Mobile Broadband vs. Satellite Internet

[The Dougster]

If you have good cell phone coverage, go the mobile broadband route.

Where we live, we used Wildblue (approx. $50/month) and it was okay. The problem was that we wanted an Internet at the ranch but didn't want dial up... a couple of years ago we went with Sprint and haven't regretted it. We canceled the Wildblue account and simply take the aircard with us when we go to the ranch. Out there, with a metal roof and a heavy rock structure, the speed isn't all that great but certainly better than dial up. The neat thing is that when we travel, we have our laptop and it's not uncommon for my wife to connect to the internet as we travel down the highway. I find this amazing.

We have never come close to the 5G mark but then we do not download movies, etc. Recently we checked into Sprints 4G service and unfortunately, it's not available where the ranch is located. Their 4G service is unlimited.

 

[riptides]

Mobile broadband from the current cell providers has the best chance to be upgraded and refreshed for years to come. The technology is already out there for 4g, and it is just a matter of selection and infrastructure.

 

[EddieWalker]

I fought with satellite for years and hated it. If it rained, it quit working. I've had everything replaced, including the cables, and it still wasn't reliable. I've been on different satelittes, had five different companies come out, and spent untold hours with tech support. It is a flawed system that doesn't have enough power in residential installations to deal with the weather. When you have a problem and call tech support, the first question they ask is about the weather. If you tell the truth and say it's cloudy outside, they'll do a ping test, but pretty much tell you to wait until it clears up. If you lie and tell them it's clear outside, they will work with you to find the problem and arrange a tech to come to your place.

Besides not being reliable, you can't fix it yourself. Everything has to be done by a tech, who might be there in a day, or a week. All the repair parts are remanufactured, and one time the guy came out with four boxes of transmitters, and all of them were junk, so I had to wait another week for more to arrive to find one that worked.

Then there is their warrantee, which is fine, but that transmitter was only good for four months and died at five months. That was the last straw for me, and when I took it all down and tossed it in my burn pile.

I'm with Verizon now and can say that it's allot beter for a variety of reasons. Tech support is in Idaho and not India. I had to call them becaues I have Windows 7, and at the time, the card wasn't recognizing it. They spent hours with me downloading the drivers and installing them so it would get me up and running at the fastest speed possible. We kept tweeking it to get it to go faster and at no time were they in a hurry to get rid of me. I really appreciated that.

I never lose my signal when it's raining or cloudy outside. When I have severe weather, I sometimes lose my satelitte TV signal and I really like to be able to see the radar images of the storms. Tornadoes happen here, and a sever storm can cause allot of damage. While I can't do anything about the weather, I sure like being able to keep track of it.

I can take it with me anywhere I go. That's a HUGE plus!!!!!!!!

It costs the same per month as satelitte, but it's way more reliable.

I'm online every day, and for at least six hours at a time. I'm online all night long while watching TV. When I log on, I get my usage for the month. Since the tenth, when I start over again, I've used 1.1 gigs out of my five that I'm allowed. I've never hit 4 gigs and don't have any problems with a five gig limit. I don't watch movies, but I do watch youtube clips fairly often.

I honestly think that the satelitte companies are going to go out of business. It's just a matter of time. It's almost impossible to find anybody who likes there's, and the list of those who had it and hate it is very large and growing. I can't think of another service with so many unhappy former clients that so readily bad mouth them and share their experiences with others.

Like already mentioned, you get a 30 day free trial with Verizon. It's simple to install and easy to use. If it doesnt' work, take it back and go from there. With Satelitte, you are stuck with it for two years. I think it's a simple choice.

Good luck,
Eddie

 

[buckeyefarmer]

it's all about location, location, location.

BTW, I got the verizon MIFI card for $.01 on amazon, just had to sign up for 2 yr service agreement. I went with verizon because some of the areas I want to use it don't have anything else.
this summer Sprint is coming out with their 4G phone, what will also act as a wireless router for up to 5 devices, so it will be like the MIFI (you can get a 3G sprint MIFI) but also a phone. sprint does have 4G aircards out already and have 4G service out in several cities. Sprint is offering unlimited data also.
verizon is supposed to really start cranking out their LTE 4G later this year.
Satellite internet will die a slow death, like POTS lines, but for some locations, it's the only choice.

 

[rtimgray]

Hi Everybody-

First of all - thanks for all the replies. I did some further looking around and finally called AT&T to see about getting set up. The only reason for picking them over any other provider is that I have an AT&T cell phone and knew that I got decent (usually 3 or 4 bars of 3G) reception at home.

Had a great conversation with the AT&T sales guy, got hooked up with a wireless card and 2 year plan. Wireless card was "free" (after rebate). Had 30 day guarantee.

I go the card on Tuesday (having ordered the equipment on the previous Friday). Set about hooking it up to the laptop. Things went well right up until I actually tried to use the service.

Nothing.

Now, I have never used any wireless service anywhere ever, so I thought that I was doing something wrong. I worked on it, checking configurations, making sure all the drivers were loaded, etc. etc. (exhausting my knowledge of computers does not take very long).

So I called AT&T tech support. I got to talk to a very pleasant lady in Jackson Mississipi - for 2 1/2 hours! It just went on and on. We tried this, we tried that, we rebooted, we uninstalled, we reinstalled, we pinged (no pong, though)....anyway, the conclusion was that the wireless card that was sent to me (a Turbo) was no good. I was told take it to an AT&T corporate store and exchange it (free of charge, of course).

The nearest AT&T corporate store is about 45 minutes from home. Luckily, a project at work sent me close to another store, so I was able to drop by yesterday. The lady at tech support and the sales associate at the store both said "Oh yeah, those Turbos are trouble. You need a lightning." The sales associate went to get a Lightning.

Guess what - didn't have one.

So I ended up with a Velocity. She said that if I'm not happy with it, I can bring it back and exchange it for a Lightning, no problems.

I find the hilarious part of this being that she said she didn't know when they would get more Lightnings. She said it could be today, it could be tomorrow, it could be next week. They get shipments everyday, but don't know what's coming.

Really?

Isn't this a COMMUNICATIONS company? And they don't know what they ship to their stores? Do they have monkeys filling up boxes in a dark room or what?

Anyway, sorry for the side rant.

I took the Velocity card home with the sneaking feeling that I still wouldn't get it to work. I hauled out the laptop, plugged in the card.....Presto, I've got connection - I've got internet!

We played around last night for a couple of hours, and I think I like it. It is not "High speed" if you are used to DSL or cable, but it is soooooo much better than dial up. My wife could download books from Amazon in a couple of minutes (used to take 20-30). We can watch videos now. Can actually get web pages to load up without having to go get a cup of coffee or make a sandwich while you wait. The kids can play their simple online games. After all that use, the meter bar said that we had used up a 30 megs (and the plan allows for 5 gigs/month, so I think that is about 166 megs/day - somebody correct me if I'm wrong).

So to make a long story longer, I also tried it on our older desktop, and it worked there as well, although the speed was not as good. Not sure why, but that's not too big a deal as long as it works on the laptop.

We noticed we could get 4 or 5 bars outside on the porch and speed seemed to increase somewhat. Now that means I've got to finish my porch ceiling project so I can get the swing hung so the wife can set outside and surf.

Sorry for the long review, but I was hoping it might be helpful to somebody else reading the thread. I'm gonna wait a few days and see if I need to exchange the Velocity or a Lightning or not.

Thanks again for all the advice. The cost of the plan seems comparable to Satellite, I don't know that the speed is as good, but the portability is (obviously) so much better.

Take care.

 

[riptides]

...We noticed we could get 4 or 5 bars outside on the porch and speed seemed to increase somewhat. Now that means I've got to finish my porch ceiling project so I can get the swing hung so the wife can set outside and surf.

....

Good for you. More bars = better signal = better performance.

Now go get a EVDO router, place it on the porch, maybe get a booster antenna for it, and share your connection throughout the house - wirelessly.

 

[EddieWalker]

Depending on your system and the software that you have with your card, you might be able to get more speed by upgrading to a newer version. When I went to Verizon, I was very slow at first. The lady at customer support was very helpful in working with me to configure my card to get it to go faster. I can't tell you how it compares to DSL, but compared to my previous satelitte system, it's just as fast. I'm just about instant, but every now and then, there are delays.

Congratulations on your card. I think this is the future for rural internet and because it's so much easier and reliable then satelitte, it will replace those companies in a matter of time.

Eddie

 

[TheRealBuzz]

There will always be locations outside of the coverage of Cable, DSL and even Wireless because those technologies can never offer the ubiquitous coverage of satellite in a profitable way. There will always be satellite data services.

There is nothing wrong with satellite broadband other than the way it is marketed. It is actually very reliable. That's why it is used by so many companies as a backup system. However it is expensive and in terms of performance it's like apples and oranges when compared to other broadband services mainly because of "latency", the delay time between send and receive. Average latency of cable, dsl, etc. is 50 milliseconds. The average latency of satellite is 800 to 1200 ms. This is a result of the distance traveled from ground to orbit to ground and back again. It's is a problem that will plague satellite for a long time because it's just the laws of physics.

What this means for the end user is that the service will not be suitable for interactive applications such as gaming, VoIP, streaming video, etc. All the things that have grown so popular over the last couple of years. Add to that the available capacity, It's basically like prime real estate, it's expensive because there is so little to go around. And so the capacity is cut up into pieces and dished out to everyone a little at a time by limiting how much you can use each day. The "FAP" or Fair Access Policy it's called". FAPs and other forms of capping or traffic shaping are becoming common on many other services as well due to the overwhelming growth in bandwidth demand by home users. Never the less there will always be less capacity on satellite so their FAPs will always appear more restrictive than others. Moving from town on DSL to the country on satellite is just like going from city water to well water. You have to watch your usage now or you may run the well dry and have to wait for it to fill up again.

As I mentioned before the way satellite is market is the real issue. It's is retailed through so many small retailers and not all of them properly explain to the customer the way satellite works. When one does explain it to the consumer it often goes in one ear and out the other. All of this culminates in a situation where consumers are are often disappointed with the performance because they compare it to what others are getting in town for the same price. Broadband is like real estate in reverse. The further from the city center you get the more expensive it gets.

Where satellite does shine is compared to dial-up it is much faster. MP3's that would take 30min on DU often take less than a minute on SAT. Large work files can be downloaded faster, edited, and sent back faster and more reliably. E-mail with picture and other attachment are no problem. And it's always on and doesn't tie up your phone line. Satellite is still a viable solution where no other solution is available and it's value is directly related to it's intended use and requirement.

As you may have guessed.... I install satellite internet systems.

 

[ronjhall]

If you are going to be using the air card to download videos, books and other large files. Your 5 GB will disappear very quick. Keep an eye on your usage to avoid going over the limit.

 

[rtimgray]

If you are going to be using the air card to download videos, books and other large files. Your 5 GB will disappear very quick. Keep an eye on your usage to avoid going over the limit.

Good advice - no doubt.

And, believe you me, we're gonna watch that like a hawk. The program (ACM) has a "fuel guage" for each session as well as the billing period. I'm also going to check on it via my online account as well. Overage charges are 5 cents/meg.

We were a little bit surprised that even after the couple of hours we were on it last night, and the downloading of the books, we only hit 40 megs, and that was a pretty busy two hours (we had to see how fast all of our normal pages loaded).

 

[dooleysm]

Good advice - no doubt.

And, believe you me, we're gonna watch that like a hawk. The program (ACM) has a "fuel guage" for each session as well as the billing period. I'm also going to check on it via my online account as well. Overage charges are 5 cents/meg.

We were a little bit surprised that even after the couple of hours we were on it last night, and the downloading of the books, we only hit 40 megs, and that was a pretty busy two hours (we had to see how fast all of our normal pages loaded).

When I was checking on things last month via 3Gstore.com, Mobile Broadband Made Easy. CradlePoint Routers, MiFi, Antennas, Amplifiers and Verizon & Sprint EVDO Modems. they were saying AT&T was $.50/mb for overages. Verizon was $.05/mb. Check that and make EXTRA sure you don't go over your 5 gig/month limit.

I've been pretty happy with our recent Verizon air card purchase. I've got the wireless router for it, but I'm still considering the zBoost repeater/antenna. I took the router up on the roof in a few places and tested it out. I got a much better signal up there.

 

[bubbas45]

If you are going to be using the air card to download videos, books and other large files. Your 5 GB will disappear very quick. Keep an eye on your usage to avoid going over the limit.

Very true. If all you do is read email and do some shopping and forum browsing, 5 GB is probably more than enough. I work from home two days a week and my wife and I are on the Web for some hours most days. If you start messing with downloading videos, or watching a lot of them, expect to go over at some point.

The overage charges are outrageous. They are brutal. Tracking your usage via the VZ website is possible, but it's an approximation and generally a few days old--meaning that your usage at the time you check is more than what the website shows. VZ also will throttle users that exceed the limit. Throttling doesn't seem to be applied to any rigorous guidelines.

VZ has no (individual) plans more than 5 GB. You cannot upgrade. If you are accessing the Web just through a smart phone, you can get 5 GB for $10 a month, or unlimited for $30, yet 3G mobile broadband is $60/month. The intent of VZ is for the mobile broadband to be used for mobile access, not static, home use. I think that is stupid, because there is a huge market of folks that have no other access to reasonable bandwidth and speeds.

Someone else wrote:
"go with mobile broadband. It may not be the greatest but it will beat satellite and certainly dialup."

That's the bottom line. I had DirecPC and I had DISHnet and they stunk. 3G broadband is so much better, but it is not great.

The advertised download speeds are possibilities, not guarantees. Folks close to towers with few other folks using 3G tend to get good speeds. I'm not that far away (1 mile-ish) and doubt there are many other users, yet my download speed today was about .29 Mbps. That's dial-up speed. I may be getting throttled, but I have never gotten anywhere close to the advertised speeds.

For 3G equipment, I recommend 3Gstore.com. Don't go directly to the service provider. That site also sponsors very informative forums regarding EV-DO access: evdoinfo.com and evdoforums.com.

bws

 

[ronjhall]

When I was checking on things last month via 3Gstore.com, Mobile Broadband Made Easy. CradlePoint Routers, MiFi, Antennas, Amplifiers and Verizon & Sprint EVDO Modems. they were saying AT&T was $.50/mb for overages. Verizon was $.05/mb. Check that and make EXTRA sure you don't go over your 5 gig/month limit.

I've been pretty happy with our recent Verizon air card purchase. I've got the wireless router for it, but I'm still considering the zBoost repeater/antenna. I took the router up on the roof in a few places and tested it out. I got a much better signal up there.

Best to go to the source for good info. AT&T overages are $.05/MB. Get Started - Wireless from AT&T

 

[rekees4300]

VZ has no (individual) plans more than 5 GB. You cannot upgrade.

I sent an email to VZ about that and they replied I could upgrade to 10GB for $199/mo (that's not a typo) :laughing: What are those people smokin' !?

 

[tommu56]

TheRealBuzz

Not to hijack the thread what do you suggest to get a good satellite install??

tom

 

[TheRealBuzz]

tommu56

I'm in Ontario Canada so I can't really suggest any specific companies that would be in your area.

What I can tell you is that for most of North America there are several different brands of residential satellite service but that they all come mainly from 2 sources. Hughes Net and Telesat. And from what I understand they operate the same way on both sides of the border so I think the following info should be relevant.

The biggest difference between the 2 to consider is how they operate their FAP and how it will effect you. Systems running on the Hughesnet platform tend to use a daily FAP, i.e. 200MB per 24 hrs. The Telesat platform tends to use an hourly FAP , i.e. 25MB per 60min. When you go over your FAP both systems react same, they cut your speed back to 50kbps. This is why many people comment that it is no faster than dialup. They got "FAPed".
The duration of your FAP penalty period is the same as your FAP allowance period. So you will be less likely to hit your FAP on Hughesnet but if you do you are in slowsville for 24hrs. You will probably hit your FAP more on Telesat but your only down for 1hr. You will have to determine which one best fits you intended usage. Both have FAP free zones in the early morning for automatic updates and nighthawk down-loaders.

I sell both and I find Hughesnet to work best for most users both residential and business. But the dishes are a bit bigger and less aesthetically pleasing to look at than the Telesat.

One of the small benefits of satellite over "Cell Sticks" is that you get FAPed not charged so you bill is the same every month. And if you add up all your daily FAP allowance it is usually much more data than you get with most reasonably priced Cell packages...up here anyway. You have a lot more cell choices in the 'states.

My advice is to try to find a dealer that has a storefront, has been around for a while, and has a demo system you can try in the store. Ask a lot of questions and look for candid answers.

Good luck.

 

[DavidVT]

We have two ATT usb cards and two VZ usb cards that we check out at work when we travel with our laptops. Some prefer one or the other. I have better luck with the ATT but I suspect this is really a software issue.

None of them work at my house as I have ZERO cell coverage. Fortunately I have had DSL in rural Vermont for many years now. I used the one way dish thing years ago before DSL but it just did not work on the VPN to corporate america so I gave up on it.

I did find software that runs on my blackberry and using a usb cable it allows me to get internet when traveling with just the phones data plan. A bit flakey but better than having to buy some shady local wifi plan in the airports or food places. I only use it if I forget to check out one of the cell cards.

The irony is that my ATT cell card software recognizes my ATT blackberry phone when on the usb cable but will not connect because ATT wants us to buy another $60/month plan beyond the fortune we pay for unlimited data to the phones themselves.. weird.

 

[ronjhall]

I sent an email to VZ about that and they replied I could upgrade to 10GB for $199/mo (that's not a typo) :laughing: What are those people smokin' !?

One of the many features of a Cradlepoint MBR1000 router is it will balance the usage of 2 air cards plugged in to it at same time.

 

[rtimgray]

5 cents or 50 cents, I still don't want any overage charges. After all, the internet connection for me at home is strictly a convenience/luxury item. $60 a month for that is already more than I should be spending.

I've gotten registered so that I can see my account online, and the sales rep did make me aware that the data may be a couple of days old. He also said to be sure that the billing period syncs up with the usage that is shown on both the online account and the ACM.

I've been a little puzzled as to why these air cards aren't marketed more. It seems (for me, since I have decent cell coverage) like a better deal than satellite. I see ads for Hughesnet on TV all the time, but I don't know that I've ever seen an ad for an air card.

After another days use, I'm still happy. Most of our use is forums (like this) and online shopping, browsing, reading sports scores, etc. Again, it's not high speed, but sooooooo much better than dial-up.

Thanks for all the comments. The more I read the more I learn.

Take care.

 

[tommu56]

TheRealBuzz

Thanks for the info!
I was thinking of what to look for in the install.
It seems from what I have been reading the install is as important as the equipment it self.
I am an electrician what can I do to make sure its done properly even if I have to do it my self and how much can I do my self?
I was thinking of getting this at my cabin (off grid and no reliable cell service)
Can the receiver / transmitter be powered by 12v dc? can it be powered off and back on with out a major issues?
What's the delay when powering up to get a signal?


thanks again

tom