Thread: Sattelite Broadband,anyone use it?

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

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

I have Two way sat here. Bloody expensive and not as fast as they make out Can be unstable at times 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

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

John

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

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.

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 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.