Tiscali SAT Prices!

bkehoe

Tiscali have announced prices for their 2 way service in Italy, but like BT, you won't be able to move it very far from the installed location before the HTTP accelleration software stops working.

They seem to have some kind of special offer on; http://satellite.tiscali.it/tiscalisat.html

Brendan

dahamsta

Hi Brendan,

Spent a little time with babelfish and xe.net. I can't remember the BEAM pricing - is this more expensive? It seems to be...

DISCOUNTED PRICES EXCLUDING VAT (Valid until 31/12)

Installation: €340/£267.77
Equipment: €950/£748.19
Monthly: FREE

DICOUNTED PRICES INCLUDING VAT (Valid until 31/12)

Installation: €408/£321.33
Equipment: €1140/£897.82
Monthly: FREE

NORMAL PRICES EXCLUDING VAT*

Installation: €420/£330.77
Equipment: €1200/£945.08
Monthly: €80/£63.01

NORMAL PRICES INCLUDING VAT*

Installation: €504/£396.93
Equipment: €1440/£1134.09
Monthly: €96/£75.61

SERVICE INCLUDES

Always-on Internet access
400kbps upstream / 150kpbs upstream
Static IP address
100MB diskspace
20 10MB email accounts (?)
Netfax (Internet faxing)

adam

* I'm presuming that the "normal" prices quoted are ex-VAT.

bkehoe

Equipment is more expensive, but monthly fees are approx half of what Beam was.

Brendan

dahamsta

Equipment is more expensive, but monthly fees are approx half of what Beam was.

Nuvver one for ya Brendan: Does the equipment really cost that much?

adam

chernobyl

Expect to pay @ least 2000 Euros for the equipment without being subsidised and the faster you want the return channel....up up up.

ando

Originally posted by bkehoe
HTTP accelleration

Is that something that lets you have low latency ? hence be able to play online games with satellite ?

phaxx

Nah, I don't think you'll ever be able to play online games with a satellite connection - think about it, the packets have to go from your computer all the way up to a satellite in orbit, then back down, and THEN over the net...

chernobyl

Originally posted by phaxx
Nah, I don't think you'll ever be able to play online games with a satellite connection -

true with geostationary but if billy goat gets his constillation of LO ones going there is hope for us country lads.

Urban Weigl

Just found out from a friend that in Germany, they're currently offering it at a special rate there as well.

You basically get it installed free for 3 months (you have to pay an installer 600 DM though I think).

If after this you decide to keep it, you have to pay 1000 DM for the equipment, and 105 DM/month subscription.

This works out at a total of 640 punts "set up", and 42 punts per month. Prices are inclusive of VAT (I don't understand why prices are often quoted excluding VAT in the UK and Ireland).

These prices make me think that Esat should be able to offer the service for £500 installation, and then £50 per month here (including VAT).

bkehoe

Esat doesn't have any connections to Tiscali afaik, and I beleive that Tiscali have said that they won't be selling it here.

The Netgain software on the Gilat platform basically makes browsing much faster. When you request a website, the normal way is that your browser gets some of the site, then sees it has to get an image, and sends another request for the image, and so on until the site is loaded. With netgain, when you request a site, all the site is downloaded to the hub, and then sent to you in one go. This is much faster for most sites, as the hub will have a very fast low latency connection.

Without Netgain, it WILL work, but browsing and stuff will only work out at around 56k speeds, but you should still be able to download files and stuff. FTP/IRC/ICQ/P2P stuff, e.t.c. will work, possibly not as fast, as the Hub-VSAT still work best when each knows 'when' the other is, i.e. if the distance changes too much, the hub may think that the vsat station didn't get the data, and sends it again.

People in Canada sometimes do what some of us are considering; they get a US relative to order the Starband system, and then bring it over the border, usually no more than 20miles, and netgain still works fine.

Here is a possible solution; get a relative in UK/NI to order the Tiscali, or the BT system, and then get the installer to install it in your own house, and set up the system to work from your house. Tiscali would never know as long as the person in the UK payed the bills, but you'd probably have to pay the installer a ton of cash to come down here and install it, but it'd work, and I may do this myself.

Brendan