Anyone Have Satellite Internet??

[pk1959]

We are seriously thinking of switching from our dial up internet to ANYTHING that would be faster. We live out in the country where cable or DSL are not available, so as far as we know, satellite would be our only choice. Anyone have it and can give me the pros and cons of it? It would definitely cost more than what we are paying now, but with 4 people in the house all spending quite a bit of time on the internet, hopefully it would be worth it. Thanks in advance for any replies.

 

[swilshire]

I've wondered about this too and will be watching the replies. We don't have cable tv either, so would be interested in a package that includes that. The only cable packages I've seen also include a telephone. We have a low cost landline and cell phones we're happy with, so I'm not really interested in a new phone service.

Sheila

 

[ntsammy5]

It's not as fast as cable or dsl -- here's a pm I just got from someone who has it:

it is a little slower than a low level dsl on a good day and the weather or thick clouds knock it out pretty easily plus there is a download threshold, where if you reach the limit your speed is reduced to dial up speed for a couple hours.

Hope this helps.

 

[QTnursestudent]

We're in the same boat. For over 9 years we've had slow dialup because we couldn't get anything else out here in the country. I've even gotten online to look into the satellite internet (I think Hughesnet has a commercial that says that we should be able to get it) but their website said it wasn't available at our address.)

We were able to get a demo of clearwire. It's a very small box that sits inside next to a window. We had stopped to see a friend who has a computer repair business. He was "selling" the clearwire and had the authority to give out demo equipment for either 2 or 3 days use. Clearwire's website said it wasn't available for our address, but their service map was so close, we decided to give it a try. Hey the demo was free, so why not!!??

Well, it works!!! It is extremely fast and awesome!! This coming from a family that suffered with slow dialup for all those years. Clearwire at that time was offering 1st month free, next two months are $14.95 (we leased the equipment so we have to pay that portion for the three months, but equipment lease per month is only $4.99 + tax) Plus, within the first month they sent out a customer survey. Filled it out and got $75 webcertificate that is used as an online credit card. We decided to lease because if it falls off that windowsill, they'll replace it for free if it's leased. If you purchased the equipment (in the $100 range I think) and it breaks, too bad for you, buy another one.

Full price for the level of service that we got is approximately $40 a month + tax.

It's "portable" within the clearwire coverage area. We can take our little box to our neighbor's house and hook it up quickly and use it there. We've hooked it up to a borrowed laptop and driven around in the coverage area and haven't lost our signal yet. I don't think we'll use this option too often, but it you need to, it's available.

We have enjoyed it so much! There is a referral program too. Could get $25+ for each household referred.

So, go to their website and look up your address. If they say not available, but you've seen it advertised in your local area, go to that business and see if you could get a free demo. It might be available even if they say it's not!!

 

[kors]

We just got rid of it...the speed was at some points slower than dial up. The threshold for downloading was different depending on what package you get. The HIGHEST package had 450 MB threshold...the other ones started at 100 MB. The speed is slowed down for 24 hours after you hit the threshold. Not good for downloading on Itunes.

 

[goinback]

We had it before we moved into our new house last year. It was just as slow as our dial up, and sometimes did not work at all. It was also EXPENSIVE! The equipment and installation were around 600, and the monthly bill was over 100. The worst part of it though, was that I could never get anyone on the phone in customer service. I once waited on the phone for an hour and gave up. I then tried to e-mail CS and fax them with no response. This was with Hughes net.

 

[wshupnastar]

We have Wildblue...I don't know if it's nationwide or what. It's just who Directv referred us to. They used to refer people to Hughesnet, but I guess they were getting too many complaints. (At least that's what we were told).

Anyway, we definately move faster than we did with dial-up. And it's great to be able to watch videos (although, due to bandwidth regulations, we don't do that often). We have the smallest package available. My daughter dowloads at least a few songs a week from Itunes (takes less than 2 minutes now...used to take around 45) and I listen to Live365 for at least 2 hours a week, we have yet to ever use half of our bandwidth.

I mainly got it for uploading purposes. I work from home and needed to be able to upload documents. I would try and try on dial-up...after around 8 hours, I would just give up! Now my documents take at the most 7 minutes! That alone is worth it to me!

It is expensive. We pay $49.95 per month. Our equipment costs around
$250. We did do some comparing and found that we did pay much less than what HughesNet would have cost to get the equipment and installation.

If you have any specific questions, feel free to ask. I am pretty satisified with what we have. As others have mentioned, it can be unreliable when it is raining/storming, but I guess it's one of the trade-offs.

 

[kellia]

We have it. It is run by a local company, not one of the big ones, and costs $40/mo. It is our only option other than Comcast around here, though. We can't get DSL and dial up is a joke because our lines are so old. Verizon doesn't want to upgrade them because then they would have to let in competition.

It is pretty fast, we had Comcast briefly (though I now vow to never give them another of my pennies) and it was pretty comparable. There are occasions like bad storms where it doesn't work, but that isn't very often. They have the satellite on a watertower not far from here and then we have a receiver on our roof. Except for paying $40/mo, we are very happy with it!

 

[tileman]

I know how the dial up is a joke

We live about 25 miles from town and there is only about 30 to 40 house out here. But we are all on acres of land no cable or dsl .

But last year bellsouth now att put in a new main box up the road and ran fiber to it. So we were able to get a T1 here work great for our home office and such. We payed no install 2yr deal $450.00 per month but heck it beats what we had befor. Also they have 3 hr to have it back up and running cause its a business plan.

We have it with FDN here in florida.

Ron.

 

[speedyf]

Since you are out in the country, I don't know if this would be an option or not. How is your cell phone signal around where you live? If you have a good signal, maybe check with a cell phone provider about internet via a cell phone connection. If you live near an interstate, the signal is usually pretty good.

The speed is between dial-up and DSL...it's usually around 250kbps which is about 4 or 5 times faster than dial-up.

Just another option to check out.

Speed

 

[pk1959]

Thanks for the replies so far.....the Clearwire thing sounded neat, but unfortunately it is no where near us......we checked out the cellphone connection, but we are not really in a good coverage area for that either. From the replies that I got so far, I can't really tell if people are happy with their satellite service or not! We have satellite tv and have good luck with that. At least it almost never goes out, but I don't know if that means that we would have good luck with the internet satellite or not? Hope to get more replies from people with experience with it. Sucks living out in the boonies.

 

[QTnursestudent]

I'd have to agree that it can suck living in the boonies, but there are lots of great things about it too! Too bad about clearwire. Wish you good luck in finding something better than crappy dialup!

 

[My2BabiesLexis&Dill]

I've had mine for almost 6 mths now and I love it. It's way faster than dial-up and we couldn't get comcast. The only time we have a problem with it is when there is a terrible storm outside. It may knock it out for 5-10 minutes but no longer than that.

I would recommend it to anyone that wants/needs high speed internet.

 

[pk1959]

Well we bit the bullet and went ahead and ordered it last night. We can't get it installed until Dec 1st because they are out of the equipment in our area until that time. I guess we have suffered with this slow dialup for 9 years now so what's another month! We are going to start with the $49.95 a month package which is really no more expensive than what we pay now for the second phone line that we have plus the cost of the dialup. Dish Network has a special going on right now where you pay $199 for the equipment and installation and get $100 of that rebated back to you, so that's not a bad deal either. Everything else about living out in the sticks is WONDERFUL Hopefully this will take care of the one major drawback.

 

[Acklander]

We're in the same boat - live out in the boonies. It's much faster than dial up, but not as fast as when we lived in an area with cable.
It goes wicked slow when I'm on an encrypted site (like on line banking, or paypal) but other than that it's fine.

 

[Mskanga]

As a customer who had hughesnet before ( it was called direcway at the time ) I beg you to RUN the other way from them NOW , you will regret doing that , if you don't believe me just remember that you will have problems with the FAP ( Fair Access Policy that they implement ). Google it and you will see.
On the other hand we had a similar service also satelite from "starband" www.starband.com
The price was about the same but a lot less problems. Luckily we got cable in our area a couple of years after that. Good luck.

 

[Mandy_in_NC]

Well we bit the bullet and went ahead and ordered it last night. We can't get it installed until Dec 1st because they are out of the equipment in our area until that time. I guess we have suffered with this slow dialup for 9 years now so what's another month! We are going to start with the $49.95 a month package which is really no more expensive than what we pay now for the second phone line that we have plus the cost of the dialup. Dish Network has a special going on right now where you pay $199 for the equipment and installation and get $100 of that rebated back to you, so that's not a bad deal either. Everything else about living out in the sticks is WONDERFUL Hopefully this will take care of the one major drawback.

If you don't mind me asking how much are you having to pay up front? We have Dish and have thought about getting internet through them.

 

[uva185]

My friend got satellite internet installed at his vacation cabin in Canada. It has been great. The equipment was $600 and he pays $80 per month. The speeds are slower than cable (but cable is really fast these days 5-8mbps at my house). We were able to have 3 people simultaneously using a VPN connection to work and another 2 people casually browsing the internet with no problems. We even tried using Vonage with it which worked okay, but there was a lag due to the latency of using satellite (not speed related)

 

[westcliffemom]

As a customer who had hughesnet before ( it was called direcway at the time ) I beg you to RUN the other way from them NOW , you will regret doing that , if you don't believe me just remember that you will have problems with the FAP ( Fair Access Policy that they implement ). Google it and you will see.
On the other hand we had a similar service also satelite from "starband" www.starband.com
The price was about the same but a lot less problems. Luckily we got cable in our area a couple of years after that. Good luck.

Yep, we're just now switching from Hughes.net because of the FAP! We're going with Wild Blue.

 

[pk1959]

If you don't mind me asking how much are you having to pay up front? We have Dish and have thought about getting internet through them.

We had to pay the $199 for the equipment lease upfront on the day we ordered it, then we will get a $10 statement credit for 10 months once the service starts which is the $100 rebate.