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 Review by seagreen 
UPDATED: 1.8 years ago
member for 7.4 years, 3942 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Newcastle,Placer,CA
 $69 per month (12 month contract)
 about 14 days
 "When it works it's great"
 "Recently it hasn't been working well at all"
 "If you have any other choice for broadband, don't get satellite"
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Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Mail,DNS,News:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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This is actually Earthlink Satellite (Powered by DirecPC) - I don't see any way to change the review to read 'Earthlink'.
Installed 5/14/01
My installation was excellent; the installer was knowledgeable and prompt. He even hung around for over an hour while on hold to the NOC to check cross-pol. He finally had to leave to do another install but had his office go on hold to NOC to finish the check. The installer did not ground the dish as the instructions specify.
The equipment includes a 2 USB modems which are clamped together and use a single USB connection to the computer. It would be nice if there were an option for an RJ45 connection so that a router could be used.
The dish is huge and requires a very stable mounting position. We have solar panels on our roof so the installer used the frame for those to mount the dish.
The IP is dynamic.
At first the speed was great for downloads; uploads have never even approached what they were supposed to be.
Over the last two months the service has deteriorated considerably with many outages, loss of satellite signal, signal strength drop, proxy connection failures, timeout for both mail and news service and slow web page loading (>3 minutes in some cases)
Earthlink allows 20 hours of dialup per month in addition to satellite service. This is supposed to be for those who travel with their laptop. I've exceeded that on one weekend by using the dialup account as a backup when the satellite was useless.
Earthlink's Tech support is basically clueless regarding satellite issues and it is a minimum of a half hour on hold to talk with a technician who will read a scripted message about ways to 'fix' things (most of which the user has already done prior to calling).
I have no other options for Broadband other than satellite as I reside in a rural area so I am hopeful that things will improve in time.
I would not recommend purchasing satellite internet connection at this time unless you enjoy constant frustration.
Update: Cancelled satellite service November 2004 for IDSL. The upload speeds on the satellite connection had deteriorated to the where they were consistently slower than what my 24.6k dialup account could do. IDSL was 1/10th the download speed but 10x the upload speed of satellite.
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