Some advice please

Hunter Mahan

Right I have every option explored and the only way I can get broadband at home (very rural) is by:
Satellite or a Wireless Radio Broadband service.

For around the same price I can get up to 8mb unlimited with the Wireless option
or
Up to 10mb unlimited on Satellite (fair usage... works out about 3gb/hour up to 13gb per month before I'd be throttled down to 1.5mb which I don't really envisage happening)

I'll be totally clear on this, there are no other options open to me.

I am not a gamer or a huge downloader of films, I would just like a decent quickish service which will stream the odd film (1-2 per month max) without buffering for half an hour. I'd also like something which will not slow down to a snails pace during peak hours.

Which would you go for if these were the only options open to you, assuming both companies are reliable with good customer care?

wexie

Hmmm.....personally I have a line of site radio link. Which (finally) is working fine, some poor trees have gone to a better place to work out the line of site issues (they just got a little bit bigger :mad:) but it's usually fine.

Not too much experience with satellite but from what I gather it's prone to high latencies (even higher than the radio) and the setup tends to be more expensive. I believe some satellite connections are download only which would leave you to have to upload using whatever phone line you might have available? Have you checked this?

At the time I had to decide this was the deal breaker for me as I work from home sometimes and a decent down connection with 56K up wasnt really an option.

Satellite technology has progressed since then though I guess so maybe the setup costs and upload issues have been resolved?

Hunter Mahan

The satellite option claims to be 10 down and 2.1 up. TBH I don't fully understand latency, but was guessing this may only be a big problem for gamers?

The line of sight issue may actually only leave me with one option, but I will only find that out once a site visit is completed.
Does the speed of your radio service drop much or do you get fairly consistent speeds throughout the day?

wexie

No the radio is pretty stable, occasionally it seems to be slightly affected by the weather but it needs to get pretty bad before that happens.

The occasional time it's a bit slower but I think that's mostly due to contention rather than anything else.

Latency is more or less the time it takes a signal (packet) to travel from your computer to the other end (where you're communicating with). So obviously having to travel to a satellite in space and then back is going to take longer than a radio signal to somewhere a few miles away.

It's really an issue with anything that's time (response) sensitive so definitely gaming. Think of what you use the internet for, if there's nothing that relies on quick responses then satellite should be okay I guess.

Hunter Mahan

Thanks for taking the time to reply wexie, appreciated.

Big Lar

Hunter Mahan wrote: »

Up to 10mb unlimited on Satellite (fair usage... works out about 3gb/hour up to 13gb per month before I'd be throttled down to 1.5mb which I don't really envisage happening)

:eek: Steer well away from Satellite, A cap of 13gb per month is pure sad.

bealtine

Big Lar wrote: »

:eek: Steer well away from Satellite, A cap of 13gb per month is pure sad.

i second that stay away for satellite like the plague. Useless for most things broadband like VOIP(skype), games and many other things as it takes ages for the signal to travel up to the satellite and then down again.

If you can get Fixed Wireless (not mobile) then go for it