware coverage for families, and I spent several years exclusively writing about the then-burgeoning technology called Wi-Fi. I was on the founding staff of several magazines, including Windows Sources, FamilyPC, and Access Internet Magazine. All of which are now defunct, and it's not my fault. I have freelanced for publications as diverse as Sony Style, Playboy.com, and Flux. I got my degree at Ithaca College in, of all things, television/radio. But I minored in writing so I'd have a future.

In my long-lost free time, I wrote some novels, a couple of which are not just on my hard drive: BETA TEST ("an unusually lighthearted apocalyptic tale," according to Publishers' Weekly) and a YA book called KALI: THE GHOSTING OF SEPULCHER BAY. Go get them on Kindle.

I work from my home in Ithaca, NY, and did it long before pandemics made it cool.

The Technology I Use

My first computer was a Laser 128, an Apple II-compatible clone with an integrated keyboard, matched with an eye-straining monochrome green monitor. I used it to type papers in college for other people for money...until I discovered the Mac SE in the college computer room. That changed my life. My first cellphone was a Samsung Uproar—the silver one with the built-in MP3 player from the Napster days (the pre-iPod era).

I use an iPhone 15 Pro hourly and an iPad Air infrequently (but I'm always in the market for a cheap Android tablet). I have a PlayStation 5 just to play Spider-Man, and several Windows machines, including a work-issued Lenovo ThinkPad. I talk to Alexa and Siri all day long. I do the majority of my computing on a 15-inch LG Gram laptop attached to a Thunderbolt hub to run a multi-monitor setup—I overdid it on the power needed to simply work from home.

I'm most at home in Microsoft Word after decades of writing there. More and more, I turn to services like Google Docs, using tools like Grammarly. I use Google's Chrome browser due to an addiction to several extensions I think I can't live without, but probably could. I use Excel extensively on data-intensive stories, but for chart creation, we've switched over entirely to using Infogram for interactive features that are hard to find elsewhere. I do a lot of graphics work for my stories, but limit myself to the free and amazing Paint.NET software to edit images.

I'm a firm evangelist for using the cloud for backup and syncing of files; I'm primarily using Dropbox, which has never failed me, but I also have redundant setups on Microsoft OneDrive, plus extra picture backups on Amazon Photos and iCloud. Why take chances? For entertainment, mine is a streaming-only household—my kid has never seen network TV and barely been exposed to commercials, thanks to Roku and Amazon Music. The house is peppered with smart speakers from Amazon for instant gratification and control of smart home devices like multiple Wyze cameras and Nest Protect smoke detectors. I've got accounts on all the major social networks, to my horror. I have a robot vacuum for each floor of the house. I want a 3D printer, but not sure what I'd use it for.

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