Mobile Broadband vs. Satellite Internet

[rtimgray]

I've started looking into getting a high(er) speed internet connection at home. All we have right now is dial up (24.4 on a good day). We don't have access to DSL or cable, nor are we likely to any time in the near future.

I've done some investigation of satellite and mobile broadband services. Wildblue is not signing up new accounts in my area, but HughesNet is. It looks like their cheapest plan is something like $100 to install or buy the modem, then $60 per month for 200MB/Day of access. Most of the mobile broadband providers are about $60 per month with 5GB/month of access (and most of them offer a free usb receiver with a 2 year contract).

Does anybody have any experience with either one of these services? The advantage of the mobile broadband would seem to be access points anywhere, while the satellite service would be limited to home. However, it also seems as though I can get "overage" charges on the broadband plan if I use it too much (like a cell phone, I guess), whereas Hughes will just throttle you back and send you an email telling you to slow down (at least for the first few times).

Does anybody know how the speed of one compares vs. the other?

I would welcome any suggestions from anyone about this, as well as if there are any other alternatives that I'm not aware of.

Thanks for the help.

Good luck and take care.

 

[Chuck52]

My daughter is in much the same situation as you, and because she wants to take some on-line college courses, she's looking into the options. I'm mainly concerned with the data limits....I just have no good idea of how much you can do within the limits they give you. I have unlimited DSL at home, and it would be nice to see just how much I use for comparison. Does anyone know how to get that information? It might be a feature I could turn on or access, but since it is unlimited I've never tried. Also, if one does have limits, are there good ways to minimize usage, like turning off picture downloads and such. Things that limit the bytes without preventing access to the useful stuff? It would be helpful if the carrier supplied tools to help customers manage their accounts, and perhaps they do? I see, for instance, that at least for some plans data from international sites is charged differently from domestic sites. Some kind of pop-up warning you about impending financial disaster from accessing such data would be great.

Chuck

 

[WVBill]

I have experience with both Hughesnet and Verizon mobile broadband (3G EVDO).

I switched to Verizon 2 years ago and have not looked back.

I posted the following on another thread a while back:

My experience of differences between Hughesnet and Verizon
1) On Hughesnet every key or mouse click on a web page needs to travel from you up to the satellite and then back down to earth that's a 1/4 second round-trip even at the speed of light. It's called "latency" and it adds up to noticeable time lags when opening up screens & web pages. Latency on terrestrial systems (like Verizon and your office computer network connection) is probably less than 1/10 of a second.

2) Your Hughesnet modem will be assigned to a specific channel on a specific transponder on a specific satellite - you will be one of hundreds assigned to that spot. If something goes wrong with the channel or the transponder it will take Hughesnet time to reassign everyone to another channel or transponder on that satellite (the times it happened to me it was about 3 - 5 days each time). During that time - you have no internet.
And when you do come back up, you will probably be on an overloaded channel/transponder and your upload/download speed will suffer. If a whole satellite goes out then you either wait for Hughes to re-position a spare satellite or launch another one - - or have a Hughes technician come out and re-point your dish to another satellite.

Yes, failures do happen on Cell towers but it's much easier and quicker to climb a pole than fix something in outer space.

3) Don't listen to people who tell horror stories about "FAP" limits on Hughes and 5GB monthly caps on Verizon - UNLESS you plan to do a lot of movie downloads or real-time video streaming, or on-line gaming. In the five years combined that I have had Hughes and then Verizon, I've never been FAPed or exceeded my 5GB monthly cap. My wife and I combined do probably 5-6 hours a day web surfing, online shopping and e-mailing. We view a fair number of you-tube videos and I work from home 1-2 days a week and download/upload a normal amount of business documents. We have one XP computer and one Vista computer set up to auto-download Windows updates.

See the following for the facts
What does 5GB (Gigabytes) Get Me? : EVDOinfo.com


4) My Hughesnet used to drop out during heavy thunderstorms or when snow covered the dish. I've never had a weather-related outage on Verizon except the one time a heavy wind blew my grid antenna out of alignment with the tower (my fault - I didn't have it bolted down well enough).

5) Hughesnet requires professional installation (not that you couldn't do it yourself, they just require it). Verizon does not.


You will need to be close enough to a Cell tower to get the mobile broadband.

How close are you to the area where they show service? Check out the coverage maps for 3G or High speed for your area from all of the cell providers. (Usually on their web sites)
The coverage maps show no service where I am, but I'm pretty close to where they show coverage so I checked it out. You can get specialized antennas and amplifiers that may allow you to get service. I'm over 5 miles from the cell tower, over rolling hills and I need a separate antenna. But I got coverage.

When I got mine set up, Verizon offered a 30 day no obligation return, and 3gstore offers a 14 day return policy on equipment.



If you're close to a coverage area on the maps it may be worth a try.

 

[rtimgray]

From what I've looked at, a couple of the providers show some of the "garden variety" uses and how much you can do certain things. AT&T shows on their pages that you could watch 1700 video clips per month, of 30,000 web page views (which is says uses 150kb per use). It shows that downloading a 2 hour movie from iTunes would use 1.5GB.

My real curiousity, like yours Chuck (I think) is if there is a way to track your usage (like a decling balance or something) so you know when you are approaching your limit. Based on what I've read off of AT&T and Verizon and some others, 5GB per month is pretty standard and it would probably be sufficient for most of my needs - I just don't want to get blindsided with overages, but I don't want to be afraid of logging on the internet either.

Good luck and take care.

 

[WVBill]

My real curiousity, like yours Chuck (I think) is if there is a way to track your usage (like a decling balance or something) so you know when you are approaching your limit.

With Verizon, yes there is a way to check your usage. It's not accurate enough to track it down to the fration of a Megabyte but it's close enough.
This is available on the Verizon Wireless website.
Following is mine:

Domestic Data Used
339.137 Megabytes Used
Estimate as of 04/21/10 12:15 AM
Monthly Allowance: 5120 MB
Cycle ends 05/12/10


Usage Type My Usage Allowance Megabytes 339.137MB 5120 MB View Data Details


View Data Usage in Megabytes

Data UsageClose

Data Usage

( 04/13 - 04/21 ) For your reference, your data usage is also shown in Megabytes. In Kilobytes

347,277 KB​

In Megabytes*

340 MB​

* Rounded up




I also get an e-mail from them when I've used half of the monthly allowance.

 

[budgie9]

Take a look at this site you will gain some useful information here.
DSL ? Cable ? VOIP ? Security ? Satellite ? Fiber ? News ? Tips ? Reviews ? Community ? Tools - dslreports.com

I had Hughes satellite service through a Canadian supplier. I don't know if it was more the supplier or Hughes. But the service was expensive and the service was terrible. Twice they shifted my transponder on the satellite and twice it caused nothing but trouble for days on end. What speed they promised was never delivered in fact it was less than half the speed promised most of the time. Limits were terrible, there was often a massive slow down in the service due to others taking over the transponder with their larger downloads. There is something like a 6 second delay in reaching the satellite from here. This causes trouble with programs like Skype and video links.
Personally I was glad to get away from the service and sell the equipment. taking a large loss on that.

 

[Chuck52]

As it happens, I just got a new phone from AT&T after frying my old one with the wrong charger. If I'm reading it right, one can call a number to get info on current phone usage, so it sure seems likely there is something similar for the data plans. Aside from coverage, are there major differences between the carriers on the data plans?

WVBill, thanks for the input on the usage and that link. Sounds to me like daughter could do what she needs to do within the 5GB limit, assuming she can convince SIL it is worth it. Since she has a practical application, the on-line course work leading to a degree, I suspect she'll win the argument.....and then he'll find all kinds of other uses for himself!

Chuck

P.S. Thanks again Bill....you sent that further info as I typed.

 

[oldnslo]

I have been using Verizon 3G service for the last 5 months with no problems. My biggest complaint is that I rarely use more than 1 GB and have to pay for 5 GB. I could not find any service that offered a program with 2 to 3 GB.

When i signed up I also had the 30 day trial period.

Very simple to install myself. They send you a modem that plugs into a USB port on your computer. Their is a CD that does the rest.

Speed does seem to vary from time to time but have never lost the connection.

ATT did not have service in my area at the time or I may have considered them.

Never had Satellite ISP service, but my Direct TV is very flaky in bad weather so would suspect the same from ISP.

Roy

 

[rekees4300]

I've started looking into getting a high(er) speed internet connection at home. All we have right now is dial up (24.4 on a good day). We don't have access to DSL or cable, nor are we likely to any time in the near future.

I've done some investigation of satellite and mobile broadband services. Wildblue is not signing up new accounts in my area, but HughesNet is. It looks like their cheapest plan is something like $100 to install or buy the modem, then $60 per month for 200MB/Day of access. Most of the mobile broadband providers are about $60 per month with 5GB/month of access (and most of them offer a free usb receiver with a 2 year contract).

Does anybody have any experience with either one of these services? The advantage of the mobile broadband would seem to be access points anywhere, while the satellite service would be limited to home. However, it also seems as though I can get "overage" charges on the broadband plan if I use it too much (like a cell phone, I guess), whereas Hughes will just throttle you back and send you an email telling you to slow down (at least for the first few times).

Does anybody know how the speed of one compares vs. the other?

I would welcome any suggestions from anyone about this, as well as if there are any other alternatives that I'm not aware of.

Thanks for the help.

Good luck and take care.

Avoid HughesNet like the plague! Their service sucks and their customer support is even worse! I switched to Verizon 3G EVDO 2 years ago and have been pleased with its reliability. The 5GB monthly limit isn't a problem unless you watch alot of videos or do massive downloads. The speed of Verizon is much better than Hughesnet (which during peak hours is actually slower than dialup). Also Verizon plans a new 4G technology called LTE within a few years. LTE Information Center

Also avoid Wildblue which is even worse than HughesNet. There are many horror stories posts on the forums ranging from very poor service to outright fraud!

 

[deepNdirt]

the wife just signed up for the Data plan with her 3-G cell phone she has almost instant upload/download speed, way way faster then the home DSL service, been think of doing the Data plan myself although I cannot type on them small Q-pads on a cell phone. I'm still doing research if can connect wireless Blue tooth laptop through the use of 3-G network.. if so this is the way to go because the Data plan use only cost extra 10.00 per month as long as you already have a wireless service, and its unlimited use....
-verses 29.00 month cost for the slowest land line DSL :thumbsup: