Sattelite Broadband,anyone use it?

[fernockulated]

Ok having found out we are eligible for the Govt grant ,we have decided to jump into the realm of sattelite b/band,what i would like to know is what are the good points and bad points,have been given a hit list of nine companies that do the install and are govt.prefered,does anyone have any "nightmare" stories of providers not quite stacking up (remember legalities in your replies! ), am leaning towards a provider trading as "activ8me",running thru the Ipstar sattelite, activ8me - affordable satellite broadband for regional, rural and outback Australia (http://www.activ8me.net.au/) supposedly better speeds than others,although anything is gunna be better than the 28.8Kbps that dial-up currently serves us with,so its over to all you I.T guru's to fill in my techo void :)
cheers Ferno

[Nathan]

We have a client using NewSat (www.newsat.com) which works pretty well. We chose this one because it's a symmetric service, ie. satellite up and down, with decent uplink speeds.

The company was really good to deal with and it's worked really reliably for a couple of years now.

Nathan

[fernockulated]

ours will also be the two way set-up,will feel quite strange talking on phone whilst browsing the net for a while,although since the next g phone setup we have been able to do that,previous digital mobiles didnt work out here :(

[Rangier Rover]

I have Two way sat here. Bloody expensive and not as fast as they make out:mad: Can be unstable at times:mad: You need a plan that suits your useage as around 15c a meg can add up. PM me if you want to know provider.
Tony

[JDNSW]

I have been using Skymesh (also ipstar) since May last year. It is an improvement on dialup, particularly since I don't have to deal with Telstra.

I am on a 1024/512 plan, and the speeds come close to the stated ones. The major problem with satellite is that there is a minimum latency of about 1 second (often effectively a lot more). This means that anything interactive is hardly possible. I find that the minimum time between sending a request for a page and starting to receive the data is about ten seconds. On the other hand, for example software updates, typically maintain in excess of 90% of the nominal download speed.

What I did was decided what was important, and phoned every company on the list and got their answers to the questions, then put them all into a spreadsheet, and in my case it came down to two providers, and I phoned each and picked the one that came across over the phone as the friendliest.

Two companies got crossed off the list because I got an answering machine and my call was not returned. One got crossed off the list because their phone number was disconnected (same number on ABG's sheet and their webpage and Sensis).

You will find that the actual prices are pretty much the same, but the conditions vary a lot between companies. In my case, the things that got Skymesh my money were :-

No lock in period at all.
Shaped plans - no surprise bills.
Can buy extra data blocks
Support Linux
Fast installation.

Most of the companies use the same contractor to do the installation in any particular area, I think Activ8me is about the only one that doesn't.

By definition, since you can only get the subsidy once for a property, hardly anyone will have experience of more than one provider. I would say I am moderately happy with Skymesh, and I have several relatives with Activ8me, and they seem to be happy, but in all cases there is no real comparison, so I'm not sure what the satisfaction means.

Some of the companies seem to be a bit dodgy - GoBush for example went belly up a month or two ago, leaving a lot of people in the lurch, and there have been others in the past. Have a look at Regional, Satellite - Whirlpool Broadband Forums (http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-threads.cfm?f=67&p=2)

John

[fernockulated]

well the paperwork has been done ,t's crossed and the i's dotted,received call from activ8eme this week inform us that they will be out next tuesday, weather permitting to install the dish on the roof,and hook things up,pity I won't get to it till at least friday :(:(:(
thanks again for the advice,have bookmarked that website and will be gleaning some knowledge from it hopefully
cheers Ferno :)

[It'sNotWorthComplaining!]

My mate has Sat in Qld. Has a voip phone service with it. Conversations are a shocker as there is a sec delay alll the time. It's like watching the New on TV when the studio asks the reporter something and you see them standing in the field like a stunned mullet waiting. But since nothing else was available it's better than nothing at all.

[Disco300Tdi]

Which plan did you decide on with Activ8, Ferno ?

We were with them before moving across the state, now with Aussiebroadband which is also Govt funded satellite.

No lock in contract
Half price first 6 months
3 email addys
24/7 support

99% of the ISP's use the IPSTAR satellite.

[Graeme]

We use Bordernet on a 3GB per mth shaped plan and most months we get shaped during the last week. On dial-up we used less than 1GB per mth as a guide.
I did the install myself as I took over the service from my son when he was able to get ADSL. I couldn't find the satellite at first because I had my GPS set on magnetic north and had forgotten the GPS had the option of true or magnetic.

[Narangga]

We've just swapped over to an Ipstar-based ISP at work.

Unfortunately for us we are only able to get the shaped beam rather than the spot beams most of you guys are on so we are still trying to tweak the setup to get the rated transfer rates - especially during heavy rain.

However from the comments of the ISP Ipstar support isn't as good as that offered by the previous satellite network provider.

[incisor]

especially during heavy rain.


i used to get bandwidth for my isp on sat bandwidth direct from a US supplier until the war in the middle east caused the military to take all the satellite bandwidth... and the au $ fell to 55 cents so became non-viable as you had to pay for it in US$

dish size is your friend...

anything under 2m was an utter waste of time even with a top of the range lnb if you want to sustain decent bandwidth in heavy cloud cover up this way, was my experience.

[Narangga]

i used to get bandwidth for my isp on sat bandwidth direct from a US supplier until the war in the middle east caused the military to take all the satellite bandwidth... and the au $ fell to 55 cents so became non-viable as you had to pay for it in US$

dish size is your friend...

anything under 2m was an utter waste of time even with a top of the range lnb if you want to sustain decent bandwidth in heavy cloud cover up this way, was my experience.

1.8m dish, 4W BUC and decent LNB (BUC & LNB come from JNC). Rx is fine we just have a Tx issue. Link Budget shows 1.8m dish should be OK in that config.

[fernockulated]

Which plan did you decide on with Activ8, Ferno ?

We were with them before moving across the state, now with Aussiebroadband which is also Govt funded satellite.

No lock in contract
Half price first 6 months
3 email addys
24/7 support

99% of the ISP's use the IPSTAR satellite.


We went with the 9 gb (3g/9g) 3during peak and 9 off peak,anything over not charged just speed drop,as mentioned elsewhere,not much difference price wise,just looked over what was available ,compared and came up with what we have,all set up and running ,tis much faster than the crappy snail speed of dial up,yes there is the delay but loading times are much better,downloaded AVG anti virus on wed nite,dialup time would have taken the better half of three hours,downloaded in five minutes via new b/band,google earth now runs instead of tripping over itself,computer not glitching as much during internet work now that signal can keep up with 'puta :)