Satelite Service Provider Broadband?

[Andrew Cz]

Following an artical I just read in the September Issue of PC Magazine(http://www.pcmag.co.uk) about EuroSky Internet by satellite, i was wondering does anyone know anything more about this service? Like realable etc... and pros and cons.

Some deatails from mag:

Instalation cost: £190 + disk if needed
Subsciption: £9.99 a month
Speed: Up to 2mb/s, says they got a steady 50kb/s, Upload via standard phone line...

Multicast Highspeed downloads also provided.

Works by connecting satilite to a PCI decoder card in PC. Used a combination of Dial up and wireless technology.

£10 a month is really attractive compared for the £50 a month for ASDL even though it is slower.

Any advice appreciate!

[Xayd]

DirecTV is offering this in the states, and I've heard problems with it.

You get downloads from the satellite link, uploads still go through a dial up analog modem. So, uploads are still limited to the normal speeds, but you get downloads in bursts, which isn't really feasible I don't think, theoretically.

Someone confirm or deny this, but the only nice thing I could see about satellite is the ability to get huge packets, since the lag time in between packets will be large (satellite subscribers see ping times in the 500 range, a satellite is too far away to get it there any quicker). But, if the upload side is still going through a dialup connection, wouldn't packet size still be limited to 576?

Two way satellite would be feasible if you don't do any gaming. You could get huge packets every second or two, increasing overall download speed. But the round trip time is gonna eliminate gaming altogether.

One way satellite with a dial up connection "seems" to be a flawed concept to me. Unless they've worked out this issue with packet size some other way.

Xayd

[Andrew Cz]

What no gaming!!!

I have some more info this multicast service.

U submit a URL of a file u want to dload and they will cast the file directly to you some tiem later @ 2mb/s. This is not curently offered though.

Andrew

[vitalstatistix]

??? 50KbPS Upload??? what protocol huh?

fyi, the jsut released/announced V92 protocol suport at max 48 KbPS upload speed. K56/V90 offer much lesser upload speed. Its not a symmetric combination out there

[RayH]

I think in the US, Sprint/Earthlink is experimenting with broadband satellite service in Arizona, a terrain that's condusive to satellite transmission.

It probably won't work in San Francisco. Too many hills and fog........

[PC]

A buddy of mines who lives about 100 miles north of SF was telling me about a satelite broadband solution that is going into testing right now. It offers two-way satelite communications and forgoes the need to connect the phone line. That's about as much as he could tell me as he doesn't own a computer and uses WebTV to surf Ebay.

[glc]

PC - that sounds like Gilat2Home. It's gonna be hooked up through MSN.