Satellite internet through DishNetwork, thoughts?

[edbert]

First off, I already have DishNetwork as my satellite TV service. I currently have ATT for home phone and DSL, I want to get rid of the home phone line(don't use it) which means I have to find an alternate since DSL requires a phone line.

My question is, does it offer a quality internet connection? Does it go down a lot? Basically if you use or have used this type of service let me know what your impressions are.

I would like to switch to ATT Uverse(their FiOS service) but it won't be available until at least January 08 and I would like to start saving money now if I can.

[dkg999]

I have the Wild Blue internet package via Dish Network satellite at my farm in IA. I have had it about 6 mos, and I have the middle package at $69.95 per month. So far I have been pretty impressed. The speed is not as fast as my cable internet at my apt in IL, but is plenty fast to allow working from home using the company VPN connection and email. It seems to be pretty stable and not really impacted by the big storms we have had this summer. You do want to make sure you have a stable platform to mount the dish to. I had a neighbor who had all sorts of trouble, but it was all caused by a crappy job of setting the post he put in his yard to put the dish on.

[AsSiMiLaTeD]

I don't see how you're gonna save any money going that route. My phone and DSL together are like 35 a month, satellite was still 100 a month back when i had it last...

[edbert]

Well, my phone and internet are currently right at $68 a month. We have some additional fees for living in Allen for phone service, so it would save about $20 bucks a month.

[dkg999]

Have you thought about going the cable TV/cable internet route? My cable company in IL has some pretty good deals for adding home phone to that package. I also have some friends using the Vonage type phone service and they like it. Cable internet is the way to go if you can get it.

[thejck]

I think you can keep your DSL even without a phone line. you might have to pay 5 bucks a month more or something like that.
DSL is good i like it stick with it if you can

[AsSiMiLaTeD]

You should work out a better deal with your phone company. I live over in West Plano, and my phone is about 20 a month, internet is 14.99 - no way you should be paying 70 a month for phone and internet...that's highway robbery...

[AsSiMiLaTeD]

IMO, satellite internet is not worth the hassle, based on my 6 months of experience...just never got reliable service.

[sucks2beme]

A couple of my co-workers have this for their home office.
Their experience was less than stellar.
I waited and got the Fios. Downloads at 1.5 MBPS. Never goes down.
I would just price challege your existing provider, and wait the 5 or 6 months for Fios.

[noimposse]

Had Direcway/Hughesnet for about 1.5 years. It was terrible. Went down during heavy cloud cover (like before and during thunderstorms, snow). Speeds were appalling at times and Dicectv has a EULA portion that most people miss: there is a 100mb cap per hour. If you exceed the cap, the almost completely sever your connection for the next 3 to 4 hours. That was usually the worst. Lastly though, even though the download speeds aren't 'that' bad, the upload speeds are and so is the latency. For example, if you were even considering any type of online gaming, pings would be upwards of 900ms.

I may be jaded from just my experience, but it was pure hell the majority of the time. But it was either that or dial-up since my family lives in the country, and actually...once we had the ability to get DSL from verizon (finally) we jumped out of our contract with Directv on the internet service. Paying the early termination fee was worth it.

[dudeinaroom]

I have a friend who just got direct tv's internet and it is not much faster than his dial up was. You can not game on it and pages take a good 10-20 seconds to load.

[avguytx]

You should work out a better deal with your phone company. I live over in West Plano, and my phone is about 20 a month, internet is 14.99 - no way you should be paying 70 a month for phone and internet...that's highway robbery...

It's all based on who provides what in your area as to how much of a reach around/kiss you get as you're getting raided from the backside. Where I'm at, Embarq (Sprint's new name out here) covers the area and I have NO other choice for phone. I could use cable but it's even HIGHER here. So, I pay about $60/mo for dish (3 rooms, HD, etc...or so) plus about $115 with taxes a month for a phone line with unlimited long distance ($45), a fax line (basic land line $11), and DSL ($25). The taxes are ridiculous in TX for phones. Do the math there and you see what I mean! $35 worth of (some B/S) charges.

[bobman1235]

If you do any gaming, satellite internet is next to useless. Depending on the provider, your service can be good or bad; but no matter what, with satellite, you're going to have high latency (a long time between when you request something and it happens), which means if you're playing a game you'll be dead before your opponent sees that you moved out of the way.

If you don't game, then it all comes down to pricing and quality of service, both of which are dependent on the provider and area.

Though I agree with someone above ; you can usually get "naked" DSL (DSL without a landline phone) these days.

[PhantomOG]

The taxes are ridiculous in TX for phones.

You can say that again. I just cancelled with ATT/SBC. I was paying $35 a month for just a local dial tone with absolutely no features. $15 was the line charge and $20 taxes/fees.

I switched to TWC digital phone and now pay ~$31 a month for unlimited long distance and ALL features.

[opus]

FAP. that is fair access policy, or like noimposse said, if you download more than they think is fair they will bump you down to dial up speed or less.

Also when I looked into it they told me on four seperate occasions that there was no gaurantees' at all on download speed. Once they turn it on that is it. Pay thru the contract or buy out. So if Mr. Tech hooks it up and it is pulling down 56k, tough sh&t.

That is why I have not joined up.


just my $.02

[dkg999]

Opus - it must depend on the Dish Network retailer. Mine spent a lot of time making sure my dish and modem were all working at max speed. He wouldn't leave until he was satisfied with it, and then came back a month later to check it and make sure it was right.

[edbert]

Thanks for all the help. I might just use the info everyone provided and try to get DishNetwork to give me a better deal on the satellite side and then check to see about the "naked" DSL.

[opus]

Opus - it must depend on the Dish Network retailer. Mine spent a lot of time making sure my dish and modem were all working at max speed. He wouldn't leave until he was satisfied with it, and then came back a month later to check it and make sure it was right.

Yep. Good point. I do remember though when I was researching Wild Blue I came across several unhappy customers fighting the refund policy for service that was subpar at best. Anyway glad it works for you maybe I will look back into it.

[jeremie]

I have had wildblue for 2 years now and the only reason i keep it is because there is nothing else available. Just today alone, I lost my connection for about 15 minutes. called the 800 nbr and there was an outage in the middle of the day. this happens quite often for me. Some people have no issues some do, i fall in between. I only recommend them if you cannot get anything else. The thing that sucks is the latency, when logging into work you type and then 2 seconds later you letters appear on the screen. anyway thats my rant.