OT: earthlink satellite internet

Has anyone used this? We just moved into a
new house and without going to satellite my
only options are dial up or Comcast. I like the
Comcast internet, buy their rates here are
outrageous! Has anyone used the Earthlink
satellite internet? If so how did you like it?
Thanks in advance for any replies.

Where I live, we only have Satellite internet (and cell phone internet) and dialup.

We were going to go with Wild Blue, but after a lot of research, many satellite companies are similar. We ended up returning the dish because the "free" installation wasn't free at all. But that wasn't all the red flags. The "scam" on free installation was the final straw, but I'll tell you to look at these things

*You buy your own equipment (ours was over 500 dollars)
*80 a month for 10gigs of data (you'll want to stay away from youtube and netflixs and such) Though now they offer another 10 gig a month between 2am and 6am as I understand it. It's just not very much data in this day and age unless you don't do a lot online.
*Very sensitive to weather (outages very common)
*data parceled on a daily basis (which means you can't use a whole gig in a day. You get about 330 megs +/- a day. If you go over, it shuts down to 10 percent of speed. If you went over several days in a row, you'd get shut down for a day (I think... can't remember the exact amount of time)
*Warranty costs. Even though we had a warranty on the equipment, it was 95 dollars each time they would service your warranty.
*Equipment failure. Make sure to research the equipment they use. The equipment we had seemed to last many people just about a year (about the length of the warranty)

If it was me, and your comcast is a landline, I'd pay the extra for comcast. Satellite is not "broadband" internet. If you notice they refer to it as "high speed", but only by comparison to dialup.

Now all that being said, I know people that have it and are glad they have some option other than dialup. BUT if there was ANY other option in our area, I think no one would stay with satellite. It'd be nice to watch movies and such without worrying about how much data you've used.

Satellite is a good service "IF" there is nothing else available. If you have Comcast internet available, go there first.

I have and are using to write this Exede satellite and like it just fine, it works good and is really fast. It has a few drawbacks, one is the latency is real long, takes it a bit longer for a webpage to respond but it does it's there bang. Two is the data caps, I have a 10Gig plan($50) and can mainly just do basic browsing/emailing/some facebook and just a few YouTube's per month. No movies and very few other videos.

I might have a wireless provider in the area now, so in July when my two year contract if up I will see if I can change over to them.

We had satellite internet for a few years. It was a lot faster than the glacially slow dial-up internet we had available at the time. But it was not THAT fast, cost nearly $100 a month, didn"t work if there was bad weather and finally it quit working at all for a couple of months when something went bad inside the satellite. If I remember correctly, we also had to buy the equipment, which cost about $600, and pay to have the equipment installed. One reason satellite based internet cannot get much speed is that there is measurable time lag when the signal is broadcast from the satellite to the home receiver and then processed, and again when a signal is broadcast from the home dish to the satellite and is processed there. Even at, or near the speed of light, sending the signal that distance takes a bunch of time.

When microwave based internet became available from a mountain about 5 miles from our house became available, we got rid of the satellite service and got the new service. It was MUCH faster, about the same money and except for the time the power went out on that mountain, it worked all the time.

A couple of years ago, our phone company redid some equipment in our area and land line DSL became available to us. It is as fast or faster than the microwave system we had, and costs about half as much. So far it has never gone out and it seems to work the best of any of the systems we have tried.

We live out in the country a ways and never expect that the cable companies will go to the expense of wiring this area for cable. Comcast used to be the cable company that served the metro Spokane area. I know lots of people who have cable based internet and most of them have said it was entirely adequate for their uses and it was lots less than we were paying for the various internet systems we have used.

So, from my experience, satellite internet is a way of getting reasonably good internet service, but it isl quite expensive, doesn"t work all the time and is relatively slow. I would choose it again only if my only other option was the lousy dial-up. The microwave based system was pretty good, but expensive and you had to be line-of-sight to the microwave station that served it. The phone line DSL we have now is the best. It is fast, less expensive than some of the other providers, and always works (hope I am not jinxing it!!!). But for lots of areas, that service is still not available.

But if I had cable based internet available to me, I think I would at least try using that, as it is supposed to be plenty fast, less expensive than all but dial-up, and it is supposed to be very reliable. If it was available, I probably would also subscribe to cable TV service, rather than the Dish satellite service, since it would be less expensive.

You will need to make your own decision, but I would sure look into the possibility of using Comcast, especially if the cable is already in place at or near your house. Good luck!!

I wouldn't touch ANYTHING with the name Earthlink on it! We had Earthlink internet service for a few years, and when we wanted to terminate (contract was over) we couldn't get rid of them. I spent hours on the phone with English deficient Indians who would say, "Not to worry", over and over, which I interpreted to mean "The service is terminated", but I was wrong every time. I finally just quit paying them (after several written notices to them) and then they ran the bill up for a few more months and turned it over to a collection agency. I never gave them another nickel, and told the collection agency to proceed with caution because we are well documented around here. My advice on Earthlink - go outside and find two sticks to rub together - you'll be happier in the end.

Thanks everyone. Looks like I'm gonna go for Comcast. According to the at&t website i can get their internet at my house too. My township tells me that i can only get satellite or antenna for cable/internet. Hopefully the internet providers are correct and the township mistaken. Thanks again for the input.