| satellite, cellular, and the future As a wildblue customer, I don't see the point of this demonstration at all as it seems extremely improbable at this point that we will see actual plans available at this speed. Why not just show a DS3 line or a Gigabit connection also not available in the real world in rural locations at prices people can afford?
When they actually have satellite(s) and gateways in place and put a price and order form on the 18 Mbps plan a performance increase of an order of magnitude will be nice for rural users who have no other option (though it still won't hold a candle to low latency broadband; I hope at least they use the new capacity to get rid of the bad traffic shaping mechanisms). But until then it's like saying to the rural user "would you like to meet the most beautiful and smart lady you've ever seen" "oh, well at this point she is just a cartoon..."
quote:
Increased capacity might ease the incredibly low usage caps imposed upon customers, though upgrades obviously can do very little about miserable latency.
While I agree that satellite will never match low latency terrestrial broadband, and therefore I'd prefer the stimulus money go to low latency projects, fundamental upgrades could improve the latency greatly of the wildblue system. When wildblue first launched with unloaded satellites and gateways the latency was in the low 600 ms range from 2005 until 11 of 2006. I liked the system a lot then because things like ftp worked nice and quickly, I could type in realtime via ssh, etc (not as fast as dsl, still 5x slower, but now years later wildblue is around 18x slower to type in ssh than dsl which is noticeable.)
14-september-2005
ping -n 10 google.com
Pinging google.com [216.239.37.99] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 216.239.37.99: bytes=32 time=682ms TTL=238
Reply from 216.239.37.99: bytes=32 time=600ms TTL=238
Reply from 216.239.37.99: bytes=32 time=600ms TTL=238
Reply from 216.239.37.99: bytes=32 time=695ms TTL=238
Reply from 216.239.37.99: bytes=32 time=680ms TTL=238
Reply from 216.239.37.99: bytes=32 time=679ms TTL=238
Reply from 216.239.37.99: bytes=32 time=678ms TTL=238
Reply from 216.239.37.99: bytes=32 time=645ms TTL=238
Reply from 216.239.37.99: bytes=32 time=644ms TTL=238
Reply from 216.239.37.99: bytes=32 time=603ms TTL=238
vs Today where wildblue applies as much traffic shaping and more than the physical traffic shaping in order to make more economical use of their currently available bandwidth.
ping -n 10 google.com
Pinging google.com [209.85.171.100] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 209.85.171.100: bytes=32 time=1789ms TTL=234
Reply from 209.85.171.100: bytes=32 time=1242ms TTL=234
Reply from 209.85.171.100: bytes=32 time=1213ms TTL=234
Reply from 209.85.171.100: bytes=32 time=1258ms TTL=234
Reply from 209.85.171.100: bytes=32 time=1284ms TTL=234
Reply from 209.85.171.100: bytes=32 time=1214ms TTL=234
Reply from 209.85.171.100: bytes=32 time=1214ms TTL=234
Reply from 209.85.171.100: bytes=32 time=1252ms TTL=234
Reply from 209.85.171.100: bytes=32 time=1456ms TTL=234
Reply from 209.85.171.100: bytes=32 time=1297ms TTL=234
Ping statistics for 209.85.171.100:
Packets: Sent = 10, Received = 10, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 1213ms, Maximum = 1789ms, Average = 1321ms
quote:
In contrast, the usage caps of 5GB on 3G services seem robust by comparison, and we've slowly seen 3G operators eroding satellite broadband's already narrow market share.
I thought the 3G 5GB cap quoted above was also monthly -- is this not the case? If so, I don't see how a cellular 5 GB usage cap seems robust compared to 17 GB down + 5 GB up cap on wildblue's pro package or even the 7.5 + 2.3 on the most basic level of service (or is it robust because you can easily pay as you go and use more paying the overage fee with cellular?)
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Very happy TDS DSL user | Wildblue in Lake Michigan |
