Island Jeff
join:2005-07-18
 ·WildBlue
 ·TDS
| reply to bolt
Re: Satellite Broadband?
quote:
250 MB a day or less is fine?
With wildblue staying below the 80% mark so I don't have to worry about FAP I get 431 MB per day on the download side.
quote:
Most of my peers would probably better off with EVDO though.
Here we don't even have reliable voice coverage much less 144 kbps cell coverage. EVDO would be nice, but I'm not holding my breath it will get here in the next 12-24 months.
quote:
SkyWay USA is not that way. They offer their base service plan at only $29.95 per month and equipment only costs $49!
The problem with SkyWay as I understand it is that it still requires dialup uplink, which means a reliable dialup ISP and phoneline which may or may not be available, ties up or requires an additional phone line which costs around $25/month here, is not "always on", and has very very slow upload speeds making interactive activities like sending or uploading photos as slow as over dialup. But I'm sure it's ideal for some. For me, I sure am glad to have wildblue (and hughes) that now have fairly fast upload speeds at last in the 250kbps range for a more balanced "broadband linke" experience.
Overall, Satellite isn't nearly as good as any low latency broadband, but it sure is better than dialup. I remember back in 2005 when I signed my wildblue contract after 3 years of starband, a few urged me to wait for the local broadband initive that was just about to get off the ground. Long story short, now 2 1/2 years later after a year of zoning work simply to erect three towers, the local effort is still just about to get off the ground. A year ago cellular one did a demo of their 144kbps data offering, but it didn't work reliably 3 blocks away with a clear line of sight to their antenna at the demo site reliably enough to complete two testmy.net tests in a row, and thats as far as cell has gotten to date. While I'll be as excited as a kid in a candy store when any low latency broadband finally arrives here, I sure am grateful and glad that wildblue and satellite in general has been avaialbe to fill the gap in the meantime.
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Wildblue in Lake Michigan | Color Printing Forum
Unhappy with noticeably slower secure sites, higher latency due to 11/17/06 firmware changes |
