Satellite > WildBlue Satellite > ViaSat-1:: Mobile Internet

ViaSat-1:: Mobile Internet

»www.engadget.com/2012/02/13/vias···ortable/

The author of that forum posting says "In my opinion, if you own a several hundred thousand dollar diesel pusher motorhome, the prices of these antennas are not out of range."

That is rather amusing, because of course the owners of several hundred thousand dollar diesel pusher motorhomes (and also those that own ones that cost a million or two) are no different than people who don't own such: They think spending $20K for internet-access hardware is ridiculous, and they also think the high monthly cost for mobile access is outrageous as well.

This is nothing new. The dishes on my roof certainly cost more than $20K combined, and since I would never have owned an RV if those dishes hadn't been invented the three motorhomes and umpteen dollars in diesel fuel could also be considered part of my internet cost, but that is the way it works: Very few buy an RV and then picks up expensive internet satellite gear as an afterthought. The need for internet comes first, then comes the RV to mount the satellite gear on.

My personal estimate is that the number of users of mobile satellite internet today among the RV world is less than 20% of what it was 6 years ago. The number of self-pointers, folks who do manual aiming of tripod mounts, is likely down to less than 10%. Almost all of the dealers who serviced that market are now out of business, and many of those servicing the automatic dish market have quit.

And don't think that is because speeds were too slow! For the kind of money that the pro-portable dish and service cost you could buy speed at any time in the past 10 years. The only limitation on the speed (and contention ratios) I have on my 1.2 meter is strictly dollars. Actually, having written that, it isn't really true - I'm probably limited to about the speed of a single Ku-Band transponder, say 45Mbps or so.

So, anyone who thinks these things are going to become mainstream RV products has another think coming!

SNG, on the other hand, is alive and well. Multiple vendors with multiple products, and customers with the bucks to pay for them.
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Motosat self-pointing dishes: 1.2-meter XF-3 on 93W, .74 meter G74 on 127W, SL-5 HD DirecTV|idirect 3100|Hughes HN7000S|Verizon UMW190 Air Card|1990 Blue Bird Wanderlodge Bus "Blue Thunder"|Author of hnFAP-Alert, PC-OPI and DSSatTool

reply to dbirdman
»Re: ViaSat-1: Mobile Internet

Sometime back when I said the price of current antenna technology would have to drop quite aways to get within reach of the average RVer you said the average RVer was never a candidate for these antennas.

Now when someone says that an RVer with a multi-hundred thousand dollar RV (not an average RVer) wouldn't find the price out of range you think that is amusing.

Granted, no one wants to spend $20 k on anything they don't have to (note the lower case 'k' - and the proper space between value and unit. I point this out because you commented on the use of an upper case 'B' in MBps in an earlier reply on the related thread, watch out or the unit police will come get you . . .;) .

Some people want the connectivity. As you also pointed out earlier, KVH sells antennas into the maritime market. Their price is not too much different than one will likely pay for the SNG antenna. The data rates on the KVH system vary depending on which satellite they are using and where they are in the footprint, but they aren't nearly as high as the Exede data rates. The cost for maritime service is surely higher than for consumer but lower than for the business jet users.

RV customers who want the satellite option will make their choice as to what price point is right for them.

At the end of the day, if the SNG market helps to drive down the cost of antennas as development matures, then the price point will drop and there will be more RV owners ready/willing that choice.

Right now as far as I know, ViaSat is not targeting the RV market, but as for myself as an RV owner, I'm keeping my eye out for when they become available.

Look, I know you work for ViaSat, and there's nothing wrong with that. I own and run the only (as far as I know) forums dedicated to mobile satellite internet where most of the members are RVers. I would love to have you join us and keep us informed of future progress in this area. While I am absolutely certain that most would never pay for what you have I am equally certain that there are a few who would. If you are concerned that I might censor your posts I can only say that I've removed exactly 23 posts out of the 96004 that have been written over the past 9 years - my moderation hand is very light. My TOS explicitly allows commercial postings.

As far as the unit police go, I will take that as being in jest, but for the record, K and k along with M and m each have the same definitions. B and b on the other hand, do not. I know of no place where $20K and $20 k have different meanings. 20kb and 20kB *always* mean two different things!

»www.datastormusers.com
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Motosat self-pointing dishes: 1.2-meter XF-3 on 93W, .74 meter G74 on 127W, SL-5 HD DirecTV|idirect 3100|Hughes HN7000S|Verizon UMW190 Air Card|1990 Blue Bird Wanderlodge Bus "Blue Thunder"|Author of hnFAP-Alert, PC-OPI and DSSatTool

I'm not worried about censorship. I'll check out your site, but mostly I don't post much anyway, kind of on again off again. I've been on here 11 years and barely have a half dozen posts.

Actually though, I was only kidding a bit about the units.
»physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/index.html

The proper SI unit prefix for the 1000s multiplier is a lower case 'k'. The upper case 'K' is reserved for the temperature unit Kelvin. I know, even some technical dictionaries have 'K' for kilo and don't differentiate between KHz and kHz or Kbps and kbps. But you have to go back to the standards organizations like NIST, ISO, etc. to find the real scoop.

And, the whole big B little b business is kind of funny. The IEC International Electrotechnical Vocabulary (IEV) and the ITU define "bit" as the actual abbreviation for "binary digit". There is no official designation of b as the unit for bit, which in turn is of course the abbreviation for binary digit

B is generally understood to mean an 8-bit byte, or an octet, but because word length varies on some architectures an n-bit byte is also possible. This can lead to some confusion when performing system calculations. The trend in new technical literature tends to the use of the term octet just to avoid confusion.

Then there is the whole Ki, Mi, Gi, etc. prefix thing to deal with the base 10 versus base 2 multiples business.

I could go on and on . . .

reply to DrStrangLov
SNG = Satellite News Gathering

I guess this is the dish used for this application:
»www.c-comsat.com/uploads/documen···-75V.pdf

Yes, that is the one.

I talked to the C-ComSat folks at oilcomm in Houston a couple of years ago, and they told me they had zero desire to get back into the RV business again.

reply to Spice300

There is a fairly large market for SNG with small dishes. There's a zillion small-market stations, and that includes radio as well as TV. Way cheaper to outfit a van with a small dish than a really big satellite truck. Outfits like Clear Channel like to run uniform equipment across their many stations.

Hard to say if going Ka will make a difference to them. Automatic-pointing Ku dishes in the 1.2 to 1.8 meter range specifically designed for SNG (they use really high-power BUCs) have been around for quite awhile, and they offer enough bandwidth for HD.
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Motosat self-pointing dishes: 1.2-meter XF-3 on 93W, .74 meter G74 on 127W, SL-5 HD DirecTV|idirect 3100|Hughes HN7000S|Verizon UMW190 Air Card|1990 Blue Bird Wanderlodge Bus "Blue Thunder"|Author of hnFAP-Alert, PC-OPI and DSSatTool

reply to DrStrangLov
One of my Datastorm members who is a tripod-Hughes user ran into another tripoder who was now using Exede. He rigged up his own mount, and paid $200 to take an installer certification course, and said that it allowed him to change beams via e-mail notification.

pictures (posted with permission): »www.flickr.com/photos/81571751@N···/detail/
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Motosat self-pointing dishes: 1.2-meter XF-3 on 93W, .74 meter G74 on 127W, SL-5 HD DirecTV|idirect 3100|Hughes HN7000S|Verizon UMW190 Air Card|1990 Blue Bird Wanderlodge Bus "Blue Thunder"|Author of hnFAP-Alert, PC-OPI and DSSatTool

While it's not likely to be of intererst to an RV'er, I thought that I would add that ViaSat has filed to add a 1.2 m SNG antenna to its FCC license.

So SNG vans (or RVs) will have the option of either a 75 cm or a 1.2 m antenna.

reply to DrStrangLov

Re: ViaSat-1:: Mobile Internet