Anyone have or been thinking about going to satellite internet service?

A good buddy of mine has been on the Wild Blue service for a few years now. But the download and upload speeds have been horrible the whole time compared to what he was promised and they had been out to his place several times with no success in correcting the problem. Were talking slow, think only a bit faster than dial up. But it was the only thing available that except dial up service which is also horrible out where he is.


Fast forward to today, he got a new sat service installed. http://www.viasatresidential.com/exede/home

As for his new setup, I would recommend it to anyone that can't get high speed internet service at there location.

This picture speaks for itself as for the speed! This was taken with a cellphone directly on my buddies computer this morning right after they installed it.

This thread is relevent to my interests....

ETA: I've had both Wildblue and Directv/Hughes in the past. Both blow chunks. Especially their bandwidth restrictions. It seems this new place has upgraded both speed and GB limit. I'll try it out when we move and see what happens...

Those speeds are damn good, compared to my current DSL at the office humming away at ~5mbps

If I understand correctly, this company is actually utilizing a new satellite that just got put into space.

I will be watching this thread for updates once he has had the service a few months and can speak to reliability and availability during weather "events", as well as continued throughput as potentially more subscribers are brought online.

I suspect that a light whisp of clouds will still knock you out for a few minutes. Directv can barely keep a good signal these days.

Its the best some of us can do though. miles from a 3G/"3G"/4G signal, no cable or dsl. I've heard in the past that for places as remote as I am, sat may be the way to go for a decade or longer.

I will try to remember to give you guys a update (or get my buddy to do it) in a month or so.

You might be surprised. With all the fiber to the cell tower builds the ILECs are doing they are now able to get fiber to their far remotes for almost free. So a lot of areas that we would have never been able to prove dsl to are now in the planning phase and we are just now doing all the stimulus stuff that will also reach out to all these far out areas. So help may be around the corner in the next year or so.

That is what I keep telling myself (for the last 8 years or so). I will just keep riding my grandfathered unlimited no-contract Alltel plan on my Verizon MiFi until there is a compelling reason to change.

LOL I know the feeling. I live within the city limits of Benton and I could not get DSL till about two years ago. What area of the state are you in? I work for Windstream. Might be able to look some things up if you live in our area.

Yes Please

I hope this pans out. I live on the south side of jonesboro, and have att dsl now. It does well late at night, but chokes considerably during peak hours. Sudden link is my only other option so far and I can't stand a company with poor attitudes in customer service. I thought about checking into fusion media, but dont know anyone that has them, and could give a honest opinion of them.....

Just checked it out. 7.5G of data for $50. I don't think that would last long watching movies on netflix all night....

I agree that it is limited on data. Although it is a far cry from dial up! And they do also have a 15G & 25G plans that cost a bit more.

And I am not sure how well this new system will stream video. Since its still going to have a high latency. (500ms up to the bird, and 500ms back down to you = 1sec ping times. Or at least this is how sat internet has been in the past.)

But maybe they have a new buffering system or something to allow video streaming.

We just moved out to Bauxite. Little did I know that there were still some places (not that far out of city) that still didn't have DSL.

I've talked to the neighbors and they were totally disgusted with Hughes, Wildblue, etc.

We had AT&T out to install a home phone (Land line) and the guy assured me of no go on DSL, but said they were planning on expanding their U-verse out that way eventually.

Just last weekend I finally bit the bullet and signed a 2 yr contract on an AT&T hotspot/wi-fi modem. It is really a lot faster and efficient than I expected, but I'm limited to 5gb w/o being charged extra. At $50 a month...I'm not really thrilled about paying more. I have 30 days to decide if it working for us.

What are the rates ($$) on this new setup?


DK

Anything for Bauxite as far as Windstream service? I've only checked with AT&T.



DK

Feeeh, I was excited until I saw that, I get better pings on my mifi...at least the majority of the time.

One of the few downsides to living in the sticks, shitty internet, but being able to do magdumps anytime of the day right outside my door makes up for it.

any updates on performance?

Haven't ask my buddy about it in a while. I will try and ask him tommorow if I remember.

When I worked for Alltel, I was the 3rd person to get DSL in Little Rock. They beat Southwestern Bell by a few months getting it installed. After the tech guys set up the CIO and another big-wig, they came to my house. I was a test case for them. Over a few weeks, I'd have up to 4 trucks parked in front of my house.

The central office is on Markham and I was over in the Cherry Creek subdivision. Right at the limit (in the late 90's) of DSL. Throw in the fact that I was also one of the first CLEC (competitive local exchange carrier) users in town as well.

Friend of mine switched from Hugues net and has had nothing but good things to say!!!!!!.

My buddy says, "Its been almost perfect. Just had a spell where I had to restart the modem some. But that only lasted a week.

He has had and has been using fairly heavily for over a month now with no major issues other than the modem reboots during one of the weeks.

That was my biggest problem with both Hughes and WIldBlue. WB being worse.

At one point, right before I cancled it, it was down more than it was up and the rebooting process took 15-20 minutes of rebooting to fix the problem.

We dont have any other choice where we're moving, so I guess I'll have a genuine arfcom AAR about it in a few months.

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