satellite internet,

[rockhound]

we have skybeam. that is quasi satelite. it shoots from our satelite dish to a dish on a water tower about 8 miles away. never out a day. works well.

??? how is their customer service? heard bad things.

what kind of speeds are you getting?

[Bailey Guns]

we have skybeam. that is quasi satelite. it shoots from our satelite dish to a dish on a water tower about 8 miles away. never out a day. works well.

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.

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.

[HBARleatherneck]

delete

[BlasterBob]

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).

[Inspector Fowler]

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.

[Beprepared]

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.

[netsecsys]

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...

[Tweety Bird]

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.

[rockhound]

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.

[netsecsys]

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!