Dish to Launch Nationwide Satellite Broadband Service

Sat's inherently slow latency will always make satellite ISP service horrible. No one in their right mind should be using it.

It is better than dial-up unless playing online games or VOIP services.

Unless they can get WISP?

Most people can at least get some 3G cell service now where they live. If you live somewhere that you just can't get anything , then why the hell did you move out there?

The people I know who aren't all over the internet and were born into situations where it just wasn't something they could get easily don't really care if they have it or not. So the whole "dial up" comparison is just as out dated as bringing it up each time someone mentions sat internet.

The majority of the country will end up getting internet thanks to LTE type networks anyway. Far cheaper than last mile fiber and much faster than the horrible latency of sat.

"So the whole "dial up" comparison is just as out dated as bringing it up each time someone mentions sat internet."

I know someone on here who keeps saying basically the exact same thing about cable when complaining about cable (Charter in particular) and their stupid current practices. He's always trying to tell people to leave. As if everyone in the country has multiple options for anything faster than dial up.

For some people, this could be the best thing in the world, especially if it's not as ridiculously priced as Hughes or Wildblue crap!

You people are spoiled. This would be a god send for those of us who spend time in the middle of the "jungle" and can only UPLINK data fast. The up speed, better the 300baud would be great.

You haven't used any modern equipment have you?

In the future, if Dish does follow through with the broadband plans and/or wireless provider plans, anyone think Karl will admit he was wrong ?

Of course he won't admit he was wrong...

Not a chance. Then again there won't be any evidence because any posts that prove it will be deleted for either being off topic or trolling. Just like this and probably your post will be deleted for pointing it out.

The key word is rumored

You guys are being really kind to me, thanks. Note (as link above notes) I'm not alone in wondering if Dish's LTE build is a bluff, but don't bother actually reading what I write or the stories I link to -- just crap on me for fun. I really like how you don't actually say anything of substance about the actual subject (Dish LTE build), you just take a giant commentary crap on the author for no reason.

MVM? Really?

Anyway, this is off topic. Locking it just in case some people want to oh, actually discuss the story.

Also, as a reminder, we're paying people to write their own stories. Since mine are clearly so unpalatable to you, and you clearly have vast insights into these issues, I'll be eagerly looking for your submissions.

1) Dish owns HughesNet
2) ViaSat owns WildBlue
3) ViaSat Built both Ka Band (identical) satellites for Dish and WildBlue.
4) The will have very simulator plans....

Just to let you know. Echo star owns hughes net. Echo star supplies dish network. It only makes sense that dish network will bundle some day. Especially with the new bird.

Yet another sub-par, slow, heavily capped, high latency option for Americans to chose from. Just behold the competition!

it's satellite broadband that caters to rural customers... what would you really expect from that?

Not really much you can do about the high latency. But 5mbps isn't too slow. This sounds quite a bit different than what I have heard from rumors for Hughesnet's new upcoming service.

"While insiders note that Echostar's new EchoStar 17 satellite can handle services up to 15 Mbps, initial Dish offerings will likely be dialed down to 5 Mbps to protect capacity. The services will be bundled with existing services, Dish will be able to handle about 2 million connections."

I don't see how you can handle 2 million 5 Mbps connections off of one satellite. Could someone explain the physics of this?

Any comments on what kind of caps this service will have?

I think that's a bit of an overblown estimate, at least if the connections were actually being used concurrently.

Unfortunately, I'm guessing (as there hasn't been an official announcement on them) it will be around Exede which is still pretty disappointing for the price point / latency.

Even if they do have all the "extra capacity" I imagine they're going to cap it aggressively.

Exede plans range from 7.5GB ($50)-25GB($130) Monthly; I imagine the prices and caps will be similar.

Historically Hughes plans have been daily (Tallying up to around the same ranges of data), but it might change with the new service.

Same way that cable Internet can offer 20 Mbps packages to an entire neighborhood over just four channels. Residential Internet service simply *has* to assume that people will not saturate the connection 99.9% of the time in order to achieve low pricing that the consumer is willing to pay.

EchoStar 17 has 100 Gbps of aggregate capacity. 2 million users at 5 Mbps each would be an oversubscription ratio of 100x -- pretty typical. Per-user guaranteed bandwidth would be 50 Kbps. That's a lot better than the existing satellites, which have single-digit Kbps of per-user guaranteed bandwidth.

Caps should keep users watching the meter and not streaming too many videos, so this could realistically give a couple of hundred Kbps during peak times.

Of course, until the 2 million users actually show up, there will be plenty of bandwidth to spare.

why are they not using the satellites they acquired along with the 2ghz spectrum? they could sell services that use satellite only now and faster tower based connections as the network gets built out.

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that those birds don't have anywhere near the capacity that new ones (ViaSat-1, Echostar-17) have.

ALL satellite broadband end up using the wireless isp model of throttling, caps and overages... so the devil is still in the details.. including price. Can't imagine it being worth more than $30 assuming the status quo QOS. Also, the equipment & installation are high upfront costs of service in addition which shouldn't be ignored.

Dish's boradband is going to be yet another option for folks who don't have wireline or fixed wireless options. Sat companies know they can't go after folks who have full-on low-latency broadband connectivity.

In addition to having no other options for internet than satellite, we also can't get cellular service with a mile of where we live so we're almost stone-age without the satellite service.

The basic Hughesnet package works good for us compared to dial-up. Others have had major problems with it. We may be scraping snow off the dish in the Winter time, but we'll see how it works in a few more months.

I've said it before, the problem with satellite broadband marketing plans is that they are marketing it towards the wrong people. They need to market it towards the rural areas, where wired-broadband is not an option. Where I live, there are several areas that don't have access to any wired broadband options. No cable. No DSL. Most places do have cellular coverage, and cellular broadband is an option, but it's what? $60 a month for 3GB of data?

The majority of these people in these rural areas could care less about the download speed of their connection. These are people that are on dialup Internet connection and get, at best, 40kbps connections. As such, they've never used the Internet for a whole lot, so their monthly bandwidth needs are low as well. But when they are paying $15 or $20 a month for a dialup connection, they're not going to pay $60 a month just to get faster speeds.

Market this satellite broadband as an alternative to dialup. Set the max speed to 1mbps or even 512kbps if you really want to be conservative. Hey! It's still faster than dialup! A monthly bandwidth allotment of 10GB should be enough for most users. But the price is the selling point. $40 a month is what I'd like to see. Really I'd like to see $30 a month, but that's probably wishful thinking. I think satellite providers could get a lot of dialup customers, if they set their prices accordingly and don't focus so much on the download speed. Dialup users just want something that's "faster than dialup". Latency also isn't an issue because these are dialup users.

"But when they are paying $15 or $20 a month for a dialup connection, they're not going to pay $60 a month just to get faster speeds."

Of course they are. Do you realize how really frustrating web browsing is on dialup?

That should be the new name for this DISH provider. Ditch because everyone is ditching them for better service and prices.

"Everyone" you say?

Yes

Reading between the lines .....

While insiders note that Echostar's new EchoStar 17 satellite can handle services up to 15 Mbps, initial Dish offerings will likely be dialed down to 5 Mbps which will allow us to oversell, and still charge you a premium price. Although we advertize plans up to 5 Mbps we do not even promise you will receive it, and you shouldn't expect it. If you do get manage to get a laggy 1.5 Mbps you should feel blessed and fortunate to even get that!

Customer:
But I'm Paying for 5Mbps......

Provider:
And whats your point?

OMFG, once upon a time DISH DID offer sat 'broadband', god help me I was with them when they comarketed Starband. I wouldn't wish that crap on your worst enemy, struggled thru 2 years with those clowns and DISH went from partners to barely tolerating the service to abandoning them... and Charlie will do the same damn thing again. You'd have to be a complete fool to believe ANYTHING Charlie Ergen, DISH or any of his henchman promise.

I got a phone call today saying that Dish now owns ViaSat.

They gave me a new customer service number to call.