Starband is a winner!

[anthonyk]

Hey, Jagmandave, what do you pay for your T1 connection?
I have hughesnet, and I'd drop it in a second if anything else were available.

anthony

 

[hudr]

Also, a lot of disappointment can occur due to the latency of a satellite system. DSL, cable, fiber, even dial-up are copper based and hard-wired (at some point) to the internet. There is a lot of lag in the satellite system since the signal has to hit the satellite, travel back to Earth (a NOC in Florida in my case), out to the internet and then back. There is a lot of compression and cacheing that goes on between the NOC and your modem. Downloading files is OK, but jumping from site to site can sometimes try the patience of someone used to DSL or other flavors of broadband.
If you think about any of this and what has to happen for data to travel to and from your PC, its all pure magic anyway.

 

[Tim_in_IA]

You might check on wireless service in the area. I have a line of site to a town that is 6 miles away and I get service through there. They install a dish on the house but it doesn't point towards the sky . They are using a service called motorolla canopy. It uses teh 5.8ghz band like 802.11 A wireless does, so make sure you don't have cordless phones that use the same. As far as speed my latency is under 59ns and I have speeds faster than cable or dsl. Upload and download is the same.

Initial cost was $400 for equipment installed and monthly is $39.

 

[Jagmandave]

Hey, Jagmandave, what do you pay for your T1 connection?
I have hughesnet, and I'd drop it in a second if anything else were available.

anthony

Anthony, like I said this is a business phone system, so we spend about $650 month for everything except long distance. We are in the boonies west of KC, and we have 2 "KC" lines that are not long distance included. Overall, our phone bill went down, because the web site hosting, email etc all got moved over to SW Bell along with the T1 service. We figure we save about $500/month, plus the web access is fantastic!

 

[RHughes]

Several folks have mentioned switching from satellite to DSL. I'm curious to know, how far from the CO are you guys? Distance used to be the killer for DSL service; I think 5 mi. was about the limit as was switching from fiber for the long run to copper for the last mile or two. If DSL were available I'd sure sign up for it. From what I've seen, the monthly rates are lower and the bandwidth is higher.

TriDigital Broadband (WDSL I think) is getting established in a town near us but they don't cover our area (yet). Their setup fee is about the same as satellite and their monthly rates are about the same, maybe a bit cheaper, but their adversied bandwidth is "8 -10 times faster than dialup". That usually means 512Kbps. They don't mention a specific rates.

 

[Tig]

You might check on wireless service in the area. I have a line of site to a town that is 6 miles away and I get service through there. They install a dish on the house but it doesn't point towards the sky . They are using a service called motorolla canopy. It uses teh 5.8ghz band like 802.11 A wireless does, so make sure you don't have cordless phones that use the same. As far as speed my latency is under 59ns and I have speeds faster than cable or dsl. Upload and download is the same.

Initial cost was $400 for equipment installed and monthly is $39.

I use canopy at the cottage. It's 14 miles to the tower. Works great, although the microwave oven seems to beat the signal up real bad. I can't use the IP phone when it is on.

 

[hudr]

Rhughes: Distance is still a killer. What our local TelCo does is install small substations w/ DSL equipment in them and upgrade the infrastructure from there to the main switch. Several people experienced the trickle down effect when DSL was provided to a local prison. The substation was installed and upgraded then everyone w/in DSL distance of that substation qualified for DSL.

 

[HomeBrew2]

Just in case anyone's interested in WildBlue, I've had it running for about 2 weeks now. Install, by retailer, and operation has been flawless ... so far. I've heard some nightmares about WildBlue but the price was right (relative term). Cheapest package: Free install, $200 eq purchase, $50/mo, 1 yr contract. Latency is noticable jumping to diff sites, not bad page to page within a site, as noted previously. Download was stated by the installer as 500k and it seems like it's probably close to that.

 

[RHughes]

Just in case anyone's interested in WildBlue, I've had it running for about 2 weeks now. Install, by retailer, and operation has been flawless ... so far. I've heard some nightmares about WildBlue but the price was right (relative term). Cheapest package: Free install, $200 eq purchase, $50/mo, 1 yr contract. Latency is noticable jumping to diff sites, not bad page to page within a site, as noted previously. Download was stated by the installer as 500k and it seems like it's probably close to that.

You're lucky! I initially looked at WB for service as well. Unfortunately all the WildBlue providers in my area have had to put new installations on hold until at least March. Apparently the 1 (one) bird that WildBlue has up is close to max. Maybe that's on a beam-by-beam basis, I don't know. At first I thought the local installer was giving me a line, but after getting the same info from two others I realized he was serious.

 

[HomeBrew2]

Well, I'm a very lucky person in general. The way I understand it, which isn't really in conflict with your info, is that WB was piggybacking on somebody elses bird and only recently (Nov, Dec?) launched their own. Don't actually know if it's operational yet though. On a similar note, I've been thru all the dialup providers around here and all gave excellent service for the first month or so ... then crap. Hope this experience doesn't follow suit.

I forgot to mention previously that there is a cap on data volume over a rolling 30 day period: download=7.5GB, upload=2.3GB. The more you pay, the more speed and volume you get.