Sattelite Internet???

[zelbinion]

Does anyone currently use Directway or similar service?
If so, whats your experience with it. Is it worth the price for the hardware. My only other option is dial up and I'm about to short circuit with that

Zel

[Antrobus]

I'm curious about it too. I've heard the equipment is very expensive. I have direcTV, but woiuld have to get a new dish to get the internet. I was qouted a price of about $800, which probably means over $1,000.

But I'm getting very tired of dial up and Verizon is dragging their a$$ about wiring the road I live on.

[Lord Loser]

I use a satelite ISP, specifically starband. I live in a remote location and my old dial up was no more than an email service. It took me so long to download anything that I'd usually get dumped by their server as taking up too much of their time. So I stepped up to the plate and did it.

The monthly fees are about double that of land based ISPs and you do have to come up with a substantial amount up front. As far as speed goes, it seems lightning fast compared to the old dial up, but it's a little bit slower than DSL on download speeds. Upload speeds are faster than dial up, but much slower than download speeds.

Here a couple months back, Starband lost communication with their satelite, and I was frelled for about a week. They were able to re-establish communication with it, but it looked like they were going to have to write the satellite off. Had that happened, I would have been screwed and would have had to subscribe to another service, until they were able to build and launch another to take its place.

Now for the downside. If you live in an area that is frequently overcast with heavy cloud cover, or lots of rain/snow, it will block your signal and you will be sol. Also the cost is a major drawback.

So I guess in short, I would advise you to get a DSL, or Cable, if it is at all possible, because of the reliability and cost factors. The second word of advice is do your homework to decide if you want Directway (Direct TV), or Starband (Dish Network) or some other provider that I'm not aware of. DirectTV is supposedly launching 3 or 4 new satellites for High Definition TV this year, so they might have the better reliability factor, should one of their satellites fail for some reason (can't send the local repairman to fix those).

All in all, I've been quite pleased with what I've got, but for me, it was the only game in town.

[trinamick]

We had Starband at our office, and it sucked hardcore. It so rarely worked, that we had paid for six months of service, and had access about 8 days out of that. We switched to wireless, which is awesome, for about the same price.