Anyone use Satellite Broadband??

A

Andrew*Debbie

Active member
 Anglesey
Does anyone here use Satellite broadband? Which provider are you using and how well does it work?


BT estimates 0.75Mbps broadband for the house we are moving to. We are not going to pay broadband prices for dial up speed.
 
Are you referring to sky broadband?
If so the connection is still through your phone cable.
The speed will be dependent on the distance of your home to the exchange I think).

Is it possible to receive broadband through the dish? Not sure.
 
Not used it, but looked into it once a few years ago (so chance things have changed, and I'm out of date - but i think the below still applies).

Latency is currently the biggest downside in my opinion - if you want to play online games or anything where latency is an issue, this is going to be a deal breaker. For things like this here forum, it will probably increase load times noticeably - add up to a couple of seconds to every page load. Streaming video (iplayer, lovefilm, etc) on the other hand, should be much better - a second or so more to buffer at the start maybe, but then plenty of bandwidth to keep it going.

It also tends to cost a fair bit more than regular broadband - see here for some comparisons on price http://www.thinkbroadband.com/guide/satellite-broadband.html - generally they all seem to be capped and pricey compared to adsl.

In your shoes, if I didn't stream a lot or do anything too bandwidth heavy, I'd still go for the regular broadband - I think it'll feel faster in general use because of the latency. Only downloading big files, streaming video, that sort of thing, is going to benefit massively - you probably won't be able to do it sensibly on a 768k connection :(
 
The Tooway service costs more, but it's supposed to be fast. It uses Eutelsat's new Ka-Sat satellite, which has been described as the first High Throughput Satellite (HTS) in Europe. Another advantage is it also provides UK IP addresses, essential if you want to watch BBC iPlayer. It is worthwhile checking the limitations in the "fair use" policies and find out what happens if you go over your monthly data allowance. There is also Beyond DSL http://www.satelliteinternet.co.uk and no doubt other suppliers. And as Benlumley has said, the major drawback is still latency. Also don't forget contention which comes from the fact that thousands of people may be trying to access the satellite "doorway" at the same time. If there are more requests for data than the satellite can handle, some users have to wait. I believe some service providers offer free data use during the night (after 11pm) when demand is low.
 
I am with Sky Broadband, they have just told me that Fibre optic is now available in my area but they want a £50 connection fee and an extra £12 PM on top my existing monthly payment.
Unsurprisingly I said no thanks, I will wait till you drop the connection fee charge which they will eventually do when no-one pays their outrages connection fee.
 
Nosa said:
I am with Sky Broadband, they have just told me that Fibre optic is now available in my area but they want a £50 connection fee and an extra £12 PM on top my existing monthly payment.
Unsurprisingly I said no thanks, I will wait till you drop the connection fee charge which they will eventually do when no-one pays their outrages connection fee.
Click to expand...


Tell them your thinking of leaving and it will all suddenly be available for free :x
 
A company I did some IT work for about 6/7 years ago put it in as they could only get 512k on ADSL.

It was quicker but latency made it a very poor experience, I managed to improve it a fair bit by adding a caching proxy server (with active caching also configured) to the network so that frequently accessed pages would be served from the proxy rather than over the link.

Even with this added the company spent the next 12 months trying to cancel the contract and get a refund!

Maybe the technology's improved now ? but I'd be wary of it still.
 
I used my friend's satellite connection for several days recently. Obviously different provider and satellite, but presumably the technology is similar. The latency is rather annoying, but I soon learned to just cope with it. It wasn't horrible. I was happy just to have a connection, we were on a large rural property with lots of trees and hills, so it was the only option. The throughput was mostly OK, it was occasionally really slow though. This is for just basic web use. MMPORPGames are definitely out. Std. def streaming worked fine. Hi Def streaming not so much.

Definitely beware of bandwidth overage charges and/or high use throttling policies. I'd say it would be a better service overall than BT's 750K for general internet use. And if BT is like American phone co.s, you'll more likely get closer to 500K actual throughput based on that claim!

Your experience will largely depend on your usage habits, what connection speed you're used to, and your expectations. My regular connection is on the slow side (1 - 1.5M), so satellite was OK comparably. If you're used to a faster connection, it will seem very poky.
 
It's worth checking your options for using 3G. We had a sub .5 Mb/s connection through our BT line and now get 7 Mb/s using a 3G router on the Three network. We have a contract with 15GB per month, which is fine as long as you don't want to stream lots of video.
 
Sadly 0.75mbps is classed as broadband, and there are loads of houses in rural locations which have slow speeds like that :thumbsdown:
 
Nosa said:
I am with Sky Broadband, they have just told me that Fibre optic is now available in my area but they want a £50 connection fee and an extra £12 PM on top my existing monthly payment.
Unsurprisingly I said no thanks, I will wait till you drop the connection fee charge which they will eventually do when no-one pays their outrages connection fee.
Click to expand...


In the area we are moving to, Sky is reselling BT ADSL, so we'd still be getting 0.75.
 
Z4-35i said:
It's worth checking your options for using 3G. We had a sub .5 Mb/s connection through our BT line and now get 7 Mb/s using a 3G router on the Three network.
Click to expand...

We spot checked 02 and Vodaphone. Vodaphone has no signal at the house and 02 has voice and sometimes 2G data. If we walk down to the tea room at the end of the lane 02 has 3G. :headbang:

3's coverage checker shows outdoor only.

As much as I hate Orange customer service, they are the only provider that shows excellent coverage. I may invest in a pay and go dongle. Surprisingly the monthly cost is close to satellite. For data hogs, a dish could work out cheaper.


We purchase American TV shows on iTunes and use the BBC iPlayer. I'm guessing we use somewhere around 6-10G / month. Have to cut back. . .
 
chrissrush said:
Maybe the technology's improved now ? but I'd be wary of it still.
Click to expand...

There are newer satellites that are supposed to be better. I'm not sure and I'd hate to invest the hardware and/or sign up for a long contract.

More disturbingly many of the service providers are tiny companies. One had phone support M-F 9-5. "leave a message and we will get back to you within 4 hours"

Residential users can't buy directly from the satellite operator. Well I suppose you could, but the chunks they sell cost more than I take home in a month.
 
Z4-35i said:
It's worth checking your options for using 3G.
Click to expand...

We just bought a PayGo 3G WiFi box from a T-Mobile reseller. We will see. . .

MobileWiFi.jpg
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom