Does anyone have experience with satellite internet?

[thebolt]

I am looking at a remote residence in an area which is not covered by cable internet. The home will be in Elbert County and I appreciate any alternative which would be less expensive and/or more efficient that satellite service for my location.

I have been reading different satellite company claims but would like to know if anyone has personal experience. I know this will be slower and more costly than cable but that option is off the table. I thought some here might have personal experiences with this same issue.

Thank you for sharing your wisdom.

[trlcavscout]

Are you looking at the local wireless internet providers or the actual satellite? I haven't seen anyone with the satellite service for a while, but they were getting like 2 mb downloads and .5 mb uploads because it used their phone line for upload, so generally DSL is a better option if you can get it. The wireless options are better and I know a few people out in the sticks getting like 5mb download speed but the service is kind of limited as to wear your located and most people report issues with bad weather.

Their May be other options I haven't seen, but if available the wireless services are generally better then the satellite. When I worked for U.S. Cable we serviced all of BFE north of Fort Collins and we swapped customers over from those services to cable, but it's been a few years since I was around it much.

[thebolt]

I've spoken to the Comcast and Verizon reps and each have said I am out of their coverage zone. I am not that knowledgeable about this but the Verizon rep explained the only way I can receive internet is going with the dish and receiving internet via a satellite dish. He offered Hughes as the company they refer their customers to.

[BushMasterBoy]

I think wireless is the way to go. I used to have it in the Colorado Springs area, but I can't remember the company name. It used a square shaped antenna and got its signal from the top of Cheyenne mtn.

I googled this...

http://kellin.net/residentialservice.html

[Honey Badger282.8]

11 years ago when I was in high school my family moved to Parker and we could only get dial up, DSL or DirecWay (now Hughes Net). We opted to go with DirecWay in a bundle with DirecTV. It was horrible, atrociously slow speeds, slower than dial-up, and terrible reliability. I don't know why but we would lose internet far more often than we did TV, it didn't take much for the internet to go. My parents swapped out with Qwest (now Century Link) DSL after about a year and we got about quadruple the speed which still wasn't fast by any means but at least it solved the reliability issue.

It very well may have improved in the last decade, I do know that my parents are chomping at the bit to ditch Century Link now though.

[jmg8550]

Satellite internet is garbage. We had DishNet/Hughes, slow, unreliable, and dish would slow down in our speed claiming we went over the data limit. Which never happened, I didn't stream movies on it. I now have Charter (Cheyenne), much faster. Atleast 30 meg.

[thebolt]

I anticipate needing this service in Elbert County and appreciate any suggestions or solutions to service to help in my area. I have not heard much good news about satellite service but don't know if I have alternatives being outside the "footprint" of Century Link and Comcast.

Thanks to all the replies thus far and hope someone has suggestions for my specific area.

[Bailey Guns]

If Skybeam is available it's a much better alternative. I've used sat internet for several years in Bailey and, honestly, I'd almost rather have dialup. I worked for Dish as an installer, too, and several install techs (including me because I used it at the time) would recommend against it to customers who'd already ordered. Yes...it's that bad.

Skybeam is a little better (I had it when it was still Wispertel) but you must have a direct line-of-sight to a tower. It's very finicky with weather, specifically thunderstorms with lots of lightning. But it's head and shoulders better than sat.

You won't be able to stream a lot of movies because of the "fair use" policy. Your bandwidth allotment per month will be small compared to DSL or cable.

If satellite is your alternative that's the only reason I'd recommend it.

[ColoWyo]

Call Skybeam. It's who I use out here in Elizabeth. It's line of sight dish to dish. It's really quite fast.

[TRnCO]

I'm south of Elizabeth and we use Kellin, which the link has already been posted. My wife works from home and we're happy with internet service from Kellin. You'll have to contact them to see if their service will work for your location. The tower that we ping to is over near Singhills west of Delbert Rd.