At long last WildBlue is out yonder - Satellite Internet service for rural U.S. has first subscriber

Rocky Mountain News ^ | May 20, 2005 | John Accola

[agitator]

Download speed will dwarf dialup but upload speed will still suck.

[martin_fierro]

Way Out There On The Farm PING

[RandallFlagg]

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)

[1FASTGLOCK45]

martin_fierro wrote:
Way Out There On The Farm PING


Ya'all can trade 'ousins an the oinkers online now, ya hear?
/sarc

[angkor]

EchoStar Communications, the Douglas County satellite-TV provider, is testing Internet services ....WildBlue promotes itself as the only company founded specifically for satellite Internet.

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.

[monkapotamus]

http://www.wildblue.com/

I'm checking it out right now. I may be in the market for this or DirecTV's similar service soon.

[this_ol_patriot]

...with two teenage sons...

The poor kids will be ganked before they even log in.
"Mom can we get dialup back?"

[Paleo Conservative]

Download speed will dwarf dialup but upload speed will still suck.

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.

[RIGHT IN LAS VEGAS]

awaiting a community near me

[Melas]

The article should have mentioned the horrible latency associated with satellite. This is no replacement for broadband.

[BurbankKarl]

what about DirecPC?

[Melas]

I was thinking the same thing.

[Keith in Iowa]

>>>The article should have mentioned the horrible latency associated with satellite. This is no replacement for broadband.

Hope the kinds are not on-line gamers...that latency is a real killer for on-line games...

[BurbankKarl]

This cant be cheaper than me stealing the neighbors WiFi connection.

[general_re]

The article should have mentioned the horrible latency associated with satellite.

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?

[this_ol_patriot]

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.

[LadyDoc]

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?

[HAL9000]

The article should have mentioned the horrible latency associated with satellite. This is no replacement for broadband.

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.

[endthematrix]

Re: "one monumentally sloppy reporter."

Sloppy reporting is monumental.