Satellite or Wireless Broadband

irishma

Hi, I'm liviing near Letterkenny but cannot get a decent broadband signal with Eircom, told we're too far from the exchange - 3.5 miles!! Does anybody have any recommendation for satellite or wireless broadband ?

I've spoken to Digiweb who say we can only get satellite in our area but it won't be rolled out till the end of the month or into November.

Q-Sat and Onwave seem to think we're all up half the night online thus unlimited downloads between 2am and 8am. Well that might suit my night owl daughter but not me!

Eircom satellite charges the earth for all the extras (likewise Irishsat) and anyway I don't want to go with Eircom again.

I was with Imagine years ago but they don't seem to have anything to suit now.

Was on bonkers.ie but they only came up with Digiweb.

Why is it so difficult to get a decent broadband signal living so near a large town in the 21st century?

uncle_sam_ie

Avoid Satellite BB. It would be like trying to commute to work in a tank. It's totally impractical and is meant for people living on an island in the middle of some ocean. Where are you living? Fixed wireless can be very good depending on who is supplying it. A dongle, although not great, would be your next option.

bealtine

irishma wrote: »

Hi, I'm liviing near Letterkenny but cannot get a decent broadband signal with Eircom, told we're too far from the exchange - 3.5 miles!!

Avoid any form of satellite like the plague if you can possibly avoid it...

Try perhaps North West Electronics : http://www.nwewn.com/

irishma

Thanks for that. Is satellite that bad?? I thought it was the newest and best broadband solution! Definitely not dongle - not good enough signal. Tried Imagine wimax - no signal.

North West Electronics won't know if we have line of sight till day of installation and I have to wait 12 weeks for that, I would prefer to have a line of sight check done long before then!

Any other ideas? I'm beginning to feel that we are in a Bermuda Triangle of communications here:(

raymix

irishma wrote: »

Is satellite that bad?? I thought it was the newest and best broadband solution

its been around for quite a while, about 7 years ago I was forced to use dialup as uplink for satellite working as proxy for downlink... horrible and expensive. Nowadays they use two-way satellites, a little bit cheaper, but still horrible.

anyway, try this map, see if it helps:
http://irelandoffline.org/map/

irishma

Thanks Raymix, giving me north west electronics only...

cunnijo

Hi

You mention that Digiweb can only give you satellite. According to the website their Metro fixed wireless service is available in Letterkenny. This usually has a range of upto 10km from the base station providing you have clear line of sight.

http://www.digiweb.ie/home/bundles

In the dropdown menus select your county and area.

irishma

Thanks Cunnijo, no coverage for us with Digiweb, we're beginning to feel like extras out of Castaway

DieselPowered

uncle_sam_ie wrote: »

Avoid Satellite BB. It would be like trying to commute to work in a tank. It's totally impractical and is meant for people living on an island in the middle of some ocean. Where are you living? Fixed wireless can be very good depending on who is supplying it. A dongle, although not great, would be your next option.

Disagree, its used to be like this when it came out first.
Have seen x3 Onwave installs this year where fixed line broadband was not an option and it works just fine. Don't see where the issues come up if you are faced with no Broadband through normal means.

(where both options are available, I would always suggest landline BB).

irishma

It seems to be the only option at the moment - well, next month if it is actually going to be rolled out in our area

siblers

Have you contacted any of the fixed wireless providers in the area? If you have a clear line of sight to their antennas they can porvide you with a connection. It'll be cheaper than satellite, with more stable speeds and better caps.

irishma

Thanks Siblers, the only fixed wireless provider is North West Electronics who can't confirm line of sight until day of installation and there's a waiting list of 12 weeks!

siblers

Ah right, in the same boat myself. Been waiting since the end of August for a site survey. It might be worth asking your closest neighbours what broadband they have, will give you an idea of what's best.

Do any of your neighbours have "boxes" like this attached to their chimneys?

Those are the "boxes" typically used by fixed wireless operators that receive the radio signal from their base station.

uncle_sam_ie

DieselPowered wrote: »

Disagree, its used to be like this when it came out first.
Have seen x3 Onwave installs this year where fixed line broadband was not an option and it works just fine. Don't see where the issues come up if you are faced with no Broadband through normal means.

(where both options are available, I would always suggest landline BB).

Latency on satellite is what makes it useless. Are you saying they have magically fixed this?

I have both options, wireless and landline. Landline BB is not always the best option. My landline was 2Mb with 390ms everyday at peak hours. It was totally useless. I now have fixed wireless at 20Mb and 9-20ms all day long. It's like when I first went from dial up to BB.

DieselPowered

uncle_sam_ie wrote: »

Latency on satellite is what makes it useless. Are you saying they have magically fixed this?

I have both options, wireless and landline. Landline BB is not always the best option. My landline was 2Mb with 390ms everyday at peak hours. It was totally useless. I now have fixed wireless at 20Mb and 9-20ms all day long. It's like when I first went from dial up to BB.

Latency is based on a fixed distance between two points in a round trip transmission, so no they have not magically shortened the fixed distance to a satellite, but what they have improved on is transmission speed, years ago a slow 128k link with 900ms latency was terrible and €€€, now with the links providing 10mb-20mb download and higher, the latency is negligible. Broadband is Broadband. Satellite BB is not by any means the best solution out there, but its far superior to no service.

uncle_sam_ie

DieselPowered wrote: »

Latency is based on a fixed distance between two points in a round trip transmission, so no they have not magically shortened the fixed distance to a satellite, but what they have improved on is transmission speed, years ago a slow 128k link with 900ms latency was terrible and €€€, now with the links providing 10mb-20mb download and higher, the latency is negligible. Broadband is Broadband. Satellite BB is not by any means the best solution out there, but its far superior to no service.

Gaming with Eircom's 390+ms was unplayable. When it went down to 150ms after midnight it was almost playable.

So, what would the latency now be with improved transmission speed for Satellite?

bealtine

DieselPowered wrote: »

Latency is based on a fixed distance between two points in a round trip transmission, so no they have not magically shortened the fixed distance to a satellite, but what they have improved on is transmission speed, years ago a slow 128k link with 900ms latency was terrible and €€€, now with the links providing 10mb-20mb download and higher, the latency is negligible. Broadband is Broadband. Satellite BB is not by any means the best solution out there, but its far superior to no service.

Latency on satellite is the same now as it always was usually around 800ms, has this has been "fixed" by some new magic fairy dust?

UltanMolloy

Re: Onwave - there's no limit to how slow your connection can go, and mine has been so slow at times that I couldn't open a browser to run a speed test. Onwave's response was "use it off peak" and "we're not responsible for the satellite service" - well they're responsible for selling it to you!!!
Disaster of a service - never again.
My advice - stay AWAY from OnWave!