Satellite Broadband

njb55rtd

I'd be interested if anyone in these forums is using satellite broadband.
I can't get ADSL so I'm going to have to go down this route. There seems
to be a fair number of companies offering the service but with wildly
different pricing structures.
Can anyone recommend one?
Nick

1mmaker

Hi Nick who did you try and get broadband with?

If there are a number of people in your area with the same problem,

you can all get through going through BT Satellite broadband.

Will find out more tomorrow for you mate.

seanparkin

Dont bother, I used to resell and install satellite broadband and I felt like a complete criminal for doing so.

Massively unreliable service, compounded by huge latency and contentions. You'll never ever receive anything like the quoted bandwidths.

The majority of satellite broadband services are serviced by one of two main satellites. And neither of them are any good.

murphy61

I've had satellite bb from BT for just over a year now, adsl wasn't available due to a long phone line. It's expensive (£81 per quarter), slow, drops occasionally and you can only have 1 pc on at a time. Also the latency means voip is hopeless unless you're prepared to say"over" and wait 3 seconds! But its better than dial up. I found out recently about rate adaptive adsl which means I might now be able to get adsl. I'm waiting for BT to try to connect me at the moment. Even 256 adsl would be better than satellite, as I really want to use voip. But if you've no choice......

njb55rtd

Thanks murphy61. Will this be the first time BT has attempted to connect you or are you trying again in respect to rate adaptive after being turned down for "normal" adsl? Like you, I would be "happy" with 256 but BT checked my line about 12 months ago and could not get connected. Maybe things have changed since then. Could you let me know how you get on?
Nick

murphy61

Hi Nick. This, if it works, will be 3rd time lucky! The first time was around May 2005, they said it would work and it didn't. Still got the usb modem. Then they got in touch in October 2005 and said, re-apply, it might work now. So I did, and it didn't. Now I've got 2 modems. So I thought, its satellite or move house, so got the satellite set up. Then I discovered recently that friends, who live even further from the exchange than me, were getting it. That's when I found out about rate-adaptive. Actually I was a bit annoyed that BT hadn't told me there might be a chance of it working this time, so stupidly I signed up with Talktalk - the full monty. After 2 months of calcutta calls trying to get the line activated, I accidentally discovered that talktalk don't do rate-adaptive in areas where the exchange is not unbundled! Managed to get out of it last week, relatively unscathed. My own fault, of course, for not doing the research......got another modem though! BT sent me modem number 4 last Saturday. Activation is scheduled for this Friday. I'll keep you informed! Incidentally, have you tried
http://www.prodigynet.co.uk/menu.php?page=support/adsllinecheck
I found it the other day on another thread. Wish I'd known about it when I was battling with talktalk!
Cheers
Andy
BTW, in case anybody's wondering, I'm not collecting modems....they never asked for them back and they're just sitting in a drawer gathering dust!

murphy61

At last! the update as promised. ADSL didn't work on activation, as I expected. After jumping through a few hoops, managed to get bt to agree to send an engineer, who came this morning. His router wouldn't work either, he then connected a Netgear DG834G wireless router, which synched immediately. Apparently they now supply these to all borderline areas, as they will usually work where the voyagers will not. So I'm getting 486kbps download and 155kbps upload, which is still slow but twice as fast as satellite. QOS is 98% as opposed to 14%, which means that VOIP will work now. And it does, I've tried it. I used http://www.internetfrog.com to get these figures. I asked if this was rate-adaptive, and he said no, it is fixed 500kbps. He said they don't like using rate-adaptive as it can cut off unexpectedly on long phone lines like mine, but to leave it for a couple of weeks to see if it is consistent, then try asking for an upgrade. However, I'm very happy with what I've got at present. Also, for what it's worth, BT's customer service has been very good throughout. The right hand seems to know what the left hand's doing, which is a welcome change from talktalk! So, my advice, Nick, is give BT another try.
ps I've got another spare router now!