Reliable Satellite Internet

**Michael2** · 14th December 2006, 05:28 PM

Check to see if the Federal Gov't Satellite phone subsidy is still available. When I checked about a year ago, I could get a Sat / GSM phone on a $70 per month plan on a 2 year contract for $19.

Travelling around Aus and being in remote areas for a certain percentage of the year will qualify you for the subsidy. You can get a modem for the phone. Data speeds are not that great though. Good for email, but you'll probably have to send pics when you're in a broadband area (town).

There was no real 2 way satellite system available that was portable when I looked into it, the closest was the marine spec sat phones with data capability (about the size of a laptop).

**Disco300Tdi** · 14th December 2006, 08:22 PM

Originally Posted by JDNSW

Telstra's "Next-G", their new 3G system, not only has better coverage than any other 3G system, but has better coverage than any other mobile phone system - but still only covers a small proportion of Australia, not even major highways once you get away from the East Coast, but it does cover most towns of any size throughout the country.

I recently got a quote from them to change from CDMA - same price for phone service as my current phone plan, with the option of broadband data at $49/month, but that was pretty limited data quantity, I think from memory 500Mb/month.

John

Out here in the back blocks of Korong Vale GSM is non existent, CDMA is reasonable.
I went down to Melbourne for some business, whilst there called into a Telstra Shop and talked about "3G".......
They sold me a new phone, works well as a door stop, not much use for anything else out here.
Called Telstra Country Wide and had the CDMA reconnected with full refund and no penalties on the 3G phone
Telstra are slowly updating the towers in regional areas,,,but very slowly
IMHO I will wait till the CDMA finishes before updating

**Captain_Rightfoot** · 14th December 2006, 08:26 PM

Originally Posted by 84RR

Out here in the back blocks of Korong Vale GSM is non existent, CDMA is reasonable.
I went down to Melbourne for some business, whilst there called into a Telstra Shop and talked about "3G".......
They sold me a new phone, works well as a door stop, not much use for anything else out here.
Called Telstra Country Wide and had the CDMA reconnected with full refund and no penalties on the 3G phone
Telstra are slowly updating the towers in regional areas,,,but very slowly
IMHO I will wait till the CDMA finishes before updating

Funny thing is, I live only 7k north of Brisbane, on a huge hill... yet CDMA coverage in our house is marginal at best (I have one and have to stay in the bedroom to take a call) whereas my wife's GSM works well.

**JDNSW** · 15th December 2006, 05:26 AM

Originally Posted by 84RR

Out here in the back blocks of Korong Vale GSM is non existent, CDMA is reasonable.
I went down to Melbourne for some business, whilst there called into a Telstra Shop and talked about "3G".......
They sold me a new phone, works well as a door stop, not much use for anything else out here.
Called Telstra Country Wide and had the CDMA reconnected with full refund and no penalties on the 3G phone
Telstra are slowly updating the towers in regional areas,,,but very slowly
IMHO I will wait till the CDMA finishes before updating

We were probably lucky here - only got CDMA coverage a couple of years ago, and apparently it was just a matter of turning a switch, but some of the older towers may have issues. One interesting point is that the tower was there for six months before becoming operational - enquiries gave the answer that they were waiting on the fibre optic connection to provide broadband, which didn't make much sense at the time, but does now. It seems to be impossible to get any information as to the actual extent of coverage - they will just tell you its the same as CDMA, and in this area (not just the local tower) it seems to be roughly correct - as I said, my next door neighbour has one.

John

**Bush65** · 15th December 2006, 05:02 PM

I have a bigpond wireless pc card in my laptop that I use for my regular internet connection. Works wherever there is a reasonable CDMA signal.

It is much better than dialup, but not as fast as broadband.

My area was outside the existing EV-DOCDMA (3G) coverage when I configured it about 8 months ago, so I set it up for the slower CDMA1X (for the same $$, I can download more M

.

**JDNSW** · 15th December 2006, 07:53 PM

Originally Posted by 84RR

Out here in the back blocks of Korong Vale GSM is non existent, CDMA is reasonable.
I went down to Melbourne for some business, whilst there called into a Telstra Shop and talked about "3G".......
They sold me a new phone, works well as a door stop, not much use for anything else out here.
Called Telstra Country Wide and had the CDMA reconnected with full refund and no penalties on the 3G phone
Telstra are slowly updating the towers in regional areas,,,but very slowly
IMHO I will wait till the CDMA finishes before updating

I was in town today doing some Christmas shopping, and there was a Telstra bloke with a display in the shopping centre. Having found he was a technical bloke, I raised this question with him. According to him, around 99% of towers have been converted (strictly they are operating both systems - both use a spread spectrum technique with multiple transmitters, and what they have done is reduce the number of transmitters doing CDMA - which reduces the number of simultaneous users). But a number of towers have not been converted for various technical reasons - for example, the Mt Canoblas one has not because its coverage area covers two cells run from towers actually in Orange - and the new system is more sensitive to handover problems with multiple coverage. He said adjustments to the transmitters would solve these problems. In addition, some towers do not have adequate power, or in a few cases adequate landline communications to operate the new system.

All in all an interesting half hour of conversation.

John

**Redback** · 19th December 2006, 07:27 AM

Sorry for the bum steer away, i found this mob.

http://wwww.dragnet.com.au/index.php?view=31

I got the info from this forum.

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum...fm/609236.html

Baz.

**Captain_Rightfoot** · 19th December 2006, 07:55 AM

Originally Posted by Redback

Sorry for the bum steer away, i found this mob.

http://wwww.dragnet.com.au/index.php?view=31

I got the info from this forum.

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum...fm/609236.html

Baz.

Unfortunately you need a landline to do the uploads! This could be problematic

**George130** · 19th December 2006, 08:11 AM

We were told by telstra 2 years ago it would cost us $1500 a month for satelite. There was also a hefty set up fee.

**away** · 19th December 2006, 11:28 AM

Thankyou everyone for the replies. I should have been a little more thorough with my original post.

We will be travelling all over Australia, including many places well beyond the existing cellular phone networks. We already have a Globalstar satellite phone, but it is really only good for voice communications. We also have CDMA and Next G phones which we have working into our laptop when in range of repeaters. CDMA has proven to be too slow for webcam, but Next G works reasonably well.

Dragnet looks like it could be a solution but storing the dish will be a real issue. They also don't allow "self installation", so I would have to let them install it to my house first, then take it apart and set it up as necessary when travelling. (It seems that being a Communications Technician for 33 years doesn't convince them that you can do the install yourself).

Pricing is within our budget, albiet at the top end of it but I think that we will more than likely maintain voice comms via the satellite telephone when we are in the more remote areas and use Next G or some poor bugger's unsecured Internet when in towns.

With regard to unsecured Internet, I walked down one of the streets in my hometown with my Next G phone set to pick up unsecured networks and received 4 strong signals in just 750 metres! All but one allowed me access to the Internet. This is a direct result of broadband companies selling wireless products to the public, who then do self installations without reading the instructions. Great insn't it?

I made myself a quick $300.00 by walking in, showing the network owners the problem and fixing it for them.

Once again, thanks for the replies. Dunno why I hadn't heard of Dragnet. (being in the industry and all...)

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