SKY TV Looking to offer BB in Ireland

Dellas

According to electric news Sky Tv are looking to offer BB here in Ireland. They are looking a a few options. Shame they cant do it through the sattalite dish !!! Then we would all be covered.

uncle_sam_ie

That would still be satellite "broadband" which means you couldn't voice or video VOIP, file share, do web hosting, game, or run a VPN. I don't think they would be dump enough to use a satellite. I bet they'll just go in were the exchanges have LLU. Wow-ee!

pm.

uncle_sam_ie wrote:

That would still be satellite "broadband" which means you couldn't voice or video VOIP, file share, do web hosting, game, or run a VPN. I don't think they would be dump enough to use a satellite. I bet they'll just go in were the exchanges have LLU. Wow-ee!

yep i agree the type of exchanges that already have eircom, smart, bt etc etc they should look at a company with new ideas like service rural ireland and give them tax breaks, but that wont happen as long as noel is looking after things imo

qwertplaywert

but sat hsa benifits-rural ireland can get it,and file sharing is quiet stupid:any amount of legal files music tv shows etc can be downloaded straigh from interweb sites.........if they just bothered to go beyond that first page on the google search...........and it helps ruralers,like myself,who cant get it through phone line

Creamy Goodness

satellite broadband is a no no.

what's the point having one way traffic at a fairly decent speed say 1mbit then using a 56k to upload. i'd rather stay on dial up.

uncle_sam_ie

qwertplaywert wrote:

but sat hsa benifits-rural ireland can get it,and file sharing is quiet stupid:any amount of legal files music tv shows etc can be downloaded straigh from interweb sites.........if they just bothered to go beyond that first page on the google search...........and it helps ruralers,like myself,who cant get it through phone line

It's not stupid to those websites that care about saving on bandwidth costs. Bit torrent file sharing is the way they'll go. It has been rumored that iTunes will incorporate a bit torrent client in the future. I use file sharing apps all the time at work and it's all legal, and a must. Wireless broadband is what rural Ireland needs, not satellites in space. Which will cost even more to access as other Europeans move away from it.

watty

Peer Peer sharing of legitimate kind is dishonest of the content providers. They are getting all the users to repeatedly pay for the bandwidth instead of paying for it themselves.

I don't see why if I pay for a download I should donate x10 as much bandwidth again for other people to download it.

uncle_sam_ie

watty wrote:

Peer Peer sharing of legitimate kind is dishonest of the content providers. They are getting all the users to repeatedly pay for the bandwidth instead of paying for it themselves.

I don't see why if I pay for a download I should donate x10 as much bandwidth again for other people to download it.

True, but the rumor is that Apple are planning a way that if you donate your bandwidth you'll acquire credit toward an iTunes purchase. The choice will be yours if you want to donate or not. Of course its a rumor, but I think people would go for it.

Cabaal

I'm beting they might be looking at Smart as a company to roll out the services, buy Smart and you get a head start in Ireland

Easier then rolling out LLU from scratch

qwertplaywert

they should start thier covrage with rural ireland.......and ignore the towns and cities..............what a dream that would be

Prisoner6409

Cremo wrote:

satellite broadband is a no no.

what's the point having one way traffic at a fairly decent speed say 1mbit then using a 56k to upload. i'd rather stay on dial up.

Tell that to anyone who is stuck with dial-up and no options for BB. Dial-up users do not bother much with uploads in any case but having a 1mbit dl speed would be very welcome.

qwertplaywert

yep..........dial up REALLY fustrates

Dellas

qwertplaywert wrote:

they should start thier covrage with rural ireland.......and ignore the towns and cities..............what a dream that would be

Yes totally agree the government should be giving tax breaks and grants to rural areas and encourage them to roll out BB on a major scale in the rural areas that do not have anything !!! But that would be too sensible!!!:rolleyes:

aFlabbyPanda

Cremo wrote:

what's the point having one way traffic at a fairly decent speed say 1mbit then using a 56k to upload. i'd rather stay on dial up.

I had a 1 way sat system years ago (6 or 7) before DSL was available and it rocked! A company in the UK IPVIASAT I think they were called. I had a 5MB download unlimited for 20 sterling a month. Considering all I was doing was downloading movies/music/apps it was perfect.

I was already paying for the dial up so getting high speed download was great.

And why couldnt they make it 2 way? Some US companies provide 2 way internet access and TV over the same dish.

qwertplaywert

okay-i for one dont understadn the diff between normal broadband and satilite -someone explaon?

watty

Satellites are over 22,500 miles away. This means a ping or handshake takes 90,000 miles. This means a LONG time even for radio waves, so gaming, talking etc is nearly unusable.

They have plenty of BROADCAST bandwidth, but limited UNICAST (one to one) bandwidth, especially uplink, this means hosting servers is not feasible.

It is high speed Internet, but not really broadband. All kinds of clever tricks and proxies are used to avoid handshaking each address, IP, MAC, link etc to do with loading a page.

It is possible to combine TV reception and Two Way satellite on one dish. I have seen it in Ireland. But it needs a bigger dish than a Sky Minidish for uplink. Also cheap Internet capacity does not exist on 28E. All 2 way satellite in ireland uses other satellites, so two dishes would be required (yes by ofseting multiple LNBs nearby satellites can share on dish, but that would require an even bigger dish.)

Also the receive LNB needs a blocking filter to not be overloaded by TX. Usually the TX and RX use different polarity, so you would lose half the TV channels if you tried that method of combining two way sat and TV.

Worlwide, Satellite Internet is regarded as a solution of last resort. For places with no infrastructure.

DSL and the better terrestrial Wireless services, even 3G is preferable to Satellite Internet.

qwertplaywert

wtf???

watty

BrianjG wrote:

I had a 1 way sat system years ago (6 or 7) before DSL was available and it rocked! A company in the UK IPVIASAT I think they were called. I had a 5MB download unlimited for 20 sterling a month. Considering all I was doing was downloading movies/music/apps it was perfect.

I was already paying for the dial up so getting high speed download was great.

And why couldnt they make it 2 way? Some US companies provide 2 way internet access and TV over the same dish.

In fact if you use 4 hrs a day, a basic two way satellite is cheaper and better than Dialup + download only satellite, if you cancel the phone line.

Real broadband solutions give 1000times 5MByte per month at that price.

watty

qwertplaywert wrote:

wtf???

Well you did ask.
Light & Radio waves go at 299 792 458 m / s, or roughly 300,000km/s
So it takes a while to do the 160,000km

> 750ms ping would not be unusual for Satellite Internet.
< 30ms ping for terrestrial Internet
< 1ms ping for a LAN.

A fresh 1st ping to a previously unknown destination involves
DNS access. A 90,000 round trip minimum
Possibly ARP, Another 90,000 round trip
Then the actual Ping..
So first Ping can be a LOT slower.

Imagine a web page with images loaded from 10 different servers... N o matter how fast the connection is (say even 10Mbps) you have a big delay doing DNS and initial access for each of those links before the page loads.

There are tricks to speed it all up of course. But ye canne break the laws of physics Jim.

aFlabbyPanda

watty wrote:

In fact if you use 4 hrs a day, a basic two way satellite is cheaper and better than Dialup + download only satellite, if you cancel the phone line.

Real broadband solutions give 1000times 5MByte per month at that price.

how do you make out that its cheaper? have you seen the cost of 2way sat installations? (and the cost 6/7 years ago was crazy) You can put a 1 way sat solution together for around 100-150€ plus subscription. And with plenty of flatrate dialup packages available you can control that cost too. While you wont be able to upload or game on it you will be able to do everything else.

but I agree there is no comparison between any sat solution and either wireless or cabled broadband.

I work for an IT company and a few customers have 2 way sat and its painfuly slow. Unworkable for remote access or administration.

philologos

Don't sky do ADSL in the UK it isnt satellite...

watty

BrianjG wrote:

how do you make out that its cheaper? have you seen the cost of 2way sat installations? (and the cost 6/7 years ago was crazy) You can put a 1 way sat solution together for around 100-150€ plus subscription. And with plenty of flatrate dialup packages available you can control that cost too. While you wont be able to upload or game on it you will be able to do everything else.

but I agree there is no comparison between any sat solution and either wireless or cabled broadband.

I work for an IT company and a few customers have 2 way sat and its painfuly slow. Unworkable for remote access or administration.

There is no true flat rate diaup in Ireland. i.e. unlimited time at one price = flatrate.

€90 per month is cheapest two way sat.

SES Astra (not here sadly yet) has released a two way sat system which is €250 for initial HW.

About 5 years ago the install cost was €10,000 for 2 way sat. It is cheaper now.

I think O2 or Vodaphone 3G data is a better bet than oneway sat, which is only a download accerator and often if the provider oversells, is not even that. I've tested some excellent two way sat systems. However it is for people who can get noting else. 2 ch ISDN makes more sense than one way sat. Due to error rate and real speed etc 128K ISDN is nearly 4 times faster in real terms than good dialup and can be up to 8 times better (low or zero error rate/packet loss).

And yes Sky only sell dsl based broadband in UK.

aFlabbyPanda

watty wrote:

€90 per month is cheapest two way sat.

and how much for the gear? its far more then what most people (even those with a keen web interest) would be willing to spend.

And as for 2 ch ISDN. The cost factor again makes it uncompetitive.

anyway this if going OT, It would be great if they went down the sat route but they will as said already just resell someone elses product.

watty

It would be terrible if they went down the Sat route. Anyway BskyB/Murdoch/newscorp/NDS may sometimes be ruthless, but have never shown any evidence of stupidity. They won't launch here untill they can (a) Make a profit in long run (they don't mind short term loss it there is definate monopoly & profit in longer term) and (b) Offer BB to at least 75% of customers.

This means they need LLU that works and is cheaper than today and Wireless. It probabily means buying one or two or three Irish ISPs. Starting from "scratch" would be too slow.

Magnet, BT and eircom are unlikely aquisitions. (cost, unwillingness to sell etc, unless BT is so fed up with lack of regulation of eircom they want out of Irish market).

02, Vodaphone and 3 are unlikely, though 3G is a partnership option using a 3G based router/WiFi.

Clearwire, Permanet etc are too small.

They most likely will do nothing in short term. It BT want out of Irish market they would be a good buy for Sky (old eSat, ironically setup for erish Satellite TV )

watty

BrianjG wrote:

and how much for the gear? its far more then what most people (even those with a keen web interest) would be willing to spend.

And as for 2 ch ISDN. The cost factor again makes it uncompetitive.

anyway this if going OT, It would be great if they went down the sat route but they will as said already just resell someone elses product.

If there was a real Flatrate product, esp reduced if you line fails DSL ISDN should be cheap. It should be cheaper per month than DSL if you can't get it. This is true in many countries. Upload and Download 128K (to 200K compressed) with no packet loss and sub 25ms pings and no contention is possible. Better than many users Ripwave and GPRS.

If you are interested in two way sat, contact all the vendors and see what deals they are offering this week.

A well known ISP with €99 per month sub installs for €299 and equipment €689.

It isn't cheap, but if it is the only option, it does cost less than a good PC. I was spending €120 a month on dialup.

(edit: There might be VAT extra on that...)