Dial-Up Vs Satellite

I found out we can't get DSL out where I live yet, we are 40,000 feet away from a tower & have to be 15,000 ft. So now it's between sticking with dial-up & just get another phone line or 2 or go ahead with satellite which I was reading a lot of complaints about. Is satellite worth the money putting into it? I finally got my new laptop & rarely use it yet b/c for some reason dial-up sucks on it, the pages are worse loading on it than my desk top & the laptop is a much better pc. Which satellite company would you recommend? Wild Blue or Hughes?
Thanks
Marlene

 

I would go with dial-up, or drive to a local WiFi hot spot.

 

Where do you live? I just hooked my dad up with a local wireless ISP in Eastern Washington, and I know national players like Clearwire are popping up in rural areas around the country. His service is 1mbps both down and up for $50 a month.

I'd been looking for quite some time and never came across this service until a few weeks ago (which has apparently been operating in his area for about a year) so it might be worthwhile doing some digging to see if there is something like this in your area.

 

I've never been able to get the Clearwire website to return anything other than there was a problem with your session when I try to get information from them.

 

Isn't Satellite internet expensive?

 

Hmm...website has always seemed to work fine for me using FF on both PC and Mac.. According to their coverage map it looks like their coverage areas are clustered on the west coast and in Texas for the most part, with a few places popping up along the east coast and in the midwest. The coverage map has expanded quite a bit since the last time I checked it out in March or April, so if you're not covered now I'd suggest to keep checking back.

 

The website seems to work now. Still more money than DSL for me, though.

 

I am curious about satellite service too. With as much as my dish goes out I would like to know if I am going to have the same issues with satellite internet too. I just am not sure that spending that much money a month is worth it. On the upside the price has really come down in the last few years (still way more expensive than regular high speed). It kinda sucks having to drive 20 minutes to get to the closest wifi spot to do updates and downloads.

 

have you looked to see if you can get cable internet where you live like comcast?

 

Satellite is $80/mo for 700/128Kbps up/down.
Pretty pricey, but it would work on a mountain top.

Check into cable.

 

That's as good as it gets here for me with Verizon DSL.

 

I would LOVE cable internet but the end of the line for cable by me is about 10 miles down the road I guess I need to move closer to town...

 

Maybe someone can answer this- why can DSL only travel so far on a phone line?

 

The signal begins to degrade over longer distances.

 

I would think because of signal strength and deterioration as it travel along the line, the further it goes the more noise/interference can be pickup.
ZaZ beat me to it.

 

Sat internet is generally pretty bad, you can get some bandwidth but the latency can be killer.

Not only are you dealing with the usual internet latency, but with geosync orbit service (which is what all the end-user types are afaik) you have at least another 250-300ms put on top just for round trip delay.

What I would look at, is how is your cellphone reception? If its decent, check into whether or not cell broadband is available in your area.

Sprint Verizon and ATT all have rollouts right now, although some of them have some issues with data caps (dumbest idea ever) and whatnot. I've used sprint in many spots in my area (greater DC/Balt) and its bandwidth easily beats many DSL lines, esp the cheapo ones that are usually 1.5 or 768. The latency isn't half bad either, it varies a bit but its never as bad as dialup. (I don't notice it in WoW for example)

The WWAN network cards range from almost free to over $200 depending on what you get and service contracts etc, but if you get a usb dongle or some PC cards, you can swap it back and forth between a laptop, desktop and even some combo access point routers. (linksys and kyocera both have models)

 

I use my Razr2 as my modem in my area and connect at about 280kb/s compared to my dial up which was 24kb/s! My carrier is Alltel unlimited access is $25/month. Verizon wireless also has this but here it is $60/month so hence the switch to Alltel.Works awesome! it even seems faster than 10X! The most important thing is getting a newerish phone that can pick-up EVDO or just EV signal. It is displayed as such on the display that is the high speed data connection as I understand it.