Is satellite internet good?

[Catherine1]

Has anyone used or know if satellite internet is any good?

Where I live our internet service is terrible and most of the time I have to use the internet connection from my phone but that uses up a lot of data and it gets expensive if I use too much. It also slows down afer a certain amount.

They have satellite internet in my area but I don't know how reliable it is. It seems like it's pretty fast though but I guess it doesn't matter how fast it is if it doesn't work well.

Someone told me that bad weather can interfere with satellite internet service but I am not sure if that's true or not.

I'd appreciate any kind of info you might have or know about it.

Thanks

 

[ProfMike]

Satellite internet connections can be spotty. There are many things that impact RF (Radio Frequency) communications, weather is just one of them. Trees, clouds atmospheric pressure, and the biggest being power levels. The power levels for the satellite links has to be relatively low for safety reasons and that is the main reason that they are impacted by so many different external forces.

The internet connection portion of it is also a relatively new technology so they are constantly looking for ways to improve the links and the algorithms used to increase the speed of the connections. There is always a trade off as they find ways to increase the speeds.

If that is all you have available it will definitely be less expensive than the LTE (Long Term Evolution) connections supplied by your cellular carriers. But do not be surprised is the speed is less.

From what I have been reading they are now offering DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) connections that claim to be 40 Mbps and 12 Mpbs (Mega Bytes per second), I would want to see that to believe that. The true throughput would be what I would be interested in. Burst speeds are one thing what can I really expect from a continuous connection. If you ask them up front, they may be honest with you. If you are getting a throughput of around 6 Mbps constant, that actually is not a bad connection for running your blog.

Just remember that your download speeds will be much faster than you upload speeds. Usually it is by a factor of 10. With satellite the factor may be a little higher than that.

You will also want to ask them about the QOS (Quality of Service). Find out what there up-time rate is. What may sound like a great rate 99% actually is not very good. Calculated at a year a 99% up-time rate would actually mean that in the course of a year you would actually lose 3 days, 15 hours, and 36 minutes of actual usage. For most systems that would be unacceptable.

Even at 99.9 % you are losing 8 hours and 45 minutes of up-time.

So there are many factors to think about. But if that is the only option, you really do not have much of a choice.

 

[KeralMTG]

A friend of mine in the US has it and he says it is very fast some times and very slow on other times. He live by the coast so I do not know if it matters or not.

If you can not find something better than maybe you have to get it but if there is a better one then you might try it first.

 

[Maria Marketing]

I have been thinking about this also since my service is not too good. Satellite is one of the options that I was thinking about and one that I was looking at has internet and telly both in one service it is a little expensive but for the extra cost it would be very nice.

 

[Dean]

Hi Catherine, This is one of those things that's probably going to require some research on both the company that you intend to use and the area where you are located.

As pointed out above by Mike, they can be spotty with their functioning, so it really doesn't matter how fast a connection is if it's not going to work properly when you need it. I would see if you can find any reviews on the company that are in your basic area and see if you can get some good information there. Maybe also see if the company that you intend to use has some kind of guarantee or a clause that you can get out of any contract (if required) if uptime/access times are not good.

I would do some searches online to see what kind of information you can find and just use your best judgement. I know that having a bad internet service is nerve racking at times, I have been there.

Hope this helps.

Cheers, Dean

 

[Catherine1]

Satellite internet connections can be spotty. There are many things that impact RF (Radio Frequency) communications, weather is just one of them. Trees, clouds atmospheric pressure, and the biggest being power levels. The power levels for the satellite links has to be relatively low for safety reasons and that is the main reason that they are impacted by so many different external forces.

The internet connection portion of it is also a relatively new technology so they are constantly looking for ways to improve the links and the algorithms used to increase the speed of the connections. There is always a trade off as they find ways to increase the speeds.

If that is all you have available it will definitely be less expensive than the LTE (Long Term Evolution) connections supplied by your cellular carriers. But do not be surprised is the speed is less.

From what I have been reading they are now offering DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) connections that claim to be 40 Mbps and 12 Mpbs (Mega Bytes per second), I would want to see that to believe that. The true throughput would be what I would be interested in. Burst speeds are one thing what can I really expect from a continuous connection. If you ask them up front, they may be honest with you. If you are getting a throughput of around 6 Mbps constant, that actually is not a bad connection for running your blog.

Just remember that your download speeds will be much faster than you upload speeds. Usually it is by a factor of 10. With satellite the factor may be a little higher than that.

You will also want to ask them about the QOS (Quality of Service). Find out what there up-time rate is. What may sound like a great rate 99% actually is not very good. Calculated at a year a 99% up-time rate would actually mean that in the course of a year you would actually lose 3 days, 15 hours, and 36 minutes of actual usage. For most systems that would be unacceptable.

Even at 99.9 % you are losing 8 hours and 45 minutes of up-time.

So there are many factors to think about. But if that is the only option, you really do not have much of a choice.

Thanks for your reply and the info. I have been worried about the reliability factor of this type of service. I have off and on been trying to find other alternatives but I am limited because of where I live. The last place I lived I had quite a few different options for service but here there is just not much choice. I think that I will just have to try it out if I can't find anything else and hopefully not get locked into a long term deal.

Thanks again for the help.

 

[Catherine1]

Thank you everyone for your input and information. I think I might just have to take a chance and hope it's not too bad. I am still looking for other options but I really have not had the time to look around enough.

I appreciate all the help.