Satellite

[Diaonic]

I'm looking at buying a house in a very rural area. It's just outside the reach of comcast / verizon so I can't get broadband.

Has Satellite speeds gotton any better? I've never actually used it but heard horror stories.

Is there anyway to motivate the cable company to do the install besides giving them a huge amount of cash.

They said "we would need between $25k - 50k" Which is crap. The CO is like a mile down the road.

 

[BadRobot]

Haven't seen a good sat connection yet. Also if you have to connect to secure websites they drop the connection a lot too.

I have not looked into speeds/price though of getting internet through a cell phone provider ex. sprint for a laptop maybe...

 

[jlazzaro]

i have coworkers with satellite and most are switching to mobile broadband with an EVDO router. without the highest, most expensive business package they were seeing less than dial-up speeds. this was with both HughesNet and WildBlue...

not to mention the $500+ in setup equip...

 

[JDMnAR1]

I am in the same boat as you - neither cable or DSL are available at my house. I am caught in the netherworld between three different cable providers, none of which feel there is enough market potential to expand to my area, and the telcos are not rushing to expand their offerings either. From my somewhat limited experience, if you need a reliable connection, satellite is not the way to go. While I found speeds to be bearable, albeit not worthy of the arm and leg they charge you, there was too much inconsistency in service availability. I have done some testing with wireless aircards and been pleasantly surprised. While it doesn't approach anything to write home about, connection speeds are significantly faster than both dial-up and satellite, and it doesn't seem to be as spotty in terms of uptime.

 

[nweaver]

Look for a wireless ISP (not CELL provided, but 802.11 stuff). We live in a rural area, and I found someone providing service. I get 1.6 Mb/s pretty reliably, and that's about $50 a month. Very little downtime (of course, I help manage the system in exchange for free access, so I'm biased) and very reliable. They have sprung up all over, and usually offer a good price for good service. Much better then Satellite or EVDO imho.

 

[Diaonic]

I think i'm going to call comcast and see if they will do a site survey. What gets me, the comcast CO is less than a mile down the road and there are atleast 4 or 5 houses between that distance. It just blows my mind to have all that equipment there and not bother to finish the area.

And as far as price goes, 25k is just way to much. Even if it was like $2500 I would pay that.

It's sad to think i'm considering not buying this great house because I can't get broadband. :frown: