Good satellite Internet?

[SeedTick?]

Greeting All,
I've read several search results about satellite internet service and I am still not sure. Is anyone getting satisfactory service from a satellite internet provider? Which one? I live in the boondocks and my dial-up is really bad, really bad! Like 18-28K on a good day. From what I've read it seems like there is very little consistency. Thanks in advance for your advice!
ST?

[fiveohhh]

I looked into this also as I'm moving in a bit, and won't have dsl where I'm going, but I personally didn't feel it was worth the money, the setup cost was huge and a contract, and monthly fees and the possibility of choppy connections if the weathers bad, didn't justify it for me, but thats just my opinion

[none1]

Ya, dial up, no dsl or cable blows. :(

1) http://www.direcway.com/default.asp?CurrentPath=direcway/intro.htm

$99 month, <ouch> NO EQUIPMENT COST, or like $59 month, big installation cost. Expensive :( but can get UPLOAD AND DOWNLOAD speeds of 400k. If you go with fast download, phone line upload, I think its cheaper.

2) sprintpcs.com has cellphone internet up to 70K, faster up to 128 in the future. Current pricing is PER MB DOWNLOAD, so if you download a bunch you're hosed.

70 K now, 128 k in the future is almost doable, way better than 28k.

i think some of the other cellphone companies are also just now rolling out their "3G" wireless internet, but I don't know how the coverage is yet.

Good luck.

[Mizzery]

I sell sprint and deff wouldn't go that route as an internet connection. It currently supports up to 128, but you're likely to see 40-60K on average. You get like 100 MB of download and then its $0.002 per kilobyte. That plan costs like $100 a month. Get satelite if you have the money.

In the future however sprint is going to be ramping up to megabit speeds, but thats probally not till like 2005

[SeedTick?]

Thanks for the info. I kinda like the looks of Direcway. I'm going to read a little more about it. Have you or do you know anyone who has it? Boy, 400k sure looks better than 28k:eek: I have connected at only 2.4k:mad: Thanks again for your advise!
ST?

[SeedTick?]

woohoo! Getting Direcway in 2 weeks!

[fiveohhh]

let me know how it goes, And what your setup and monthly costs are:)

[weasel]

My dad has direcway and it's better than they say, he hits over 700k, the only drawback is it's latency, something like 300ms delay, I think. Once you get it, check your connection speed and post it here.

His sys cost about $500.00 and service is $60.00 per month. The guy that installed it was a n00b and couldn't get it right. The second guy that came out, had it going in about 15 min. Also found a bad serial cable between the two modems.

[Mizzery]

300ms is kinda rough, pots upload?

[frodoski]

The high latency is due to the fact that the signal travels 24,000 or so miles up to a satellite geo-synchronus orbit and 24,000 miles or so down to a ground station.

Oh by the way, if you think capping of bandwidth is an issue with cable, you ain't seen nothing yet. Investigate the concept of "Fair Access". If you are into downloading lots o' files this technology may not be for you. But, to boil it down to less than a nutshell, if you are a heavy(?) downloader you WILL have your bandwidth throttled in a big way. However if you only surf th' web w/occasional downloads, you may be ok.

Remember read, heed, and understand all of the terms and conditions of your service agreement, it helps prevent surprises.