There's a StarBand waiting in the sky ...
November 4, 2005 11:24 AM   Subscribe

Which is the best satellite internet service?

A friend in rural Ohio (Hocking Hills) has the choice of DirecWay, StarBand or WildBlue.

Things to take into consideration:

- reliability, especially in rainy weather;
- what 'lag' is there for gamers?
- which has the best Fair Usage Policy?
- whose customer service is best?

Anything else he should know?
posted by essexjan to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)
 
Lag is approximately a second, which means gaming is basically impossible. The speed of light is a harsh mistress.
posted by kindall at 11:35 AM on November 4, 2005


If he's a gamer, he would honestly be better served with dial-up connection.
posted by selfnoise at 11:38 AM on November 4, 2005


Response by poster: He's not a gamer but has two sons who are - one of whom has access to a T1 line at school and the other has cable access when he's at his mom's. So the gaming issue wouldn't necessarily be a dealbreaker.
posted by essexjan at 11:40 AM on November 4, 2005


Find out if any of them have fair access policies. Some users have been hit hard by these and your friend could find himself basically without access for weeks in some cases.

For example, DirecPC or whatever it was called had a FAP (search deja for that term!) that slowed you down slower than modem speeds if you used more than about 100 MB a day. Unlimited, yes. Usable? Not really.
posted by shepd at 1:32 PM on November 4, 2005


Avoid Starband! See the prior thread for why.
posted by Malor at 3:02 PM on November 4, 2005


Direcway has a couple of tiers for their usage. Here is a link to an explanation of dway's FAP. The policy is explained there as a 169 MB bucket that constantly refills at a rate of 47 kbps no matter how fast you empty the bucket o' bandwidth. Direcway has a couple of higher priced tiers with bigger buckets available.

DSLreports has a satellite forum for each of the three satellite internet companies. The dway forum is pretty active, I can't speak for the other two. There is a forum for starband that is fairly active, but you have to pay to join.

My experience has only been with direcway and has been a decent one. The FAP is tolerable to me. I experience no issues with browsing, email, and a fair amount of podcast downloading. Upload speeds aren't great, but they have released a "new and improved" modem for greater upload speeds. During heavy rainstorms I lose connection. Typically it doesn't last too long and doesn't happen too often. I have had very little experience with tech support. I have read from one of the forums above that typically experience with said tech support is not pleasant. It is my understanding that a good install will prevent most tech support issues.
posted by busboy789 at 3:07 PM on November 4, 2005


Starband has been good for me the past three years. Much better than dialup; reliable service and moderately good phone support. (More in other thread.)
posted by anadem at 3:55 PM on November 4, 2005


My sister uses DirecWay and seems to be happy with it. Gaming is overrated.

WildBlue is sexxxier. I used to work for the company that's providing the home receiver gear.

StarBand is the anti-christ.
posted by intermod at 7:54 PM on November 4, 2005


I use DirecWay, and wish every day I had any other alternative available.

Weather is only an issue in the heaviest snow and rain -- say three or four times a year. The 100MB cap seems to be a pretty soft barrier -- if you hit the limit it slows down for a while; an hour or so later it's back to normal. For normal web/email/etc use it's perfectly fine. Upload speeds: new and improved, my ass. 5kps, tops. The router has a habit of crashing randomly and needing to be rebooted, three or four times a day. The only way to reboot it is to physically unplug the box from the wall, wait a few seconds, and plug it back in. This is about as irritating as you'd expect. Tech support is offshore, and can sometimes have a pretty high language barrier. (Not always, though.) ssh (or anything else where you're working directly on a remote machine) is painfully slow.

Oddly enough, World of Warcraft is perfectly playable even with the 1 second lag. I haven't tried any other networked games, so don't know if that would be the case generally.
posted by ook at 1:33 AM on November 5, 2005


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