Satellite Broadband anyone?

Affordable Satellite Broadband
I live in a village so absolutely no hope of our exchange being BT enabled. I have just had a satellite system installed by http://www.satdrive.com . As an accountant working from home I have received a grant under the RABBIT scheme so I haven't had to pay a penny. However, I wanted a system where I could afford the monthly subscription and I therefore chose SatDrive's one way system. You still use the dial up modem for uploads and to send instructions but all the downloads and content rich websites come down via the satellite in a jiffy. After using dial up alone this is a joy to behold.

I've only just started using it this week so I haven't evaluated it fully yet. I should soon be receiving emails offline via satellite without having to dial up, although dial would be required to reply to them. SatDrive also provide other benefits detailed on their website. And the cost of all this? £450 for the equipment and installation and £14.99 per month (vat incl). I'm impressed so far.

SEEDA
http://www.rabbit-broadband.org.uk covering the South East and South West of England

Welsh Development Agency
http://www.wda.co.uk/en/technology_and_innovation/broadband.cfm covering the whole of Wales

If you already have a Sky minidish, for example, you will need planning permission for a second dish. It took me two months to get mine.

Hope my experience will encourage others.

Very Disappointing results so far
I have BT satellite broadband at home near High Wycombe. Although only installed a month, the service is extremely slow and unreliable for both browsing and e-mail. My ISDN line, to which I often fall back, is faster and more reliable.

I've got BT on the case, but performance would need to improve dramatically before I would recommend it to anyone.

Aramiska satellite broadband is very good
We've had aramiska satellite broadband for 4 months now , can recommend it very fast and excellent customer service , they also provide virtual storage at their site in Belgium giving effective off-site backups! www.aramiska.com for more details we got ours through business insight who provide the smb subsidy for yorkshire.

Help in Weardale Please
Hallo Tim

Forgive me if there is a more elegant way of contacting you directly but I am new to the site.

I am just about to relocate to Weardale (near Stanhope) and I would be grateful for any info/contacts re the council's proposals.

I was going to settle for ISDN (BT's Business Highway).

Many Thanks

Mike
email; [email protected]

To Richard
Dear Richard

We have the BT satillite broadband. We find it OK. Expensive but we have used a router and all the office i.e. 10 pc's and 1 server access.

Speed is good.

Cheers
Neil

Ask your council
Hi Richard.
I live in a rural area and I am a very long way from my local and very ancient exchange. There is no way that anyone is going to bring cable up here or upgrade the exchanges.
I went to a very interesting meeting on Wednesday night where the council outlined their proposals.
Up here in County Durham they are putting in a main link around the county which will link up all the schools and council offices. They are doing this by any means possible i.e. wire/optic/radio etc. This is a big initiative spurred on partly by the governments desire to link in all schools/ offices and partly from rural regeneration (SRB6?).Our local "Community partnership" is comming on board with a lot of help too.
Anyway the upshot is that in the not too distant future broadband will be up the dale. It will be easy to link in houses/ businesses from local schools etc by stepping radio links.
Although this is not an answer to your question I would suggest that you look into this type of solution.
I know that councils do not have a good reputation at this sort of thing but they already have it up and running in some parts of the county.
Our project has only just started but if you need further information get back to me and I'll let you know what is going on.
Cheers
Tim

Wireless
Richard
In our village we are trying to put wireless broadband access in place. There are grants available and theoretically it is viable with as few as 20 subscribers @ £30pmonth. There is a rumour that it may be 'flaky' at times but will still be lots cheaper than satellite.

Our parish council have got quite enthusiastic so it would be worth approaching yours.

Are you prepared to host this for the village?

Also you could check out demandbroadband.com which I think is largely related the to East of England.

There are much cheaper options and just as reliable
You can get the exact same facility from other sources. If you would like further information send me your location and I will put you onto a local suppler.

I Can be contacted on [email protected]

Bill Gray

SSCS

Satellite experience
One of our clients has sat in Gloucester and Scotland not BT. Experience has been lukewarm, VPN is a pain,ISDN performs better. Uploading so so Downloading files, mp3, etc great. As with all things it depends what you require from it. Yours Viv Burrows [email protected]