(US) Two-way Sat Internet now $49.99/mo

Urban Weigl

You know the Gilat satellite Internet system that DigiWeb offer for euro 1808.95 installation plus euro 143.99 per month?

Well, Gilat are also offering the exact same service in the US; it's called StarBand there ( www.starband.com ). Guess how much it costs? $ 49.99 a month and $ 699.99 for the hardware. Depending on where you buy, the hardware is also available free. Still not cheap, but compare that to what we are paying here, and it actually works out cheaper than Eircom's proposed euro 54 DSL service apart from the initial hardware costs. Why are we always being ripped off? :mad:

(I have quoted all prices in this post inclusive of VAT or Sales Tax)

Edit: I know this isn't directly relevant to Ireland, but I believe it is of interest nonetheless as it demonstrates that satellite Internet CAN be offered for less.

MagicBusDriver

2-way sat will always be expensive. The cost of a transponder is too high making bandwidth expensive,I assume star-band are selling below cost.

Urban Weigl

I wouldn't be surprised if they were selling below cost. From articles I've been reading, nobody in the US is prepared to pay more than $50 for broadband, so insetad of not having any customers at all (and thus no revenue at all) they'd rather cut their losses and hope overheads will come down.

Nuphor

I assume star-band are selling below cost.

Surely that's as illegal there as it is here. To be honest, though, high power long range wireless solutions would be much more cost effective to implement. There was a post in here a week or two ago about such technology.

SkepticOne

Originally posted by MagicBusDriver
2-way sat will always be expensive. The cost of a transponder is too high making bandwidth expensive,I assume star-band are selling below cost.

Or they have written off some of their initial capital.