Does anyone have any experiences with satellite broadband?

Just looking at other options as BT broadband is very poor due to distances to exchange etc.

So we need to look at other options for broadband.

Expensive and only good for downloads.
Have you checked for mobile coverage? 3G can be very good.

Mobile coverage is worse than BB.

We have to walk around the house & garden holding one hand in the air, moving it around whilst standing on one leg! 😉

My ex’s parents live in Cyprus.

He trades financial markets for a (very comfortable) living.

They’ve had satellite broadband for about 6 years now and he relies on it entirely. It’s good, but not great IME. Expensive, comparatively low speeds and relatively frequent drop outs.

I think there are probably cheaper ways to improve speed.

I have tried all sorts of options and equipment, but the bottom line is the house is too far away from the BT exchange, some days its like going back to the old 56k dial up speed!

how poor is poor ?

i get 1.5mb bt broadband on my connection according the speedtest.net and the BT estimate when i signed up.

this is enough to stream a movie pretty much lag free – but i am one of very few folk on the line out in the country.

my buddy was about 5 miles down the road in a residential area closer to the exchange getting an advertised 5mb – at about 0.75mb on speedtest. He cant stream movies etc from apple tv he has to buffer them for a half hour before watching

I am currently using 3G broadband as I am working offshore again. I was promised up to 7.2Mbps, I actually get an average of 120Kbps. That’s only when I am close to local islands. The drop outs are frequent and I pay about £22 for 5GB of usage.
I haven’t tried satellite but seeing as they charge US$8 per minute for voice calls I don’t think that it is in my price range.

We’ve got an older Tooway system and it’s fine for general stuff, VPNs tend to slow it down though due to the latency.

I think they’ve now got a 10mb and 18mb option with pretty good uploads speeds (4mb on the 10mb down if iirc). You’ll never get around the latency issue but it’s done us fine for 18 months and that includes working from home using web based systems.

I have tried all sorts of options and equipment, but the bottom line is the house is too far away from the BT exchange, some days its like going back to the old 56k dial up speed!

Hopefully someone who actually knows what they are talking about can confirm/correct this, but i’m sure someone I know got a second phone line installed and then used a special router to combine the lines, giving an increase in speed.

How slow…………very slooooooww…..never more than 110kbps.

Just highjacking the OP’s thread.

I’ve just moved to Norfolk from Surrey and we have no broadband service available (they hope to get it to the village by 2015!) and there is a very little 3G signal at all and what thereis constantly drops out.

What are the realistic costs of satelitle broadband?

I think under *ALL* circumstances, if you have a phone line to the house, you can always buy a ‘dedicated’ line to be installed and use that for broadband, and you get a guaranteed speed. perhaps you need to look into ‘business’ options from BT and other phone providers (although its still BT that installs it). it may be costly, but if you need the net to work , it might be cheaper than buying fancy equipment for mobiles/sat. broadband.

sat. broadband will only have upload speeds of your CURRENT fastest internet connection, there is NO uplink to the satellite – the data for you then also has to go up to the statalite then back to you and can suffer from a lot of lag, and also when its raining , poor signal!

Have a look at Tooway Direct

Plenty of price / speed options there. We’ve got a pretty big dish but the new ones are Sky size afaik.

sat. broadband will only have upload speeds of your CURRENT fastest internet connection, there is NO uplink to the satellite

Depends, there are options for VSAT systems

If you can get even a whiff of 3G whilst standing on the roof of the property one of these should get you up and running

http://www.wiberouter.com/

About £250 to buy but loads cheaper than sat broadband to run

We run Sat B’Band as its the only real service available to us living in rural Denbighshire. We’re running it through AB Internet. Usual level of non-service you would expect from any ISP provider. Should get 10mb, but in reality more like 2-3mb. But hey, it’s better than nowt and any 3G connection available around here. it is affected by weather though. Think we pay £20 a month I think..

We have to walk around the house & garden holding one hand in the air, moving it around whilst standing on one leg

Is that with every mobile carrier?

Jeez, talk about thread resurrection. Did it take four months for Jota’s post to upload?

Jeez, talk about thread resurrection. Did it take four months for Jota’s post to upload?

I think something [spam?] has been deleted before my post, but if it amuses you just ignore it

Ahhh now that makes sense

Seeing as its come up anyway…

I think BT are trialling a new product, basically you will be able to pay for a fibre to your premises. It will be expensive, but if you are considering satellite there is a possibility it could be affortable.

I think under *ALL* circumstances, if you have a phone line to the house, you can always buy a ‘dedicated’ line to be installed and use that for broadband, and you get a guaranteed speed. perhaps you need to look into ‘business’ options from BT and other phone providers (

Not that I know of, the only products I know of are two linked ISDN lines at 64kb each (compared to the maximum 56kb on a normal phone line), twinned up they will give an connection speed of 128kbs. (slow)

Business products will be provided over fibre if the copper can’t support a decent broadband speed, and you would pay for a dedicated 10 or 100mb connection (or lots more if you can afford it), no contention ratio but you would be looking at thousands in line rental, and if you are out in the sticks, thousands more for installation costs. This is the part of BT that I work for.

Check your Router and the box your connecting to.

We have satellite broadband at work and in staff houses.
Chuffing expensive (£300+per month unlimited for office), or really slow and limited use for the £40 a month option for staff.
3G is waaaay faster and cheaper, shame we do not get 3g.

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