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The Iridium system is for mobile voice and data usage, not fixed data service like the GP was speaking about.

You're correct that it's two-way, however it's a very different style of system. Iridium uses a constellation of 66 low-earth-orbit satellites (similar to how GPS works) and small handheld transcievers; satellite internet is much more like satellite television: "pizza box" dishes aimed at geosyncronous satellites (much higher orbits than the LEO Iridiums) that just bounce a signal from the remote earth station to a gateway somewhere else. The Iridium system by contrast features satellites that actually talk to each other, and relay a signal down to the ground station.

Iridium allows for very compact devices, typically battery powered, and worldwide availability, but low bandwidth. Satellite internet requires more hardware and requires a directional antenna (i.e. dish) but provides much more transfer.

Trust me: you wouldn't want to try and bittorrent the latest "24" episode via your Iridium phone. Neat as the system is -- and I think Iridium is cool as hell -- it's not high-speed internet.

Two-way, high speed internet via satellite is the stock in trade of Starband, you can read a very vague "how it works" article here:
http://www.starband.com/whatis/howdoesitwork.asp

Back in the dark ages I used to surf primarily with Links since even images at that speed are unbearable.

Satelite internet could be an alternative but that's only marginally better if you're expecting the responsiveness and throughput of DSL/Cable etc. Typical satellite instalations are latent anywhere between 800ms~1200ms. I've seen a couple under 600ms regularly but these were rare. Not to mention 500kbps is about as high as you can get with it.

Direcway have been at it for a while, Starband Provides similar service as well as automated trackers aimed towards mobile installations (RVs/Vans etc.)

The obligatory read the service contracts carefully applies to both.

I am not in Iraq, but I use a satellite based internet service called Starband (http://www.starband.com/) and I have a (claimed) 500/128kbit connection, but I usually get 50kbit/sec upstream. Using Vonage with a Motorola VT1000 VoIP terminal and the "Bandwith Saver" fuction turned down to 30kbits/sec I have no problem making and reciving one call at a time. I have the VT1000 in between the network and the satellite modem so that I don't kill my call when I download a webpage. The latency is about 1 sec, but once you get into a conversation you hardly notice it. For $24.99/month for Unlimited Incoming (to a US number that your families can call for a minimal fee - or even free) and Outgoing calls to the US and Canada, this cannot be beat. Good luck to yourself and all your fellow soliders in Iraq. Thank You, Jamie

This ComputerWeekly's article says there was a failure of a communications satellite over the weekend that knocked out US broadband services supplied by StarBand Communications. The total loss of Intelsat's Americas-7 satelllite forced StarBand to move customers to a different satellite. StarBand did not say how many subscribers were affected, but is attempting to provide them with a temporary dial-up service.

Ok.. how about this service? I haven't had their service in over 2 years now, and having visited their web page, looks like they have moved on quite nicely. A visit to the newsgroup may provide better information. Back when I had the service, the web page was all smiles and kisses, and the newsgroups (both the official one that only customers could access and the unofficial one) were full of piss and venom.

Still an alternative to DirecWay and their FAP..

As a side note, I have only two service options available for me in the tiny town I reside:

Marktwain.net

Using Airspan equipment in the home. I get a static IP and 256k/128k for $44.99 a month, no port blocking whatsoever. I just have it on a Linksys router and can share to however many PC's I want (of course, the more PC's, the worse the speeds).

Missvaley.net

I don't know their equipment. You are FORCED behind a firewall at the ISP end. NO ports can reach you. You are REQUIRED to have a PCI wireless device (they provide) put into ONE PC. No sharing unless you use ICS (or it's equivelent). 384k-1.5mb/128k for $39.99.

I went with Marktwain.net's service so I could run my own mail/web server (and use the machine for learning how to setup other services). Wish I had better available, but I don't. =[

I agree with you. I also think that, while it's good to be contrast our broadband coverage with other nations in order to keep the pressure on our own progress, I think broadband coverage is a problem that will take care of itself. The very last people to have highly usable broadband available will be those in deep rural areas.

Here's my situation, I live in Stillwater, OK, which is an unusually connected city for its size with redundant fiber loops through the town nerve centers. Alas, my house is just barely outside the usable range of DSL from the CO. I can get broadband via cable (TV) but if I lived about 1/2 mile further out, that wouldn't be an option either. Fortunately, there's another option that turns out to be a little cheaper too. This wireless option also serves the smaller, rural communities surrounding Stillwater.

For deep rural areas, satellite services like StarBand and DirecPC will do very well (except where lag is a concern).

Like I said, it's good to keep the pressure on, but broadband is still expanding and will pretty much take care of itself.

As a sidenote, it would be interesting to see a comparison of actual miles of fiber and wired broadband connections implemented in the USA to those is some "wired" country like S. Korea.

Um, ever used satellite internet? How's 128K down and 64k up sound to you? After you purchase your $1000 bi-directional dish and have it installed, and pay $100/mo for service, it would be cheaper to have an ISDN or Frame relay ran to your home or business. I'll pass.

Couple points:

Advertised rates are 750k down, 128k up. Yes, slightly over $100/mo is what that costs. Are any frame-relay or ISDN services much less than that?

The worst part is there's no way around the time it takes the signal to travel the 88,000 miles to and from the satellite TWICE to get a packet to the internet and back. Right around 500ms latency, minimum.

So, if it's "cheaper to have ISDN or Frame relay" then by all means... but it is NOT cheaper in many, many areas of the US. In some more rural areas, you just can't get any high-speed services at all. The rural telco will just laugh at you, or offer you $1000/month prices. (To their defense, if you're many many miles from the nearest CO, building a T1 out to you costs BIG BUCKS for them)

It all depends where you live.

Cool thing: Starband is offering a self-pointing dish system for mobile homes etc. Try getting frame-relay to a moving target! :)

What I'm looking forward to is more constellation-based low-orbit satellite systems with higher bandwidth. Latency is much less of a problem, with orbits of 300 miles instead of 22000. But the economics of such a system just doesn't quite work yet. (Think of the problems Iridium has had)

- Peter

Um, ever used satellite internet? How's 128K down and 64k up sound to you? After you purchase your $1000 bi-directional dish and have it installed, and pay $100/mo for service, it would be cheaper to have an ISDN or Frame relay ran to your home or business. I'll pass.

Couple points:

Advertised rates are 750k down, 128k up. Yes, slightly over $100/mo is what that costs. Are any frame-relay or ISDN services much less than that?

The worst part is there's no way around the time it takes the signal to travel the 88,000 miles to and from the satellite TWICE to get a packet to the internet and back. Right around 500ms latency, minimum.

So, if it's "cheaper to have ISDN or Frame relay" then by all means... but it is NOT cheaper in many, many areas of the US. In some more rural areas, you just can't get any high-speed services at all. The rural telco will just laugh at you, or offer you $1000/month prices. (To their defense, if you're many many miles from the nearest CO, building a T1 out to you costs BIG BUCKS for them)

It all depends where you live.

Cool thing: Starband is offering a self-pointing dish system for mobile homes etc. Try getting frame-relay to a moving target! :)

What I'm looking forward to is more constellation-based low-orbit satellite systems with higher bandwidth. Latency is much less of a problem, with orbits of 300 miles instead of 22000. But the economics of such a system just doesn't quite work yet. (Think of the problems Iridium has had)

- Peter

Echostar, DirectWay, and StarBand (http://www.starband.com/ all have two way broadband available in the US. Echostar charges $500 for equipment and $65/mo. They use compression and a modified ip stack to get you ~1Mbit down and ~64Kbit up for HTTP and FTP protocols. Bypassing their ip stack gets you ~56Kbit down and ~128Kbit up.

These systems are widely used by Gas Stations (Chevron), and retailers for inventory/accounting/etc to the central office.

I was forced do go with the Echostar solution until my area got CableModem service. If its the only thing available, then its better than dial-up.

It is definitely expensive at $70/month during the first year, but two-way satellite is available from starband.

If you do a 3-year contract, your average monthly price for all three years goes down to $60/month.

Just don't expect to game on it-- ping time via geosync is horrible.

I'm in a similar situation where dialup is the only land-based possibility and WIFI is impossible because of all the damn trees (northwestern most portion of Washington state). I ended up going with Starband. The 480 Pro is very expensive ($139/month for me) and the hardware is waaaaay too much (I paid a little over $800), but it works extremely well (most of the time) and happily works with my D-Link DI-614+ router. I recently started writing a review (it's mostly done, but not 100%) on my personal site that pretty much covers most of the pros and cons as I see them.

Good luck.

These systems may require Pro installation, but if you saw some of the guys doing this, you'd know it's not that big of a deal. After I saw the crackhead (quite literally, I'm not poking fun) who installed my coworkers Starband system I decided to get certified myself. It didn't cost me anything, Took me about two hours, and now I'm certified to install these things. Plus if you install your own system, you make a commission on the money you pay for your service. Take a look at http://training.starband.com/html_files/installati on_training.htm

1) High latency - takes 1 - 1.5 seconds to start a transfer, but you receive at a decent rate once the transfer starts.

2) High setup costs - It costs $600 - $900 to set one of these up, however, there are usually plans to spread this out over a year's worth of payments.

As noted on Starbands "who we are" site Starband and Echostar have made an agreement with Microsoft. In this agreement Microsoft gave a large investment to get the 2-way satelite system up and going. As part of the agreement, Starband was to make sure the hardware only supports Win98 and up.

Besides, you still need a modem for uploads (and HTTP requests)

Not with Starband. Two-way satellite dish. Less than $1000 USD to set up (for the person who said it was $25000+ for two-way satellite) and $70/month.

They've recently filed Chapter 11 though.

According to the Starband website (PC requirements section), Starband can work with either USB or Ethernet. I would think that an Ethernet-based model would work fine.

It's called the dish network.

And we also have satellite internet, too. It's Here.

You can pay alot and get high satellite latency on the ground already. See Star Band.

Im unsure of direcpc, but as for starband...

Starband uses two satellites to provide internet access.

Telstar 7: 129 west
General Electric 4: 101 west

To get azimuth, go over to starbands installation training site and grab the point dish tool.

In rural areas, Internet connectivity options are going to be pretty limited, unless the the specific sites and dates for visits are known months in advance. Even then it could be pretty hard. I think satellite-type connectivity options might be your only choice. You might want to check out these guys: DirecPC -- http://www.direcpc.com/ Starband -- http://www.starband.com/ OnSat -- http://www.onsat.net/

Motorhomes Cost at leat $40,000
School Busses Cost ~$80,000
Commercial Buses Cost >$100,000
18 Wheelers cost >$100,000

There is also the cost of insurance and maintence, neither one of which is trivial.

So here is what I what I would do instead:

1)Buy big pickup with shell/cargo van. Maybe 2/3. These don't need to be new.

2)Attach shell with waterproofing(on pickup) and racks for equipment.

3)Buy wireless lan hubs and network cards from linksys.

4)Buy folding card tables, 8 man tents (the ones you can stand in), and folding chairs from sports authority.

5)Buy laptops from Dell with Win2k.

6)Install all software you should ever need. Make OS work well.

7)Use Norton Ghost to make the OS easy to restore to perfect working order.

8)Build a HUGE fileserver runing linux (put shockproofing in the van so the HD's don't get fooed up).

9)Make SAMBA/unix acounts on aforementioned fileserver for each user who logs in.

10)If you want to be able to get internet acess beyond your little LAN, use a couple starband satellite uplinks to connect. Or equiv. service.

11) Find a source of power, or buy a generator. I would just use local power.

I recommend a satellite Internet provider like Starband or Wild Blue (when it comes out).

Try Starband Starband.Com and get internet access via satellite. It works almost everywhere in North America. Equipment cost is less than $500. If you need more bandwidth, buy more than one subscription. I believe download is DSL or better, probably 1.5 MB/sec, not sure. Upload IS included (2 way); this isn't an 'upload via phone' solution. A friend of mine installed one 'cuz broadband access stinks in his area. This is a simple solution. No land lines required.

Given that you were on a satellite connection before, and probably don't need low latency, look into Starband. Their standard packages aren't really broadband (150-500 kbps) but it's a start. IIRC, The dish and reciever are $700, and it's $80/month, but that was a while ago it may have changed.
I've never heard of a civilian high speed wireless solution going that far. If you think there's any chance at all that you could get rights of way before 2003, you should look into wired solutions.
Don't limit yourself to a point-to-point mentality, for the hassle of having a wire through their land, a person or locality gains the benfit of connectivity they would not otherwise have.

Maybe I'm stating the obvious but you could try StarBand sat. service. It's not a T1 or maybe even DSL but it is two way and a heck of a lot better than dial up.

There's Satellite

There already exists a service that offers satellite internet access. Up to 500kpbs downlink, and 50-60kbps uplink. Too bad you'll have to carry a dish, though..

It is here already, at Starband. Well, not so much unmetered, as it is limited. And, not for gamers... latency is way too high. But, if you don't live in a major metro area, it might be right for you.


--
Never knock on Death's door.
Ring the doorbell and run
(He hates that).

Check out Starband

--
Forget Napster. Why not really break the law?

What kind of speed can I expect? The StarBand service can download content up to 10 times faster than the fastest dial-up service. StarBand consumers can expect Internet access with download speed up to 500 kbps and upload speed bursting up to 150 kbps. For download, the minimum speed will be 150 kbps. The average upload speed will be 50 kbps, depending on usage during peak hours.

It's also not at 1.5 Mbps. Download speeds are up to 500 kbps (150 kbps minimum... unless it's raining). Upload speeds "burst" up to 150 kbps, and average around 50 kbps, depending on peak usage.

But it's available now! So if you can't wait for the phone company, and you're willing to settle for Windows, and you don't need to upload anything, then go for it!

--brian

It's also not at 1.5 Mbps. Download speeds are up to 500 kbps (150 kbps minimum... unless it's raining). Upload speeds "burst" up to 150 kbps, and average around 50 kbps, depending on peak usage.

But it's available now! So if you can't wait for the phone company, and you're willing to settle for Windows, and you don't need to upload anything, then go for it!

--brian

Check out Starband.com for $60/month full 2-way communication.

My friend said they wanted $200 for installation - he's a CCNA/MCSE Siemens network engineer. For $50, you can take a test and be a 'certified starband installing engineer' which he is going to be doing. Starband is at http://www.Starband.com

DirecPC has announced the two-way component that will allow you to upload as well. Starband is another very comparable satellite provider, which also allows upload/download. Both satellite services supposedly have a latency of 600 to 900ms.

This can't be good to get high speed access to the masses. If you can't get cable and Covad goes under, then there may be no real alternative short of expensive ISDN or T1 circuts.

I hope that wireless solutions like Starband and Teledesic can come through to offer a decent performing and priced solution.

Until then, we wait...

Brian
http://www.assortedinternet.com

Echostar's Starband system is complete two-way. No landline required. They claim 500kbps down, 150kbps up. Like DirecPC it's shared so it could swamp.

>>This is prepakaged with MSN, period. (FEH!!)

You clearly haven't looked at the web site. If you purchase Starband service from RadioShack with a new PC *then* it's MSN. You can purchase Starband directly or in conjunction with DishNetwork and then the ISP is Starband themselves. Look here and here .

>>This is prepakaged with MSN, period. (FEH!!)

You clearly haven't looked at the web site. If you purchase Starband service from RadioShack with a new PC *then* it's MSN. You can purchase Starband directly or in conjunction with DishNetwork and then the ISP is Starband themselves. Look here and here .

Well, technically it's considered an "investment", but for M$, it's probably more of a down payment on the Microsoft layaway plan...

Just as a helpful hint, you can order Starband satellite internet access directly from Starband. It costs $600 for the equipment, requires Windows 98 or 2000 because it is USB, not ethernet, and is $70 a month. They also say that they will install it within four weeks.

Starband is offering high latency, high bandwidth 2-way satellite access, and a bird should be in geosynch over europe fairly soon. This means no modem connection, true 2-way to satellite communication.

The problem is that all packets have to travel 44,600 miles one way. At 186,000 miles/sec that means a .24 second delay one way, and a half second is added to any ping.

Internet gaming is out, but e-mail and surfing will rock.

I spent a couple of hours on the phone with a very clueful guy who runs their tech support. He said that they dont mind linux (he runs it himself) or server hosting. The upstream bandwidth is limited to about 50K, and a popular server would probably be frowned upon, but a personal website wouldn't be any problem.

Also, since this is mostly owned by Gilat (an Israeli company) there should be European coverage pretty quickly. According to my source, Gilat has planned on 3,000,000 people in the US using the service.

Anyway, there are 3 options.

1. Microsoft + Radio Shack (yeah, right)

1. Dish Networks ($100 for 150 channels + net)

1. Starband alone

Starband is offering high latency, high bandwidth 2-way satellite access, and a bird should be in geosynch over europe fairly soon. This means no modem connection, true 2-way to satellite communication.

The problem is that all packets have to travel 44,600 miles one way. At 186,000 miles/sec that means a .24 second delay one way, and a half second is added to any ping.

Internet gaming is out, but e-mail and surfing will rock.

I spent a couple of hours on the phone with a very clueful guy who runs their tech support. He said that they dont mind linux (he runs it himself) or server hosting. The upstream bandwidth is limited to about 50K, and a popular server would probably be frowned upon, but a personal website wouldn't be any problem.

Also, since this is mostly owned by Gilat (an Israeli company) there should be European coverage pretty quickly. According to my source, Gilat has planned on 3,000,000 people in the US using the service.

Anyway, there are 3 options.

1. Microsoft + Radio Shack (yeah, right)

1. Dish Networks ($100 for 150 channels + net)

1. Starband alone

Starband is offering high latency, high bandwidth 2-way satellite access, and a bird should be in geosynch over europe fairly soon. This means no modem connection, true 2-way to satellite communication.

The problem is that all packets have to travel 44,600 miles one way. At 186,000 miles/sec that means a .24 second delay one way, and a half second is added to any ping.

Internet gaming is out, but e-mail and surfing will rock.

I spent a couple of hours on the phone with a very clueful guy who runs their tech support. He said that they dont mind linux (he runs it himself) or server hosting. The upstream bandwidth is limited to about 50K, and a popular server would probably be frowned upon, but a personal website wouldn't be any problem.

Also, since this is mostly owned by Gilat (an Israeli company) there should be European coverage pretty quickly. According to my source, Gilat has planned on 3,000,000 people in the US using the service.

Anyway, there are 3 options.

1. Microsoft + Radio Shack (yeah, right)

1. Dish Networks ($100 for 150 channels + net)

1. Starband alone

http://www.starband.com/images/gl_fa ces .jpg
tell me those faces don't say (in order - from left to right) "what the fuck", "does this mean my napster will be faster" and "what?"

-neil

"Now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb."

I have seen only the advertising campaign. It appears that this company may provide affordable, 2-way satellite access. StarBand