Satellite Internet

I"m looking at satellite as an alternative to dialup and am concerned about reliability and the 200mb limit. I"m looking at Xplornet and the price is very close to dialup by the time you figure in a second phone line. There is also C-com which has a slightly better upload speed and a 375 mb limit but it"s $85 compared to 60 with Xplornet. Do you normally hit the limit? I"m also reaidng about these download managers. How do they work?
the other alternative is the stick. Rogers has it for $65/month with a 5 gb limit and with any major downloads or youtube watching I think I could hit my limit pretty quick. Atleast with the satellite you have the 2am to 7am unlimited to let major downloads happen. Just trying to weigh my options here. TIA

I've got wild blue and its slightly better than two tin cans and a string, but not much. For the base rate of 49.99 a month I go over at least 2-3 times a year and I dont download much. It gets painfully slow at peak times, and its a general aggervation. Then, of course it goes out when it rains, and when the sun shines, and when its foggy, and when it isnt. I'd gladly drop the 5 grand to Time Warner to run cable to me, but they say they arent engineering out my way for a while, grrrr.

I went with the USB 3G modem, or "stick" as you say. AT&T, $60/month with 5GB limit. I would certainly recommend you go that route if you have 3G service in your area. Just watch your usage and stay away from youtube if it looks like you might run out of bytes before the end of the month.

Satellite internet has at least one insurmountable problem: Each packet has to travel 44,000 miles round trip. Even at the speed of light, that takes awhile.

If you have Alltel service in your area get the USB air card from them. $60.00/month, no GB limit!

Sprint will give you unlimited usage on their 3G/4G Plan for $60 a month. I have had their service for a couple of years and it works well for us. There is no cable or DSL service where I live.

Ask around your area for an RF wireless system. I think there is another name for it, but can't think of it right now. I have an antenna mounted on my tower with my Ham Radio antennas at about 45' and get a signal from a tower 12 miles away. It may not be as fast as the DSL on fiber optic, but it's a LOT faster than dialup. SBC.ATT told me we would NEVER have DSL here, and I am only 4 miles from the main office in town... Don't have ANY of their stuff now, so they won't have to worry... Their fiber cable runs through my yard in an easement to two cell towers, but they can't justify putting the equipment on to give all of us in this little area DSL (about 30 families in a mile or so). Something about the cost return is too long. But, the Big Dawg at Texas SBC said he would have DSL to all of rural Texas.... OK, sorry I ranted. The wireless stuff is good though. We run a router, and daughter and brother-in-law on both sides of us run off ours as well. If we are all on at the same time doing the You-Tube stuff, it slows way down, but everything else works OK at the same time.

Hayman what happens when you GO OVER as you say.
Service change or bill go up.. I have never experienced either and I just stay on here.. Jerry e mail [email protected]

Thanks for all the quick replies. Problem is I'm in Canada and cell prices are nothing near what they are down there. There's basically Bell and Rogers and a bunch of companies that buy their service. The prices are competive but still a rip off. We have the technology but not enough companies to force prices down.

I've got Hugesnet, but I know others that have Wild Blue. No difference. Wild Blue can no longer take new customers in my area (satellite access limit is full). Hughesnet might soon have the same problem.

Much, much faster then dial-up for info coming into the computer, i.e. downloading and Web-browsing. Very slow in uplinking (sending data). Uplinking not much better then dial-up.

Having the satellite Internet access has enabled me to download huge files, which I never could of done with dial-up. A 30MB file takes a few minutes, whereas with dial-up it would take an entire day. As to going over our 100 MB - yes, I've done it many times. There's a time-period late-night when you can download unlimited amounts of info. But, I'm not on the computer at 2 in the morning and don't care enough to install a download manager. I could also pay extra for a higher limit. But, $60 per month is enough. Hugesnet now gives several "forgives" per month. So, if you go over (causing the system to slow down to 10 times slower then dial-up), you get on-line and hit a "forgive" button - and get the full service back at no extra charge. And, if you screw that up, you can pay extra to be forgiven.

Downsides? When snowing, I have to clean the dish often. Last month, I had to do it 3-4 times a day for a week straight. Another problem, at least in my area of NY, is that both Hughesnet and Wild Blue are gettting congested and at night - some Websites cannot be accessed. Google is one that many nights between 7-9 PM, I cannot get into. It took me awhile to discover it was a satellite congestion problem and not some weird Google problem.

I have no other options where I live, so I'm glad to have it. Cell phone usually will not work here, and neither will over-the-air Internet service. Up to outerspace to some geo-stationary tin can - yes.

We've got xplornet and it is miles ahead of dialup but still not true high speed. It seems to go out at odd times but has been real good for connection for about 6 months now. We explored a tower but nixed that as it would be $7000 for the tower for line of sight and then installation and connection on top of that. High speed isn't available here and cell phones are dodgy. We can do youtube but very slow for them, so don't do much of that. Generally satisfied.

Yeah, about .25 sec. round trip.

They send you a nasty email saying you are 'abusing' their service. Then, they turn your connection speed down. They claim its to 56K but the connection becomes so unstable that for all effective purposes its shut off. For only 99.00 a month you can upgrade the amount of bandwidth you have to get your speed back up. If you dont pay up, it stays on slow until your 30 day average drops below the threshold.

Usually what gets me is working on my website or my kid online gaming. I watched a movie the past couple of nights and it used up 25 percent of my total useage for the month. It makes me mad, that I'm paying 20 bucks a month more than cable internet for a slower connection and limited useage.

It sucks.

It's better than dialup when it works, but a mouse fart will knock it out and then you can plan on waiting up to a month to get it fixed.

I dropped it like a hot rock when DSL came to town, ate the last month of subscription and the cost of the equipment and counted myself lucky to be shed of it.

In fairness, I'm at the extreme northern edge of the satellite footprint which probably doesn't do Good Things for it's reliability weatherwise, and if it was my ONLY choice other than going back to dialup, I'd probably have to do it again.

Or maybe I'd give up home access and spend more time at the library. It aggravated me that much...

I have been over the limet a few times on Hughes, watching utube videos. They just shut you down to verry slow dileup speed for 24 hours.

Agreed. I tried an "air card" for my lap top - huge waste of time and effort getting it work. When it did work it was so slow it drove me nuts. Might work if all you are doing is passing text emails back and forth but anything bigger like a PDF file will be lost or corrupted.

Meanwhile my nephew shows up with internet access on his cell phone. His wasn't as fast as my DSL but still much faster than the aircard I tried on my laptop.

Friend of mine had Hugesnet for two months. Got three weeks out of it before he dropped it. Slow,dropped signals and downloads got lost. Plus no help from the experts. Went back to dial up.

same problem here with only dial up available
i went with telus internet stick
2 gig for $50 a month with 3 people surfing web & occaisional u tubin seems to work out fine
& a heck of alot faster than dialup
bob