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Europe Gets Pay-As-You-Go Satellite Broadband

judgecorp writes "Europe is set to get pay-as-you-go high speed satellite broadband from Avanti's Ka-band HYLAS1 satellite in the 26.5 — 40GHz range. Avanti says satellite broadband services have improved massively including a far better uplink than used to be available, though the round-trip latency can't be improved much." Conspicuously missing: the actual price.

33 of 58 comments (clear)

  1. Just watch out for Wimax by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    It will be ubiqitous by 2009.

    Posted from my Iridium Satellite Connection.

  2. Sounds like just the ticket by Tastecicles · · Score: 4, Interesting

    for Navy buckets operating out of normal, unrestricted hardline/line-of-sight microwave/wifi ranges.

    NATO have already approved Avanti satellite uplinks for operational use.

    --
    Operation Guillotine is in effect.
  3. Pay-Through-The-Nose Satellite Broadband by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 1

    Buying in bulk is usually cheaper than getting nickel-and-dimed to death with most stuff. Look at your supermarket per unit prices for King Size, Family Size and Holy Roman Empire Size packages. I'd rather see the service offered with daily, weekly, monthly flat rates instead of the old telephone pay-per-call system.

    But I guess telephone companies like that system, because they ended up charging more for service than for flat rates.

    --
    Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
    1. Re:Pay-Through-The-Nose Satellite Broadband by aurizon · · Score: 1

      Why not have a cable meter, 25 cents per hour per channel. A family watching 4 hours/night = $1 per day, 8 hours = $2 etc etc.
      Modern metering can easily do this

  4. Cost? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Only $50/GB. Plus 4 pints of blood from your firstborn.

  5. LEO or GEO by rossdee · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Where are the satellites, LEO or GEO ?

    I'm guessing GEO so ping times sux

    (Oh I spose I should clarify - LEO = Low Earth orbit - no more that a couple of hundred miles up. GEO = Geostationary - up at 25000 miles so it stays in the sameplace relative to the ground.)

    1. Re:LEO or GEO by Tastecicles · · Score: 1

      they're comsats with personal or base uplinks, so they'll be GEO. Right now, from what I've read, they're only offering contracts to military contractors and service providers. The PAYG service won't be going live until after the orbital testing on their second bird is complete at the end of August.

      --
      Operation Guillotine is in effect.
    2. Re:LEO or GEO by TheRaven64 · · Score: 2

      Don't forget that the 240ms RTT is an absolute minimum - that's the distance to the first hop, and not including any processing delays. You're looking at 300-350ms as a minimum for a complete path. Still, the bandwidth is better than the ADSL that my mother gets, so if it's not stupidly expensive then I can imagine it being useful. The 4Mb/s downstream is (just!) enough to stream iPlayer HD.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    3. Re:LEO or GEO by Ash-Fox · · Score: 2

      Very few apps are adversely affected by the long RTT times over 2-way satellite links.

      I have used systems that have high latency (not satellite) which caused problems with sites that use AJAX.

      --
      Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
  6. Re:A better name for it by Cryacin · · Score: 1

    Still cheaper than SMS

    --
    Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
  7. It's probably worth pointing out... by Gordonjcp · · Score: 5, Informative

    ... that there are companies in the UK and EU who have been doing satellite broadband for over a decade now, with both flat-rate and pay-as-you-go billing.

    This is *one* company that has started to provide it, nothing particularly new here.

  8. Re:Conspicuously missing: the actual price by ThatsMyNick · · Score: 4, Insightful

    T-mobile USA calls their prepaid plans "Pay-as-you-go", so it might also mean the service is prepaid (like you buy a certain number of GBs in advance)

  9. Re:Conspicuously missing: the actual price by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Un, no. Pay-as-you-go means pre-pay. It's the exact opposite of receiving a bill at the end of the month.

    --
    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  10. Re:Conspicuously missing: the actual price by jamesh · · Score: 1

    T-mobile USA calls their prepaid plans "Pay-as-you-go", so it might also mean the service is prepaid (like you buy a certain number of GBs in advance)

    Sounds about right. In Australia the telco's have something called a "capped plan". One would think that a "cap" is something that reflects the maximum amount you spend each month, but it's actually the minimum you spend each month.

    In retrospect though, "pay-as-you-go" does sound like it is more likely to be a prepaid plan... my bad.

  11. Cost not listed because it's a wholesale provider by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    B2C is handled by various European ISPs reselling the service at different prices. For example, Broadband-Portugal sells 1GB tokens, which are valid 30 days, for 15 EUR. Primesatellitebroadband offers subscription plans where add-on gigabytes cost £7.20 (about 9 EUR). There are other satellite operators which offer broadband internet access over a bidirectional satellite link.

  12. Re:Conspicuously missing: the actual price by Melkman · · Score: 2

    Well, the actual price would be about 15,- euro per 1GB if you can believe their reseller at http://www.europe-satellite.com/EMS/webshop/online_tooken01.htm. But Avanti is not the first, Tooway has been providing a similar service for several years now.

  13. Re:Conspicuously missing: the actual price by k(wi)r(kipedia) · · Score: 1

    Total billing might be indeterminate, but shouldn't there be some sort of rate cost either per unit (Mb/Gb) of data transferred or per duration of connection? Otherwise what's to prevent the provider from demanding your right arm as payment?

  14. If you have to ask by Freddybear · · Score: 1

    You can't afford it.

  15. I wish we could get that here in the USA. by Lumpy · · Score: 1

    Yes 3G 4G "broadband" is in a lot of places, but I wish I could get heughes net for just one month or even 1 week when I need it at a event. This weekend I had Verizon and their "superior" network.... that did not work... ZERO bandwidth with a crowd of only 125,000 Verizon utterly sucks. I had to switch to the wife's AT&T iphone and illigimately tether, and then hit the freaking data cap and slowdown to 28.8 dialup you get to enjoy.

    A nice dish pointing at the sky would have solved that.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  16. Re:22222 MILES + 22222 MILES = 44444 MILES = ? SEC by Lumpy · · Score: 1

    3 second pings dont matter at all. 99% of us that do real things with the internet connectivity are not FPS gaming.
    When I am uploading 20gig of photos I dont care about ping, but then I make money using it.

    Now the Financial FPS games called day trading, I think they would hate 3 second pings. That might be a cool torture device for a financial trader... your order to sell showed up 5 seconds too late.... you will re-spawn in 5....4....3...2...

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  17. Directional or omnidirectional antenna? by jago25_98 · · Score: 1

    Mobile use, particularly at sea tends to involve omnidirectional antennas. Directional, gyro corrected antennas are very expensive and large.

    Can this service tally with a handheld sat phone for lower speeds? I would hazard a guess of a yes but I've never found any info on this...

    1. Re:Directional or omnidirectional antenna? by Cyberax · · Score: 1

      It's not really antennae - they're fairly affordable now. It's the Doppler shift - normal terrestrial terminals (working with GEO satellites) can't cope with more than about 10m/s speed differential. So you simply physically can't use these services at sea.

      Yeah, there are maritime satellite services but they are nicely segregated into "it's cheaper to buy your own airplane than to use satphone" category.

  18. The latency... by __Paul__ · · Score: 3, Informative

    ...makes these services next to useless, especially now that the web isn't just a bunch of static pages anymore. I was using satellite broadband a few years ago, in rural Australia - it was barely better than the dialup line it replaced. We only took it up because the line quality on the dialup degraded to such a state that it couldn't stay online for longer than twenty minutes, and Telstra were incapable of fixing it.

    Only low-orbit satellites are going to be able to make satellite-broadband useful.

    --
    worldmobilenet.com -- World Prepaid Wireless Internet plans
  19. Re:Conspicuously missing: the actual price by Simon+Brooke · · Score: 1

    Well, the actual price would be about 15,- euro per 1GB if you can believe their reseller at http://www.europe-satellite.com/EMS/webshop/online_tooken01.htm. But Avanti is not the first, Tooway has been providing a similar service for several years now.

    Full disclosure: I useTooway. I use it because I'm off-grid, so land-line based solutions are impossible, and it's a lot cheaper than a terrestrial microwave relay. And actually, I think for anyone in a remote rural area who needs decent bandwidth, it's a good solution even if they do have a landline. But ping times are long so you aren't going to play multiplayer games, and I find that skype audio (but interestingly not video) is unacceptably poor. It's also more expensive that people in cities pay for bandwidth, but that's part of what you choose when you decide to go off-grid.

    --
    I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
  20. Re:22222 MILES + 22222 MILES = 44444 MILES = ? SEC by c0lo · · Score: 1
    (Too lazy)

    Google says it's 0.238584003 light-seconds... not that heavy, I suppose.

    --
    Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
  21. Re:C seems slow in this context by Oligonicella · · Score: 1

    They're slated to arrive immediately behind your flying car.

  22. Re:Conspicuously missing: the actual price by Alioth · · Score: 2

    That's actually significantly cheaper than roaming charges on 3G, which are usually about 1.50/MB (MB, not GB) or about 1500 eur per GB. So satellite internet is actually two orders of magnitude cheaper than 3G roaming!

  23. Re:Conspicuously missing: the actual price by present_arms · · Score: 1

    Pay as you go in the UK at least means say you pay £10 for say 1 GB of data for a month, you pay before you use :) I have an unlimited pay as u go data on my phone for 10 GBP /month that includes unlimited txt and 300 mins to any cell network voice mins too, I assume this satellite setup will be similar, sans the sms txt and voice of course.

    --
    http://chimpbox.us
  24. Round-trip latency by hpa · · Score: 1

    Round-trip latency can definitely be improved. It just means using LEO satellites instead of GEO.

    1. Re:Round-trip latency by Bengie · · Score: 1

      Don't forget to add a motor to the dish to allow it to track the satellite across the sky. You'll also need a second dish so it can start tracking the next satellite, otherwise you will lose connection for a bit as the other satellite leave line-of-site.

      They will also have to add this same ability to the satellite so it can track base stations.

      Sounds a bit messy.

    2. Re:Round-trip latency by pegasustonans · · Score: 1

      Round-trip latency can definitely be improved. It just means using LEO satellites instead of GEO.

      Or just use thousands of UAVs.

      --
      And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
  25. Re:Conspicuously missing: the actual price by gl4ss · · Score: 1

    it can mean both things.

    in this case it's named as data-usage-basis, which might mean both as well. however paying per gb is the norm for many satellite services since they were made available, which could lead to very, very high charges if someone left streaming on.

    so this is a service which enables to make limits.
    “Some users may wish to limit their exposure to bill shock, yet still have a need for high speed service upon demand without being subject to traffic management policies. Our service allows the partner to limit their credit risk by taking upfront payment for a well-defined GB volume of service,”

    however what would be interesting.. why does this new service allow for something that could have been allowed with the older satellites easily as well?? they obviously had data metering in place already for billing.

    --
    world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
  26. Re:A better name for it by KingBenny · · Score: 1

    that's actually funny, i a sad and very depressing way
    i wonder what our great leaders grand plan is, maybe they would like to re-instate slavery or something similar again. Sure looks like it's going down that way

    --
    Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?