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Satellite Internet?

johnastovall

Deceased, but remembered fondly here...
Has any one used pure statellite internet (no television). I'm looking for access to the net in very remove areas in the Big Bend area of Texas.
 

TRSmith

Subscriber Member
I live in a rural area but need broadband for my business so I looked into Satellite access a few years ago. It won't work for me since i upload large files to printers and the upload speed on satellite was pretty crappy when I was shopping for bandwidth. That may have changed, but I doubt it.

For general web surfing and email it might work fine. For some areas, it's really the only game in town. Like all satellite services, there's the occasional weather related hiccups, but that's not a real biggie unless you're in a mission-critical situation.
 

etrigan63

Active member
You may want to look into LOS Wireless (Line Of Sight). Texas, being mostly flat like Florida, is a prime candidate for this technology. For example, Texas Internet Service offers wireless internet in the Hood and Parker County areas.
 

johnastovall

Deceased, but remembered fondly here...
Unfortunately, Texas isn't mostly flat. Where I'm looking at going its very rugged terrain and very low population density.
 

RGoldman

Member
I had service through Direcway a couple of years ago as it was my only option where I live. It's expensive ($60/mo), slow, I mean really slow, and was down about half of the time I had it. The customer service was atrocious. Having people in another country telling you it's not working because "it is raining at your house, Mr. Goldman" when It's clear as can be, telling you to unscrew the connections and hold your thumbs (no other finger will work!) on the wires to discharge static electricity, which of course never worked. Sending out service people to replace all of the equipment over and over, which of course, never worked.... etc. The best one of all was when they told me that the problem was my house is moving too much every day so there's nothing they can do to help. I asked the person on the phone if I could speak to another tech person and he told me he was as high up in the company as I could go. I asked him if he had a boss to which he replied "yes" so I asked to speak to that person who immediately transferred me to the "next level" of technical support which of course, couldn't help either.
To give you an idea of the speed of uploading large files, I would send three 50MB tiff files at a time by hitting send as I was going to bed. In the morning, it might be sending the third file if you're lucky. Forget using the service when sending any files because it's slower than dialup if you try to multi task.
I was fortunate to have someone close by install a wireless network for their business and I talked them into letting me help pay for some of the cost if I could use it. I would never recommend satellite internet to anyone based on my experiences. The US mail is faster......

Ron
 

JimCollum

Member
Has any one used pure statellite internet (no television). I'm looking for access to the net in very remove areas in the Big Bend area of Texas.
we have service from HughesNet.

do not *EVER* go thru them

absolutetly the worst service.. both performance and customer, i've ever experienced.

they just finished instigating a FAP (fair access provision). if you surpass their definition of 'fair access', they cripple your account for 24 hours past the occurance. Throughput during that period is about 56K (same as a modem).

a simple good size microsoft update will trigger it.. so will watching a video from youtube.

in talking to their customer service... they actually told me that they are not interested in customers being happy. Their customer base is a captive one.. only those who can't get dsl or cable come to them.. so they have no motivation to keep customers happy

I have a small business package from them.. when a satellite went down, there response was a minimum of 3 weeks before they could get someone on site.


DO NOT USE THEM!!!


(hmmm.. do i sound a little upset with them? it's been about a week since my last run in with them.....)
 
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