Satellite broadband - Anyone use?

[bearman68]

Hi all.

Just about to move house, to one even more in the sticks, and even further away from the local exchange. Line speed on the BT hub is down to a max of about 1.5 mb, maybe a bit slower, and that's with a bit of optimisation of the position of the cables etc. And they are charging £12 - 18 quid a month. Can't quite remember which.

So listening to radio 2 today in the workshop, and a bloke phones in to say that satellite broadband is the way to go. Good coverage up to 20 Mb, even in the most rural parts of Wales, where I live.
Looking on the net, prices are about £10 / month for 5mb, up to £30 to £50 for a 20mb connection and depending on total amount downloaded. For me a 20mb connection would be to die for, and £30 a month looks good value for money.

But the question is are they any good, or is the promise somewhat in excess of the delivery.

Comments most welcome - Thanks

[B'stard Child]

This is general gassing try gadgets or something like that

this is where we talk about cars

[LimaDelta]

We had a 5Mb/s dedicated satellite connection which we have suspended for the winter as it was very expensive (30k per month!). We tried a very large data 3G bundle which was fairly unreliable, so we have switched temporarily to a Ka band satellite connection (which I imagine is the type of connection you are looking at. We are getting anywhere between 1-13Mb/s shared, so the speed is quite variable but the connection is more stable than the 3G. It is costing around 70EUR per month. Set up costs were around 400EUR.

HTH

[MoelyCrio]

I've got mine from Avonline which is a reseller for TooWay (the only satellite provider).

I'm in rural N Wales and 3 miles from the exchange so was getting less than 1 meg, but generally get 25 meg on the satellite.

Couple of issues though
1) Latency is awful, over 1 second usually, which is not that surprising when you consider the journey up into the sky and back (twice) the request has to cover.
2) Cost, I pay £50 per month and whilst the speed is great, if you're just viewing text sites like this, its wasted.
3) Weather, rural areas tend to get the worst weather anyway, and on a squally night like tonight, the flutter (google it) goes up and I lose the signal every now and again.

Edited by MoelyCrio on Thursday 5th December 21:05

[bennyboydurham]

Got tooway. It's expensive (£60 a month) and was very unreliable over the first few weeks. It's better now but unless you're surfing the net at 3am you won't get anything like the speeds they suggest you will. Budget on 3-5 meg most of the time and you're in the right ballpark.

ETA just got back from working away and 4.30 on a Saturday afternoon it's giving me 7 down, 5.7 up, which is a bit better than usual for this time of the day. I only ever get 20 down (which they advertise and I'm paying for) in the middle of the night.

Edited by bennyboydurham on Saturday 7th December 16:29

[arcturus]

Airband are pushing in to Wales. And the service is very good. Might be worth sticking your postcode in their service checker.