Posted on 05/28/2005 11:58:37 PM PDT by HAL9000
Six years in the making and at a cost of nearly $500 million, a satellite Internet service for rural America now has an official launch date.Denver-based WildBlue Communications announced plans Thursday to roll out its high-speed Internet service on June 2, with Strasburg as the company's first market.
A Strasburg couple with two teenage sons, a Dell computer and 26-inch satellite dish has signed on as WildBlue's first subscriber.
Theresa Tuttle says it's "simply awesome" that her family will soon be able to surf the information highway as quickly as any city slicker with a DSL line. Husband Dave works for the Adams County Highway Department, but she runs a family portrait and photography business out of their home.
"I've lived here all my life," she said. "We have tumbleweeds and dirt, no Kmart or King Soopers, and I have no complaints as far as that goes. But with the digital world and where we're headed, getting on the Internet just isn't fast enough."
Cable service isn't an option for the Tuttles, whose nearest neighbor in the community of 2,400 is two miles away. The broadband movement also has sidestepped their local phone company, forcing the Tuttles to make do in cyberspace with a slow-moving, standard dial-up.
WildBlue says its $50-a-month service will offer homes and small businesses an Internet connection via satellite that is 30 times faster than standard dial-up.
The company, backed by John Malone's Liberty Media, is targeting a national rural market that includes 25 million to 30 million homes and small businesses. In Colorado alone, WildBlue estimates 1.5 million homes and businesses don't have access to DSL or cable.
WildBlue Chief Executive Tom Moore said Strasburg, roughly 30 miles east of Denver, is representative of the nation's rural communities in search of a viable, affordable broadband Internet model. Homes and neighborhoods are spread far apart, ruling out the arrival of broadband cable and DSL in the foreseeable future.
The town's Main Street straddles the border of Adams and Arapahoe counties. Wheat fields surround family-owned farms and a growing number of tiny subdivisions.
"We're after those 25 million homes that can't get anything," Moore said. "If it wasn't for a company like WildBlue, families like the Tuttles would be on dial-up for a long time to come."
According to one research group - the Center for the Study of Rural America - only 5 percent of communities with fewer than 10,000 residents have broadband access.
EchoStar Communications, the Douglas County satellite-TV provider, is testing Internet services, and larger rival DirecTV has a small Internet-by-satellite program. Yet as of last year, satellite accounted for less than 2 percent of all high-speed connections in the country.
WildBlue promotes itself as the only company founded specifically for satellite Internet. Its state-of-the-art satellite launched last summer is leased from Canada-based Telesat, another large WildBlue shareholder.
Another major shareholder, National Rural Telecom Co-op, has been contracted to market the service. In addition to WildBlue's basic $50-a-month service fee, the NRTC will charge subscribers a one-time $300 fee to cover installation and equipment.
Moore said he doesn't expect WildBlue's national rollout in June and July will require a bigger work force than the company's current 130 employees. The number of subscribers the company hopes to sign up in its first year is confidential.
"How long it takes us to get there, we don't spend a lot of time talking about. But we think the potential market is huge," he said.
Download speed will dwarf dialup but upload speed will still suck.
Way Out There On The Farm PING
I had satelite internet for about 2 years. After I got cable, I'll never go back.
(One that the Wife got right -SHE turned me on to cable)
martin_fierro wrote:
Way Out There On The Farm PING
Ya'all can trade 'ousins an the oinkers online now, ya hear?
/sarc
Being as I helped engineer the Starband sat service in 2000, and it was 50 percent owned by Echostar, I'd have to say this is one monumentally sloppy reporter.
I'm checking it out right now. I may be in the market for this or DirecTV's similar service soon.
The poor kids will be ganked before they even log in.
"Mom can we get dialup back?"
Aren't there some electrical utility companies that are experimenting with broadband interenet connection over electrical transmission wires? I'd think that would have better uplink speeds. It's too bad Iridium charges so much for their services. Iridium would be an ideal way of getting broadband internet in remote areas.
awaiting a community near me
The article should have mentioned the horrible latency associated with satellite. This is no replacement for broadband.
what about DirecPC?
I was thinking the same thing.
This cant be cheaper than me stealing the neighbors WiFi connection.
On the web side, you can mitigate some of that by having the browser do lots of link preloading. On the other hand, gaming is right out, and VoIP is likely to be not much fun either. But if you're out in the sticks, what choice do you really have?
Believe it or not the latest generation of online games are still optimized for 56K dialup. If they could use the fast but high latency connection to download patches and just play using dialup their experience would not be all that different than cable modem users. Yes there is a difference but it's not as great for online gaming as it would be for downloading or streaming.
I'm puzzled about their claim...I've had Direcway for years...because I lived in Rural Oklahoma and paid a fortune in long distance calling...nor was I the only one in our small town that had it installed...(although now we can get DSL also)
So what is so "new" about satellite internets in the USA?
Wildblue claims their system will be better than competing satellite services. The satellite has a simple "bent-pipe" architecture with Ka-band spot beam technology. The Mentat TCP/IP stack is optimized for satellite data transmission.
Re: "one monumentally sloppy reporter."
Sloppy reporting is monumental.
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