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Will Satellite Broadband ever be affordable

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  • 13-07-2004 4:24pm
    #1
    madman22
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2 ✭


    Do you have Satellite Broadband? or do you think it is too expensive. What I would like to know why it is so expensive and will it ever get cheaper. And if it gets cheaper wont it become more popular
    What do you think?


Comments

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    #2
    Urban Weigl
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,784 ✭✭✭Urban Weigl


    No. Not for now anyway -- by that I mean not in the next 10 years.

    If you want to find out more, read about what happened to Teledesic.


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    #3
    leeroybrown
    Closed Accounts Posts: 7,563 ✭✭✭leeroybrown


    I don't have satellite broadband.

    I do think it's far too expensive (for broadband - not for satellite comms). Even more so when you consider it's generally only a downlink. The only situation I'd consider it for would be one where I needed a large pipe down with no lag constraints and even then it would probably need to be for business reasons to justify the cost. It's so expensive because opeating a satelite broadband service is expenisive and has low market penetration.

    Think of digital TV , one large signal band being broadcast to 100,000's of recievers. Conversely, broadband is directed to a single endpoint. So every broadband customer requires an individual signal to be both up and down linked.

    I'd see the short/medium term future of satelite bing in providing huge bandwidth down links to sites that require large incoming levels of data - mainly a commercial market. Perhaps it would be suitable for communal download hubs for public networks (IrishWAN or similar). Even if it gets popular, there is a limited satelite spectrum and a limited number of satelites up there right now.

    Things get cheaper because they become more popular, even if the effect reciprocates.

    Right now the future is high spped, low latency wired (copper and fiber) and wireless bandwidth.


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    #4
    Robxxx7
    Registered Users Posts: 1,240 ✭✭✭Robxxx7


    I agree... but some of us have no alternative in the rural areas, i live in a small village of 120 people, and at least 10 miles away from any relative size town (Population 2000+), so Satellite is my only alternative :( It works ok.... but its not brilliant, long rtd so gaming is out of the question...so i just use for downloading etc... It uses the astra sat so no need to move my dish and it costs about E36 per month for a 512k access (also need to sign up for a dial-up account).... so not totally cheap... but its better than nothing ....sometimes :)

    Rob


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