Satellite Internet Providers

pitchblende writes "Our company works in remote locations in Northern Canada. We have been experiencing major communications problems with our current satellite service. We use satellite systems that go for about $1000 apiece, with $100/month in fees. The service is 'shared' rather than dedicated, and our VOIP, etc, has been getting worse by the day lately. From what I can tell, dedicated systems go for $30k and up. I hope someone(s) out there has some suggestions, recommendations?"

Comments

Amazing

[mrbcs]

I can't believe you got voip to work at all. I had a satelite before.. ping times well over 1200ms. It was pretty much useless as far as I was concerned. 500 meg bandwidth cap a day so you couldn't even download an iso. Mine wasn't "shared", but it still sucked pretty bad.

Sorry about your luck, dial-up would probably be about the same though and a lot less money.

Get some of those BUDs in that other thread

[Scuzzm0nkey]

Try and set up a chain of repeating 12' satellite dish broadcasters retrofitted for 802.11G like the one they set the distance record with. It got like 125 miles, so 10 or 15 of them ought to get out to the middle of nowhere. Latency would probably blow, but it's still better than satellite.

Teleco

[Anonymous Coward]

Depending on where you are, Enerconnex offers some kind of service to remote locations though its primary target is oil and gas in northern Alberta. I don't know if that particular company can help you. It is a division of Northwestel.

You might also want to contact Northwestel directly but seeing as it is a government-sanctioned monopoly with a government-sanctioned profit margin, I wouldn't expect much help. It's probably cheaper to blast your own satellite into orbit that to get service from it.

Also, Northwestel should read Bell as Bell wholly owns Northwestel.

Satellite is pretty much the only system that you can get from another company, at least in the Yukon. Northwest Territories and Nunavut may have different telecos that don't suck so hard. I'm strongly considering getting satellite for my own personal internet just because I loathe Northwestel and its business practices.

Have you tried a Riverbed device?

[RichMeatyTaste]

WAN optimization, works rather well. We have several offices connected via VSAT links (shared bandwidth like yourself) and VOIP and everything works fine. The Riverbed averages about 90% compression across all traffic.
(a href="http://www.tredent.com/news/fhi-deploys-riverbed-steelhead-appliances-after-testing-cisco-packeteer-and-juniper/">Go here you want to read our "success" story.

Satellite? Screw that. Go radio

[Gunfighter]

Get with some of your local ham radio geeks. Those guys are amazing. Granted, their radio bands and equipment are not approved or licensed for commercial use, but they can probably at least point you in the right direction. Once they get the equipment (which is way less than $30k) and license, they can toss packets all over the place for free. I don't know what the bandwidth or latency is like on their systems, but I do know that when it comes to getting information from point A to point B, they get pretty creative. Certainly they can help you come up with something that will fit your needs (for a nominal fee). Worth a shot!