Which Satellite Internet Company?

[JamesAC]

My first TBN post and hope I can help.

I'm a networking engineer and my wife is a software engineer. We've lived in the country north of Dallas for the last three years and also struggled with this subject. I'm responsible for the latest and greatest in networking at work and worked telco in the 90's before being recruited here. We use it for normal home browsing but also for work via VPN.

We investigated the periphery of Cingular's wireless broadband. They offer a 30 day trial. Our house was on a creek in a deep stand of trees but we started with fair service above ISDN speeds - +190k was average. At about 2wks into the trial our speeds dwindled to a crawl so I ordered this simple antenna to gain an extra 5-6dBi:

Increase Your Bars! Buy the World’s Best Performing Signal Boosters and Antennas

It helped connectivity but not file transfer speeds. It eventually settled to around dial up speeds so I returned the card at trial end.


We then ordered WildBlue last August. It was running OK for SAT but, as mentioned above, around October we noticed a sharp decline in throughput. It has not recovered from the network upgrade(their term) they undertook in the fall.

We moved two weeks ago about 40miles farther from the City than our previous home. I uninstalled the dish and we ordered a move 1 month ahead of time. It took WildBlue 37 DAYS to arrange the account and billing changes which had to be done prior to the installer coming out to mount and align. He, same person who installed at our first house, came out the next morning. 37 days of keyboard and mouse and 4 hours of concrete, pole and alignment. In typical WildBlue fashion we were dual homed to both WB1, the new Sat, and also the old bird at once. Not so good for connectivity! At day 42 from the move call it was back up and crawling along as slow as ever.

I would strongly advise anyone considering sat internet to exhaust all other avenues first. We're having our local WISP out for a site survey a couple of months prior to contract expiration in Aug and if that doesn't pan out then will investigate Sprint/Nextel's EVDO service which indicates it's covering my area.

As suggested previously I would follow the WISP>3G broadband>carrierpigeon>smokesignals>chisel and tablet>SAT internet path if I had it to do again.

 

[sirwoogie]

As suggested previously I would follow the WISP>3G broadband>carrierpigeon>smokesignals>chisel and tablet>SAT internet path if I had it to do again.

Your experience is definitely not unique; it is good advice for those without landline options (DSL, cable or other). Even if the WISP needs you to put a 100 ft. tower and use directional antennas for LOS, it's still a better (and probably cheaper option) to go than satellite.

I am also a network engineer by profession, so not having high-speed beyond the ISDN dual-channel I had at my residence was troublesome. Not having the funds to get a dedicated terrestrial line pulled or provided (i.e. $450/mo for fractional T1 is not in the budget). Thus when EVDO rev. A came to my area, I started to do the happy dance.

The irritating thing is that I moved from an area that I had two different cable providers, a few WISPs, and well within reach of the telco CO. That's what I get for going a little more rural.

 

[Podunkadunk]

OK, you want the facts...here they are:

I am in the I.T. business. I work from home. I had HughesNet from October 16th 2006 until a month ago, when DSL came to my neck o the boonies.

Yes, HughesNet is faster than Dial-up...I'll leave it at that!

However,
If you ever have to use VPN, you can't...no big deal if you don't know what it is...thus, you never use it.

Large file transfers/downloads...
Anything over 100mb's is impossible. HughesNet will cut you off. No problem if you don't deal in that sort of thing, most people don't...again, I work from home.

Latency is a problem...
The gap between hitting enter and something coming up. That's because a satellite is way out there, signal has to bounce from here to there and back. It's normal for latency to be a factor, but AGAIN, you probably won't notice if you are coming off dial-up.

Speed fluctuations...
More and more people are joining the Satellite internet world. So, that means speed gets slower and slower, although gradual. They AREN'T LAUNCHING SATELLITES INTO SPACE EVERY MONTH, but hundreds, perhaps thousands are joining each month, congesting existing resources.

Customer Service...
When I called about slow service or "peak" times being slow, I got India. Yes, India, for customer service rep's. The language barrier sucks. Only when you get into the upper tiers of troublecall service do you get some good ole boy from Iowa or someone that you can understand. Also, they always have an excuse. They told me several times that I needed to conduct speed test (3 in a row), 3 times a day for 5 days, then call back with the results (which they have logged online also) and they'd go to the next step....?????????????WTF, I have a problem now, I don't want to wait another week!

Price...
3 packages available: 60.00, 70.00, 80.00 and I think one more for business' which is even more expensive. Also, YOU OWN the system and it's hardware. It cost me 600.00 for the dish/modem and hookup, then another 125.00 for the pole for the dish. (I didn't want it bolted to the side of the house, or on top). I also had to sign a contract for 15 months. It cost me 300.00 to terminate early to switch to DSL. If Satellite is your ONLY option, you probably won't mind paying that much, but it's ridiculous. My DSL is 5 times faster and costs half of the 70.00 plan I was on.

Overall, there's just too much traffic on their systems. It works, YES. Is it HighSpeed, well...it's faster than dial up, I'll leave it at that. Sometimes it bogs down (with great weather) and any site that is encrypted (like internet banking) is extremely slow and the page takes forever to load.

I don't know of WildBlue, maybe they have more Satellites in orbit. I tried a pc card (Verizon). It wouldn't work because I only have 1 bar for my cell service.

You wanted the facts...these are the facts...from someone who was a Satellite subscriber for 4 months.

-Podunkadunk

 

[texbaylea]

I am going with a local WISP next week. It will take a 60' tower to get above my trees but my off-air TV antenna will be on the tower also so that I gain more range on TV stations and FM radio. The latter is valuable to me as I prefer classical music and good stations are hard to find. I will report how it performs late next week.

EVDO performance is marginal for me.

Vernon

 

[tawilson]

I started out with Direcpc, then Direcway and now Hughes. I've been trying to get on all day to say how great it works, but it keeps bogging down. Now tonite it seems to be working fine. It's like that all the time, high usage time slows it down. It works, so I'll stick with it till something better comes along. I have the dialup return, and it's usually 19.9 kbs, so that doesn't help. I didn't read the whole thread, so maybe it's already been mentioned, but aren't they testing powerline internet in a couple places in the US.

 

[Geri]

What kinda costs are you looking at for start-up equipment for your dish with Wild Blue?

 

[txdon]

Geri, Wildblue startup price with dish is $299.00 and $49., $69., or $79 a month depending on the speed you want. Link: WildBlue | For Your Home | Enter Your Zip Code

The only other cost is installation which in my case was free because they were having a deal last year when I ordered mine. There is a one year commitment.

 

[Geri]

Thanks TxDon I will check it out. They have a dealer 20 mins south of me. We have DIRECTV but, Hughes net seems so expensive right now.

 

[kbiddle]

I have to agree with Podunka on this one... Huges is a total nighmare and the billing is some of the worst I have seen in the industry, I work for one of the two biggest Telcos and have never seen anyhting as bad as Hugesnet.
If you have another option explore it....

 

[HomeBrew2]

My cost was $199 due to a special that expired 12-31-06, otherwise ditto what Don said.