OT!! Alternative to Dial up?

I called and talked to all 3 of the companies that proclaim they offer wireless internet using a land based antenna in our area. To the man everyone of them said I was not in line of site of their antennas. I am way less than satisfied with that answer as they offered me no alternatives, nor did they tell me how high I would have to mount my receiver dish thing. That dish is about the size of a pie pan btw.

So I called the local phone company who offers T1 lines, way to cost prohibitive and they could not even tell me if a T1 line was available here where we live. They quoted apx. $1000 a month for service, IF it was possible here. Here again, old out of date phone lines.

Really tickles me off about the phone lines cause Ma Bell laid in fiber optic lines not 75 yards from the house just to service the school,, which has I think 200 grade school kids. An engineer told me that there is no plan to offer fiber optics to residents nor to upgrade the phone lines in this area.

So, after much digging and looking and thinking I am down to satellite internet. I would not be able to play the couple of games I do on-line but that is no biggie. The speeds are acceptable as shown on the page for Direcway Link

So, the question is, does any one have this service or your buddy got this service from Direcway? How is the service? The support and what is your cost? Anyone know of discounts they may offer other than what they show on the page? O do you have other ideas? I will open my email address for private replys on this topic.

Looking for alternatives for internet service and do appreciate your help or advice or experiences in this area.

We finally cancelled it due to the high cost, and went back to dialup.

Late last year, two companies put up WiFi towers near us, and we switched over to that service. They told us we were too far away, but agreed to do a signal strength test on site, and thankfully, we got a good signal from the rooftop. Speeds are much better than satellite, too.

es

That is about the only nice thing to living in the city, I have a 6 mbps download connection with 768 mbps upload speeds. I have no problems playing Quake 4 on the Internet, while my kid plays Ever Quest and the new Dungeons and Dragons online games.

Good luck in your search.

Dan

My advise:

1. Don't do it unless you have no other option. As soon as cable becomes available, junk the satellite and consider it a sunk cost.
2. Rain storms will knock out your connection until they pass. Happens to me all the time in MS.
3. Download speed is fair - not good. Yahoo finance pages, for example, still take 4-10 seconds to load. Sometimes the frames get lost in space and the page never loads. Just have to close your browser and try again later.
4. You, as an individual consumer, have LOW priority for satellite bandwidth. If one of the commercial customers using the satellite needs it all - - they get it until they are done.
5. Heaven help you if your dish gets knocked out of alinement. 6 months after mine was installed, I got a nasty letter from Starband telling me my dish was interfering with a neighboring satellite and if I didn't have it "professionally" repointed, they were going to shut me down. I never touched the dish and still do not know how the alinement got off. The installer had certified the alinement with Starband as part of the installation, so it was right at the beginning. Anyway, cost me another $100 to get him back to do it again.
Morale of the story - - - be SURE to get written certification from your installer that the dish alinement is well within the specification range of the satellite company. Make him write down on paper what the alinement settings are and what the satellite company's tolerances are. Make sure your dish alinement is not "just right on the edge" up or down of the specifications cause if it moves just a little, you get to do the alinement again at your cost. Make sure he bolts the dish down tight during installation. Make sure your mast is set in concrete.
6. Occasionally, Starband will switch your service to another satellite and not tell you. Things just stop working. You don't have to repoint since the new satellite is at the same azimuth, but you have to call tech support to get the satellite address and they will walk you thru a reconfig of your software.

Bottom line, if cable were available when I get home this afternoon, I would subscribe before the sun goes down and just eat the $800 dish plus installation cost.

Link

If you've seen the TV ads for DirecWay satellite broadband service, and are tempted to check it out, DON"T BOTHER. I did, and have to report its a total losing proposition.

1) The ads pound home incessantly the message, "Super-Fast" and "Faster connection, faster downloads, faster surf-speeds, faster EVERYTHING". This is a complete mis-truth!! EVERYTHING IS SLOWER !! I am not kidding when I tell you that DirecWay service is slower than my former $9.95/month dial-up service. And at least 50% of the time you trip a "DNS / server error" even on sites you know you have the cookies for. In the first two weeks after initial installation I experienced four days of no-service conditions ( that's 29% down-time !!), and even now I have a failure-to-connect situation a minimum of 30% of the time when surfing.

2) Billing practices are far different that what is represented by the DirecWay website, and their telephone sales force. The "$99.95 only" quoted at the time of sale ("to pay the local installer") became more than $200.00 when they called my credit card company. And the "First 30 days of service is free!" is a mail-in rebate nightmare that has me still waiting for rebate forms 30 days after my call, even though I was promised they would be delivered within "Seven to ten days, MAX".

If you're at all like me you love new technology because it always seems to offer new features that its nice to not have to live without. But it looks like DirecWay is either making promises that its technology can't deliver, or that its a huge scam. Either way, I have a "Zero Tolerance" policy as regards being lied to by corporate America, and I intend to persue this issue until at the very least I have all of my money back. DirecWay represents the kind of worst-case corporate greed scenario that is par-for-the-course with companies like Enron, and Gateway Computers.

Note - DON'T CONFUSE "DIRECWAY" WITH "DIRECTV" !!! DirecTV is a satellite dish delivered television service (which I have had for seven years) and its service is superlative, I.e., absolutely top-notch!! It is so far ahead of cable television its unbelievable. DirecWay, provides (actually just "sells") a satellite-based broadband service that is as bad as DirecTV is good. They share owners but are not the same corporate entity.

Anyways...Sat has come a long way. we a two way sat connection at our place. Its no broadband but its as close as I'll ever get.. its sat download AND sat upload. Upload takes longer due to latency but the download is comperable to broadband and makes the internet bearable !!!!! !

Its can be a little pricy to start up..Im on direcway and it was I think 400 for the setup and all that and its 60 a month...3yr commitment initially so...and the routers now can be hook to access points and wireless routers..whatever you wanna do with it once it comes it. Its really the ONLY alternative in country living where the cable, phone people say NO Way are putting that infrasture across cow pastures !!!
Its an always on connection too...

No CATV service out there either? Even if they employ a telephone/analog CATV hybrid setup it's better than satellite.

TOH

I pasted various comments and my replies concerring each one below.

OliverDouglas
What about cable TV ? Many cable TV operators are also IPSs offering high-speed internet.

Has not been available here for about 15 years. There was a company at one time that did it, but hey went broke, sold out and left the durn ugly cables strung everywhere on the power lines. The one that crosses my back yard is sagging so bad I ask the power company guys one day to take it and the guy wire down. Said they coulnt’ touch it since it wasn’t their line..

Dan, you said,

I am in Telecommunications, and my dad lives out in the booneys as well. Satellite is a good workable solution if you want faster downloads, but now I am hearing of the local electric companies getting in on the high speed Internet boom. They have thick lines, they are in almost every home, and data transmission has been sent over electric lines for years. Not sure if it is offered with your electric company, but it is worth a look-see

Yep read about that and did some research, called my power company and they have no immediate plans to even test it. Jerks!

FarmerDawn
We have satellite from Direcway, through a company called Agristar that services rural businesses (such as farms and ranches). We have been VERY happy with this service. It's pricy to set up.

Yep,,, read and printed out their pages and info.

Todd E. Manley

Im in the same boat !! not 1/2 mile away..they got it all...water just came through too!!
Anyways...Sat has come a long way. we a two way sat connection at our place. Its no broadband but its as close as I'll ever get.. its sat download AND sat upload. Upload takes longer due to latency but the download is comperable to broadband and makes the internet bearable !!!!! !

Yep, so the votes and the comments are in and the winner is?

Drum Roll please!!!!

Sateitte Internet from Agristar!! Taxes are in and when the rebate comes back in a couple of weeks, that is where it goes!

Thank you all for your comments and your thoughts and suggestions..

I really do appreciate the help and advice.