Satellite Internet,..Is it worth it??

[Up-the-Creek]

Right now I am stuck with dial-up internet service,..which I am not real happy with. I have been looking at the satellite internet providers like Wild Blue and Hughs Net,...my question is does anyone here have one of these service providers and if they do,..well,..is it worth it???

 

[freemotion]

My dad had it and it had its challenges, as all internet providers do....but it was all he had besides dial-up, which rendered the phone useless and was slow and meant no video usage, not much at all. With the satellite dish, he could do so much more, even downloaded a movie now and then (only in the wee hours was it possible, though).

When I visited, though, it seemed so slow because I have cable internet. There are different levels of satellite service, and he had the basic service.

I bet lwheeler would know, you might pm her.

 

[Up-the-Creek]

Thanks Free,..just curious of others experiences with it. I have a thread going on over at BYC too,...getting some responses over it,..

 

[Blackbird]

Wildblue is worse for us in many ways than DialUp ever was. I wouldn't recommend them from our experience, but others have better reports on them.

 

[patandchickens]

I dunno, I feel like dialup is an *advantage* in most ways, because it prevents me (and my husband, who'd be REAL bad about it otherwise) from doing all sorts of vastly time-wasting things involving Youtube, movie downloads, etc etc etc. (e.t.a - our dialup is on a second phone line we had installed, so it does not tie up the regular phone line)



OTOH if your dialup sucks -- and ours kinda does, the connection is very unreliable and crash-y on windy days, for some mysterious reason -- I can certainly understand just wanting better RELIABILITY!

We've kinda investigated it, at my husband's insistance... it seems to be very important to read allllllll the fine print because there can be some real big expensive loopholes written into it.

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[Shiloh Acres]

I put it off for a while cuz I'd heard bad things, but it is all that's available here (as far as dialup the neighbors say the phones are out half the time and always out if it rains).

Maybe I got lucky. Their tower is near and I have a straight line of sight. Installation was free with no contract, though I had to have my own equipment (which I already did).

I don't really download files, but I can load pics FAST. YouTube I usually have to pause for a minute so it loads far enough not to be jerky, then it will play fine. I use it to stream Netflix to a Roku a lot. SOMEtimes the connection keeps reloading and I can't watch. It used to be common from about 4pm till 10pm, but now it probably doesn't happen once in three weeks. (I mean that it's so bad you just can't watch at all ... It WILL pause to reload on average once every couple hours of watching, but it's not bad). I have no issues at all with regular web browsing. My bill is about $30 a month. I think I have the slowest or second-slowest option. The provider is Wi-Five.

I DO lose Internet in the wind, but that's because a squirrel chewed the cable.

It does tend to go out for 1-2 hours in a bad storm, which has been
once or twice a month usually.

Just thought I'd let you know. I needed it for business, so I REALLY needed to get Internet. I had just put it off cuz others said I wouldn't be able to get video and it would be very unreliable. That may often bethe case with satellite -- I dunno, but I've been very happy with mine. Unfortunately, you probably won't know till you try it. Do you have any neighbors who would get the same service you could ask?

 

[Up-the-Creek]

I dunno, I feel like dialup is an *advantage* in most ways, because it prevents me (and my husband, who'd be REAL bad about it otherwise) from doing all sorts of vastly time-wasting things involving Youtube, movie downloads, etc etc etc. (e.t.a - our dialup is on a second phone line we had installed, so it does not tie up the regular phone line)

This is so true,...I would probably be one of those wasting a lot of time if I could,. It is bad enough now. Very good point Pat,..thank you for pointing that out.

As far as asking someone who has it,..around here you are lucky to find someone who owns a computer,. They aren't real popular in our area for some reason,...oh wait,..here in WV we are still in the dark ages with our technology,.. I have tried to find someone with no luck. We do have a local co. that installs them,..I may call them and be nosey,..or I just may forget the whole thing. My dial-up is reliable, but just SLOW. :/

 

[Shiloh Acres]

When I had dial-up, I used to keep a book or a craft project handy and just do that while I waited for a page to load cuz I couldn't stand the thought of wasting so much time just waiting. It generally took longer cuz I'd get to a stopping place before I got back to the computer but at least I'd accomplish something else at the same time.

Just can't stand waiting sooooo loooonnnggg doing nothing but watching a page load.

I definitely know what you mean.

Having no others on the service might mean it's faster for you? I think neighbors borrow some of my bandwidth at times but I can't secure my current equipment. Might mean high costs and low priority given to an area with few subscribers too though?

Eta: maybe I just said something very foolish -- I dunno if "bandwidth" even applies to satellite. I was guessing it does since peak times used to hang up streaming video. Then again maybe it's due to angles and the earth's rotation. This is NOT my area ofexpeetise, LOL. Just offering experiences is all.

 

[Buster]

I have had HughesNet for over two years now. It's only problem is my daughter, who uses up all my bandwidth allowance in about 2 hours in the morning so the rest of the day it is pretty slow. But, much faster than dialup.

But on its best day (like when my daughter isn't here), it is nowhere near even DSL. But if it's all you got...

I'm actually contemplating getting my daughter her own HughesNet dish.

 

[miss_thenorth]

i realize I am in Canada, but maybe they have a similar service in the states. What we have is called Bell Wimax. It runs off the cell phone towers, and is 9 times faster than dialup. We can stream videos, sometimes the lines get congested and you have to keep refreshing, but usually it works okay. And it is not a bad price compared with other services. You can look up Bell Wimax, then look for something similar in the states. See if it might be an option for you. although we get alot of american tv, i am not familiar with any service like this over there.