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so my phone has been out twice again today. more off than on since moving to the new house.
anyone here using a satellite connection for internet and/or phone.
would really like to tell qwest to go hump themselves.
we do not have access to cable at 8700 ft, so satellite is the only other option.
Satellite is a bad idea in a state that can see so many days of overcast and/or heavy precipitation
my satellite tv service has not had on day out of service in nearly 8 years, rain snow sleet nothing seems to bother it. other than the time it was hit by lightning.
No way in hell I'm getting on a satellite!!! Ever heard of Laika?!?!?!
For the love of God, don't do it. Especially don't do WildBlue.Quote:
Originally Posted by rockhound
I had it for 5 or 6 years because, like you, I live in Bailey and it was either dialup, Wispertel (now SkyBeam) or satellite.
I used Wispertel for a few years and they totally sucked. Very fast, not very reliable and customer service was the worst I've ever seen.
So, I got WildBlue. Had it for years only because that was the only choice. Dialup would've been better and cheaper. I only thought Wispertel's customer service was the worst ever. Nope...it's definitely a title reserved for WildBlue. And keep in mind their "Fair Access Policy" will eventually bite you in the ass if you do much downloading at all. I'd rate reliability about a 3 on 10-scale. Upload speeds are glacially slow.
I now have Qwest DSL and I can tell you, even though it's Qwest, it's better than satellite.
To be fair, I've never used HughesNet but their FAP is even worse than Wildblue and it's more expensive. I've heard from people that have it that it totally sucks. Same issues as WildBlue. Horribly over-subscribed so bandwidth is ALWAYS an issue.
Just to be honest, I'm also a certified WildBlue installer and we (the install techs) go out of our way to talk people out of getting WildBlue if they have ANY other option for internet service.
You'll be sorry if you get satellite internet. At least in the form in which it exists now. WB is supposed to be launching another sat this fall to take some of the subscriber load off the current sat. We'll see if it helps.
Since you have Qwest you obviously have DSL. Call EvCoHS...they're a DSL company out of Evergreen (they lease lines from QWEST), everyone raves about their customer service and always gives them high marks.
ETA: Weather is almost never an issue with the sat service...especially just clouds. Lightning, maybe. But not clouds. Now you may have to knock snow off the dish once in a while but only if it really piles up.
The Soviet dog that went into space?Quote:
Originally Posted by TheInternet
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I had satellite for a couple years when I was living/working at a camp in a valley by Mt. Evans. Slow, slower with bad weather (snow and rain bad, not cold and cloudy bad), but it works. Given a choice I wouldn't want it again but its better than nothing.
I have been hearing all the stories about satellite internet. honestly the service with qwest was much better at the old house.
this house has been a nightmare. i bet I have spent 15 hours on the phone with qwest in the last two months.
we had just a little piss ant storm roll through about two hours ago and my phones and internet went out again. THIRD TIME TODAY.
We had the same problem when we moved into our house about 10 years ago. I bitched and bitched because they kept telling me it was the wiring inside the house. I told them it was not the house wiring. They finally sent a tech out to test the house wiring and he said it wasn't the house. It was the wire coming into the house.Quote:
Originally Posted by rockhound
I kept bitching and they finally ran a brand new line from the house to wherever it goes. It took them 2 1/2 days but it's worked great ever since.
I have Qwest DSL and have a brief period at about 4:11 pm every day when I lose service for about 3 - 5 minutes. Weird.
Quote:
Originally Posted by HBARleatherneck
??? how is their customer service? heard bad things.
what kind of speeds are you getting?
Skybeam is high-frequency radio from a broadcast tower to an antenna on your home. It is highly line-of-sight dependent...even more than satellite.Quote:
Originally Posted by HBARleatherneck
It must've improved since I had WisperTel several years ago.
Then again, most people have reception from more than one tower. I could only get line-of-sight to the Mt Bailey tower and it was constantly having an issue of one sort or another. My service was down a lot.
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We have had Wildblue for a few years now and are pretty happy with it.
It does go belly up when there is a very heavy rain storm. When we get a heavy wet sticking snow, we do have to go out and clean off the dish. Other than that, we are satisfied.
Wildblue sure beats the hell out of the dial up (for us down here in the boon docks).
If you can get the line-of-sight internet, it can be worth it. My parents have it and it works great, with one caveat. Mount the dish/antenna to something very solid. It always went out at my parents' house until my dad finally put in a post set in concrete, and since then they almost never have an internet outage.
Also, if you get it set up in the fall/winter, remember the summer foliage that might block the view, that was another one of their initial problems.
I'm sure it's really dependent on the company, and I don't think you'd be using it for online gaming or anything, but it definitely beats dial up and my parents can chat/Skype/Netflix on it.
The only option I have, Wildblue. All my neighbors use line of site; they have million dollar views. I'm tucked in the trees. Unless I want to erect a tower, satellite is my only option. I pay for the faster service, $80 for 1.5mbps. Looking forward to the new satellite coming on line in Oct., thanks to my tax dollars. I do have a lot of short outages, but it's my only option. Never needed to much customer service, can't comment.
I live in an area that does not have cable or dsl. I ended up having to go with HughesNet as there was no other option. I would strangle to get DSL so suck it up...
We had Skybeam and loved it. Customer service was just fine. Technical issues caused us to have to switch to another provider. We're with DirectLink now and it works perfectly.
Like others have said, you need line-of-sight to their tower. If you think you might have it, call both companies to pay you a visit.
Thanks for the info, the new house does not have cell service either so I am relying on my internet to supply my cell service which I use to run my business, these long four and five days waiting for service from qwest has to stop. And Carl they did run a new line last month due to a lightning strike. Service still sucks. We have been down 14 of the last 35 days.
Just to let you know, you will not be able to run any type of VOIP or reliable communications through a satellite connection. Tried to run Vonage through mine and it was an "EPIC Failure". Way too much lag...
If you plan on running your cell calls through it, you will need to go with a local Line-of-sight provider or maybe upgrade to a quest business plan with a reliability plan (forgot the term...).
Good luck!
Satellite internet is pretty terrible. I will say though that WildBlue is about to launch a new bird though with some new technology, so that may help
so with the fair access stuff what constitutes a download or upload. if you are just cruising the net and post in places like here would that count toward your "limits"?
or are they actually counting what you download? i would assume my email would count.
I have a 400MB limit a day but they have a window (after 11p til 4a) that is not metered.Quote:
Originally Posted by rockhound
thanks for that i saw that most do have free time.
how often do you hit that limit and under what kind of use?
They issue you 1 "get out of jail free" token a month. I have used several of these. I have also had to pay an extra $10 to get uncapped when I was not paying attention to a game download on my PS3 did not get finished in the "window".Quote:
Originally Posted by rockhound
I do not watch any online TV. Mostly youtube gun or prepping related clips. Just have to watch the meter and slow down when near the limit until the timer restarts. Bad thing is, if you go over the limit, they put a cap on it for 24hrs from the time your exceeded, not until your daily timer rolls over.
I do not recommend satellite internet to anyone (unless there is no other option) I end up staying online 4 times as much as I did when I lived in an area that had high speed internet. It sucks...