Dish Launching Satellite Broadband October 1 → Re: Cue whiners crying it isn't as good as FiOS

The point is that they are ripping you off with their per byte charging.
On $5 56k dialup you can download 18 GB a month.

It should always be unlimited as the infrastructure for peak usage always exponentially outweighs the per GB cost.

Not with satellite it doesn't.

I did the math and, yea, it would take 29 days at 24/7 to download 18 GB at 56kbit (assuming a solid 56kbs every second).

except, you also need a phone line, so no, it's not $5 a month.

The point isn't how long it takes you do DL 18GB, but now long to DL 3MB. At 28.8 it's 15 minutes, at 10Mb, 2 seconds.

I'll take SRS over dial up any day.

If you live in a rural area and can't get DSL, then your phone lines are probably bad enough that you can't max out the 56 Kbps connection.

Back in the POTS modem days, I topped out in the mid-30s. And I live in a suburb that was largely developed in the 1960s.

Of course, but the phone line price has nothing to do with the internet connection. It is a voice line.
I think the cheapest barebones unlimited local phone line you can get is like $15 though ATT.

But dialup is a very nice comparison as satellite has no physical line costs to the home. The physical network to internet starts at the head end just like with dial up.
Obviously the satellite costs 100s millions of dollars, but the internet is a freebie in addition to the tv subscriptions they use it for.

Either way satellite is competing with 18GB for $5 a month dialup when they have arbitrary 10GB and 20GB caps.

No it's not. $50 1000KB/s Satellite is competing with $5 3KB/s dial up.

Satellite represents usability where as dialup is unusable for virtually everything including basic surfing.

Yes it is.
$50 20 GB a month Satellite is competing with $5 18 GB a month dialup.

If you are at work all day so you can download all day long dialup makes more sense. At the month you still could have only downloaded 5 DVDs or maybe 50 tv shows.

Caps are pathetic. We had no caps from 1995 to 2011 when everyone started trying to rip off customers with per byte billing.
Somehow sprint has no problem with unlimited and dsl was unlimited until 2011.

While this may be true, theoretically a 56K modem, operating at full blast for an entire month would get about 18GB downloaded. How many people actually use the Internet full blast for an entire month?

The average Internet usage is about 60 to 70 hours a month (at least that's what I found when I searched, feel free to dispute those numbers). Using 65 hours a month as an average for Internet users, that means a 56K user at full blast would get to download about 1.48GB. That's a far cry from the 10GB limit that this entry-level package offers.

Granted, I would assume that 65 hours is actual sit down time that users use the Internet. It probably doesn't include all of the gaming downloads, all of the gaming, all of the movie and music downloading, etc. But I think that is where a disconnect happened between urban users (who are used to broadband Internet) and rural users (who are not). Rural users aren't interested in doing all of that stuff (maybe because they've never been able to and aren't hooked on it just yet). Rural users are mainly interested in being able to go to lowes.com to compare washing machines and appliances before going to the store. (which you really can't do on dialup, maybe if waiting a couple of days for the various pages to load doesn't bother you).

With satellite Internet (and 3G/4G Internet as well) streaming movies and music and all of that fancy stuff is out of the question. But you have to remember these people are used to dialup, and dialup just doesn't cut it any more. I actually think everyone needs to go back to dialup for a week or 2 just to gain an appreciation for all the various broadband options that are available to urban users.

All of that aside, I do agree this 10GB limit is a little bit low. I'd like to see the entry level for satellite packages to be around 30GB a month, that would average out to about 1GB a day. But the $40 price tag is good. I can see this taking off in the rural areas and might serve to really start getting those rural areas off of dialup.

Uh, no it's not. $50 1000KB/s Satellite is competing with $5 3KB/s dial up.

No one runs their dial up service 24/7 or could even keep it connected 24/7. What people use it for is quick stuff, FB, email, surfing...PAINFUL bordering on the impossible with dialup.

LOL, it's no longer a voice line if you are running it 24/7

Back in the day (80s) you could get a second line without any special install or billing. My dad had a fax line in Huntington Beach California. Can you still get a second line without much hassle and would a dedicated dial-up line make much sense these days?

GTE in Huntington Beach always charged for each line. Same bill, but each line was billed separately. I don't know how your dad got line 2 for free.

No, he paid for both lines, it wasn't a hassle getting a second line was my point. Our neighbors wanted a third and they had to jump through hoops to get it. That's what I meant, everyone could get two but most only got one.

Oh, yeah. All the homes where are wired 2 line (at least the ones in south HB and NW HB). The point was dial up isn't "$5" because it requires the phone line, especially if as the other poster wanted to do, run it 24/7 as a dial up connection. Here, basic line with tax is close to $20 with Verizon, $17 with AT&T because of the taxes and fees.