two-way satellite internet

see that sad face? that’s me when the weather ain’t perfect… in my endeavor to get the best internet bandwidth available to ppl who live in BFE, i jumped off and tried satellite internet.

first of all, if ALL YOU DO IS DOWNLOAD (and you only use it when there’s not a cloud in the sky), it’s amazing, once you’re “assimilated” into the network operations center. it will probably take you two or three weeks to finally get everything running as smoothly as possible, providing you have no bad weather and you have at least semi-intelligent installers. i have downloaded 5mb MP3s in as little as 15 seconds before.

CAVEAT - however, if you, like me, have to ever UPLOAD anything, two-way digital satellite internet service is a bad joke. NOWHERE in their online info, sales pitch or even after i repeatedly asked the rep i was talking to, did they ever say what i’m about to quote to you now from a tech support email… “uploads will be as limited as a land-based phone modem.” now THAT is a major omission as far as i’m concerned - because remember, they do offer a ONE-WAY system that requires all your uploading to be done through a land-based phone modem, so one would assume that since the two-way system itself costs more, the service costs more, and it’s supposed to be “better,” that it might actually BE better - it’s not. every time i asked about bandwidth and why a person might choose 2-way satellite internet service, the answer i got was “we can’t quote exact figures {yes i know that, i’ve worked with online systems since they existsed so i understand that part} but you can expect speeds from 30 to 300 percent faster than with a modem.”

the TRUTH is that only applies to downloads. the best upload speed i have ever seen with my system (after spending $100 to have the dish re-aimed because the first installer was apparently inept), is 4K per second. yes, you read that correctly 4 K, as in 4000 bytes a second. my 24kbps boondocks telephone connection to an ISP 30 miles away uploads faster than that. and that’s a PEAK - most of the time i get about 1.9K per sec. it takes me so long, in fact, to upload that i often get disconencted from a server for time out errors. as a professional web developer who deals with uploading databases, that’s a real groaner.

the other downside is that rain fade with a satellite internet system is (insert imaginary figure here) times worse than with satellite tv… don’t ask me why. i’m just glad we didn’t replace our tv dish with the new oblong internet “duo” dish… our internet connection disappears with the presence of cloud cover - it doesn’t even have to rain. it’s quite annoying. we rarely lose our tv signal - the weather has to be REALLY bad - with the internet connection sometimes it seems like WIND causes a signal loss.

so unless you live in an area that has absolutely no phone service whatsoever, or ALL you will EVER do is download, skip satellite… it’s more trouble (and expense) than it’s worth, for the time being. i’ll have an article on my complete experience soon, as it’s rather eye-opening i think…

Satellite Internet from HughesNet is available nationwide for people stuck with dial-up.