I'm currently living in a media black hole. No cable, DSL, or even decent cell reception. My only choice right now for high speed is a satellite link. I don't really know anything about it and the last time I looked into it a couple years ago they wanted a hefty installment/equipment fee. So I need a little info and or advice. For instance will it suffer in bad weather like satellite tv? What other factors should I be aware of? So, can anyone lend a hand?
move from what i remember sat internet is faster than dialup but still slower than dsl unless they have improved their speeds but I remember it was something like a max of 768kbps (around getting 77k downspeed) so while it is fine for viewing webpages things like streaming video, downloading not so much
I had a UPS Store business in Missouri City, TX and our retail pad site did not have a cable coming to the building. TimeWarner/Comcast said it would be thousands of dollars at our expense to bring the cable to our building. We were also in one of the few dead zones for for DSL so we went with satellite internet. You'll get decent speed but unlike satellite TV that will go out in a heavy rain storm, with satellite internet it will go down with just thick cloud cover and just about any rain. When I sold my business last summer the new owner didn't want to deal with outages so he signed up for T1, which never goes down but will cost your around $300/mo.
Last time I checked... Sat internet works like this: the dish only receives - it can't send. So, it uses a regular old dial-up modem to do all the sending, and the satellite does all the receiving. Now, you're thinking, "What?!?! one of those old, slow modems ?!?!" Well, yeah, it's a modem, but the modem is not used to download any traffic - just for sending. So, for example, when you access a web page, you send the "internet" the address for the page you want, such as "www.cnn.com", (this request is sent by you thru the modem) and then the "internet" sends you the cnn web page full of video and images and text (this is sent to you through the sattelite dish, which is VERY fast). With simple web browsing, most of the traffic is downstream, coming through the satellite, at a very fast speed. A small amount (usually web page requests and form data, which are usually simple text) is sent upstream through the modem. Here's the drawback: if you ever want to send (upstream) a large amount of data.... yeah, it's gonna be very slow. This means that, if you try to send a video signal (such as through skype or through a video conference), it's gonna suck. And if you want to upload a large file to an internet site or email a large file to someone, it's gonna be slow. As far as reliability goes, and downtime due to weather... I have no idea how reliable it will be, or how sensitive it is to weather conditions.
What area do you live in? You might have other solutions. Verizons EVDO service - $60 a month for 5Gigs. If you have spotty service, you can buy a yagi amplifier to boost your signals. If you live in a dead zone, this its highly unlikely any of the other carriers can offer you wireless internet. WASP providers: Some counties provide wireless internet through cell phone like towers. I rarely see these advertised, but they exist in most of the rural counties where i live. Satellite: Wildblue uses KA band, which is basically a higher frequency. It provides better speeds, but is much more susceptible to rain fade. It also can be bundled with DirecTV. Hugesnet uses KU, lower frequency, less susceptible to rain fade. Satellite has high latency (IE: no fast paced multiplayer games for you) and your speeds will be throttled if you become a data hog. As previous posters stated, its between dial up and DSL, higher overall monthly billing and a couple hundred startup cost.
It is expensive. You can get fair download speeds. Upload speeds are donky-slow. It will not work when a thunderstorm is between the dish and the sat.. We changed to the wireless card that plugs into your laptop. It is better than sat..
I live in central wisconsin. Zip 54406 if you wanted to look up the area. As far as cell reception I manage to get 3 bars under the best conditions. A lot of times it sits at a single bar. I'm hesitant to do anything that involves directv or dish network due to poor service from them in the past in this area. I think I remember getting a flyer from hugesnet at one point.
Snow on the internet satellite will kill your connection too. Your only other option is for high speed is T1, look it up in your area to see if there are any deals.
Yeah thats what I was afraid of. We have wind chills in the negatives today with temps in single digits. I'm not big on the idea of going outside just to brush off the dish on days like this.
