Satellite -vs- dialup (ISDN)

[AlanB]

WarrenF: Nothing personal, but if Wildblue is the best recommendation for satellite internet service, that doesn't say much for the industry. My experience with Wildblue has been one nightmare after another. Lousy customer service, frequently unable to connect, not compatible with routers, overpriced and under featured. It's the best I can do where I am, but I caution everyone to monitor your usage (the FAP-Fair Access Policy), and good luck with the rest! My local phone co. is going to start providing "Smart Coils" to extend DSL service.

I will echo what Joe said.

I REALLY wish I had other alternatives, and the Verizon looks like now it is covering my area. SWMBO is checking as to what contract we have with WildBlue, and we will try the Verizon when we are out of the current contract.

 

[MotorSeven]

Humpfh...well WIldBlue or Hughes is the only game here besides dial-up. We have been on WildBlue for a year. $70 for 1.5 unlimited. Have to say i am overall satisfied. Yes every now & then it is slow during clear wether & yes heavy clouds/rain can shut it down, but 95% of the time it works well when i want it to work.
Now what i was not happy about was the lack of disclosure on the installation. Had to pay over $100 extra because the dish could not be attached to the building(Quonset hut-METAL), had to install a pole, but i had had severe dial-up depression, so i paid the extra. Anyway, no cell here or i would have stayed on Verizon's internet plan which worked great(until we moved) & was $50 a month. So if you can get Cell, i would go that way, if not, Sat is a close second.

RD

 

[SCRich]

MotorSeven...what do you mean about 1.5 unlimited ?? I have not heard of any unlimited sat usage for at least the past 14 months. No one in the industry either wireless or sat will do unlimited.

Even Sprint that claims to have unlimited wireless does not. People who have used too much over several months just have their service disabled and the contracts are canciled.

 

[MotorSeven]

Unlimited usage, i have it with WildBlue & had unlimited with Verizon(2 years ago). 1.5mps is the down load speed, although you will not see top speed often. I just rad a download/upload test %& here are my results:

Download :: 1388 Kbps or 1.39 Mbps (169 kB/s)

Upload :: 172 Kbps or 0.2 Mbps (21 kB/s)

Hmmm, looking at the Wildblue website, they do limit usage to 17,000mb download & 5,000mb upload per month on the Pro Pak plan. I paid $300 for dish installation which is now listed as free....
Verizon i think is offering free air cards & their plan is $50 a month, but i don't know the usage limits.........

RD

 

[SCRich]

I currently have Verizon and it's 5GB a month for $50. I just have a very weak cell signal over here due to trees so my speeds are not quite broadband. I can do some stuff but it's slow and I won't do Video or large file transfers (ie: A lot of e-mailing of photos). Verizon had their own problem with FAP's also, it was unlimited but they had to put a 5gb limit on it due to a lot of people switching over to it instead of dedicated T1's for VideoIP and such since the speeds are faster than T1. Think traffic camera's and such going 24/7, it was killing everyone and some people were even doing VoIP also.

Check that FAP on WildBlue a bit better, you will be surprised as to what they stuck in the FAP in small writing about a year ago and otherwise did not tell the customers about. A lot of people did not read it in their bill and started learning about it on the internet later on, guess you missed on that fiasco.

Check your speeds at some peak periods like evenings at 6-11pm, and weekends over a period of time. Do you really get the speeds you noted constantly? If you do that is the first time I have ever heard of that and it would be a hopefull sign. Again nothing personal against Sat Internet but I can't remember hearing from anyone except maybe 2 people over 1 year out of hundreds that has had any satisfactory service.

 

[WarrenF]

For those of you wishing to take a look at your LINE OF SIGHT before you purchase you Satellite Internet system.....here is a website that is pretty cool. Just plug in your address and it will tell you your look angle ETC..

Satellite Look Angles Satellite Heading Calculator Azimuth Elevation Skew Tilt LNBF Latitude and Longitude values

Also for those of you who have had problems with your Satellite Internet system.....I have repeatedly offered to provide some readings for you all. I can look at the performance of your system....Wildblue.....and tell you what it is doing. Apparently some of you would rather ***** and moan than PM me with your modem MAC Address and then let me see what is happening.

To date No One has sent me anything.

 

[LarryD]

I currently have Verizon and it's 5GB a month for $50. I just have a very weak cell signal over here due to trees so my speeds are not quite broadband.

Rich, I live right on the edge of Verizons' coverage area and litterally extended my card out the window on a broom handle (10' USB cable) to even get a signal albeit very weak. I purchased an amplifier and omni-directional antenna so I went from .5 watts to 3 watts. Now I get three bars 90% of the time (-85dBm EVDO now) and really like the difference over dial-up.

I got my parts from Maximum Signal - Welcome! and found them very helpful. You can also look at Cell Phone Antennas and Cell Phone Boosters at Wilson Electronics for some good graphics on various configurations. I know the general direction where my service tower is located and keep thinking about a Yagi (directional) antenna but that means taking some trim off the house again to route the cable...some day maybe.

 

[Richard]

"The rest of the story"

Found Nexus who evidently has 128K ISDN access here locally. $27/month for single email account and if I desire, $32 for account with 5 emails. I don't know if there are other differences... that's all she said she could find at the time.

Now I just have to decide if I want my wife to have an email OR... let her have access to mine....

 

[SnowRidge]

Hi, Richard.

We just got DSL at our location. We still have the ISDN for voice only, until we get everyone used to our new phone number. Anyway, we always had a separate ISDN ISP. We were paying $25 a month for 128K with heartoftn.net, but just about the time we signed up for DSL, I saw a provider that had it for $9.95, go figure.

The secret is to look carefully at the nationwide 56K dial up providers. A few of them also have ISDN access. They don't seem to advertise it, possibly because they outsource their tech support and don't want to pay the extra fees or specify ISDN support.

Anyway, there is at least one out there at $9.95 or so, possibly more. If you don't mind paying more and require good support try isdn.net in Knoxville or eskimonorth.net. You can also try heartoftn.net, but use someone else's DNS servers. Theirs seem to go down fairly often. Level three is one choice. OpenDNS is another.

One way to locate national providers is find the ISDN numbers in and around Knoxville, then do a search on the numbers along with "ISP." That will at least get you started. Eskimonorth used to support every ISDN number in town. I assume they still do, so I would start with them just to get the numbers, then go from there.

Good luck.

Edit:

One last thing. If you think you can't get DSL because you plug your number into fastaccess.com and it says it isn't available, be aware that it lies. It is an automated system that literally tests the line. Since you have an ISDN line, it will say it isn't available, even if it is, because DSL requires a POTS line, which you don't have. It is a broken system. I discovered this when it told me I couldn't get DSL, even though they had called my neighbors and asked if they wanted it. They didn't call us, even though we had signed up to be notified.

I called to sign up and got the same song and dance until I told them to pretend we had no phone service and to use the street address instead of our ISDN number. All of a sudden the CSR's screen magically said it was available. Try the same thing and see what happens.

 

[Richard]

because DSL requires a POTS line, which you don't have.

Hi SnowRidge... actually, I DO have a POTS in addition to my ISDN. If you are suggesting that the fact I have ISDN at my address, regardless of my POTS, then I've got a part II answer

Part II... I live WAY in the boonies. My "Slik" box (or what ever they call the big phone boxes) is perhaps 3 miles from me. What ever its real distance it's outside the limits for not only ISDN but also DSL. Last I spoke with them, "WHEN" DSL is available out here, there will supposedly only be something like 25 circuits because that's all this box can handle until they dslam it? (something like that)

Anyways...bottom line... I'm at end of road and have a zillionair next to me (closer to phone company) and there's NOBODY out here who's getting DSL as of this moment.