fonzbear2000
Premium
join:2005-08-09
Saint Paul, MN |  why doesn't satellite internet compete against cable and dsl
satellite tv competes against cable tv, but i've NEVER seen satellite internet try to compete against cable and dsl internet-what are the reasons for that?
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i wish qwest would die! i want FIOS! |
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dbirdman
Premium,MVM
join:2003-07-07
Eureka, CA
| Because there is no similarity beyond the fact that both satellite TV and satellite internet use satellites. The differences occur because they use them in completely different ways.
A satellite has very limited bandwidth. For a few hundred million dollars you can get the bandwidth that a cable company can buy to a neighborhood for a few thousand dollars.
Satellite TV can use that bandwidth to broadcast to every neighborhood in the country. New subscribers put nearly zero impact on the bandwidth. All the real cost is in buying programming. That makes it very competitive, because cable has to spend those thousands for each and every neighborhood.
Satellite internet uses bandwidth per customer, not per neighborhood or per country. That makes it massively more expensive, per gigabyte, than any other method of internet access. Even if you were to spend a trillion dollars on satellites you couldn't match the available bandwidth to a cable or DSL company.
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W2K Server|Toshiba Satellite XP Pro|iDirect 3100 on Datastorm 1.2 meter XF3 with 4-watt BUC|HughesNet IA8/1390/7000s Pro on Datastorm .74 F1|1990 Blue Bird Wanderlodge "Blue Thunder" 22 tons of rolling steel! |
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Island Jeff
join:2005-07-18
 ·TDS
 ·WildBlue
| reply to fonzbear2000
First there is the financial reality: existing satellites are extremely expensive and bandwidth is limited as dbirdman says; we've come a long way compared to 5 years ago, but still the highest level "consumer-priced" satellite plans in the $79/month to $200/month range from wildblue or hughes (or starband, though the other two are the main players) are not as fast as the entry-level cheapest cable or dsl plans offered in urban areas.
Second there is the simple distance reality: distance equals latency. It doesn't make a difference for streaming out large videos, but for online activities it makes a world of difference because every action means you're waiting for the packet of information, the click, the page, the image to travel back and forth to the satellite. With no other delays in the system, satellite can deliver a half second latency; in reality, the consumer systems of today, even with the current high prices, are loaded so latency is noticeably more than this. Even if they were operating in a virtually unloaded state though, they're 10x or more slower than cable or dsl in terms of latency.
So to compete, with the inherent latency of satellite a factor, satellite would not only have to cut current prices to as little as 1/4 of what they are currently charging, but would also have to dramatically increase bandwidth available (to outdo cable or dsl which currently offer many times the speed and allowable usage over a month of usage) - I would figure the highest end consumer satellite package would need to provide 5x the bandwidth at 1/4 the current cost to even start to tempt me away from cable or dsl due to the fundamental latency.
I don't forsee those numbers coming into alignment in the next decade; satellite will continue to be a great options for those with only dialup and no other option available. And as more people get urban broadband, I expect others will continue to push out into rural areas and utilize satellite in the next few years.
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Wildblue in Lake Michigan | Color Printing Forum
Unhappy with noticeably slower secure sites, higher latency due to 11/17/06 firmware changes |
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geoffinak3
Premium
join:2004-09-15
Big Lake, AK
moderated:
February 6th, @10:31AM
| reply to fonzbear2000
It could be done, the bandwidth is up there, it might take some compression or other ideas but let smart people think about it and we will find the answer.
Just my idea
Geoff |
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lastmile
join:2007-09-08
Robertsville, MO
·WildBlue
| reply to fonzbear2000
Latency is contributing factor for broadband applications. Many applications are time-sensitive and demand low-latency such as VPN's, VOIP, online gaming, remote desktop, x-windows, etc. and the demand for these apps are increasing.
If Satellite could offset some of these issues -- then it may be a viable option but in its current form is hardly a contender against other broadband options such as DSL, Cable or wireless.
Makes me wonder if IPV6 has any bearing or relevance on the challenges / limitations with Satellite.
I would think most users would toss Satellite Internet in the trash if there were other options available. Most other broadband options are also considerably cheaper. |
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Island Jeff
join:2005-07-18
·TDS
·WildBlue
| reply to geoffinak3
quote:
It could be done, the bandwidth is up there, it might take some compression or other ideas but let smart people think about it and we will find the answer.
Is the bandwidth really up there? At what cost? So far we've been told by all consumer satellite offerings and experts to date that the bandwidth is simply not up there in sufficient quantity to offer cable- or dsl-like usage at the --
Wildblue in Lake Michigan | Color Printing Forum
Unhappy with noticeably slower secure sites, higher latency due to 11/17/06 firmware changes |
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randyvsatus
Premium
join:2005-03-03
Monument, CO
·Qwest.net
| quote:
= Island Jeff  Is the bandwidth really up there? At what cost? So far we've been told by all consumer satellite offerings and experts to date that the bandwidth is simply not up there in sufficient quantity to offer cable- or dsl-like usage ...
Knowing how much satellite bandwidth is available (relative to terrestrial solutions) is not the issue...the issue, as dbirdman says above, is the enormous gap in the cost to provide the bandwidth from a satellite vs a terrestrial source...."Satellite internet uses bandwidth per customer, not per neighborhood or per country. That makes it massively more expensive, per gigabyte, than any other method of internet access. -dbirdman
Now ya know!
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1.2M Dish |4 watt|iDirect|||Qwest DSL|7168 / 896 Kbps |
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Island Jeff
join:2005-07-18 | Thanks for completing my thought... appears my post above was oddly truncated somehow. Weird. |
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Qoiz
join:2005-06-26
 ·Cox HSI
| reply to fonzbear2000
in other words, satellite company owner people are going to have to bring ALL ping times to AT WORST 500, find a way to provide unlimited data transfers at very high speeds(10+ mb/sec) and offer plans that are probably half as cheap as what the phone companies offer, all that just to make up for the glitches and limitations of satellite, but is that going to happen..?
never, unless a company has intentions of spending hundreds of billions or more per year with income of maybe a few hundred million, which is like a loss 100000 times greater than the profit. even then I would never switch, I would take my
5MB line over a 50MB satellite anyday! heck, id probably take even a 500k line over it....... maybe even 256, but probably not 128 since you cant watch videos very well, only load small webpages.
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I have had Direcway/Hughes for years. I've had trouble with them some until the latest system DW7000. It is blazing fast 1 to 1.5 kbps down most of the time- Kath159 |
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geoffinak3
Premium
join:2004-09-15
Big Lake, AK
·StarBand Communica..
| We need to remember that this country is still about 40% dial up, that is terrible. I see that Cellular is probably going to fill the gap as Sprint and Verizon seem pretty serious and if you have been stuck at 22K 750k down is just fine. Trust me you don't care about latency, you just open multiple web browsers.
Try going back to 25K or even less.
I think Satellite could have done it 5 years ago but got too greedy. So cell will be a big fill in.
This is important, not for games and VOIP, but for business and education. Those people who live in rural areas, heck I lived at SD city border and could get nothing, so had to go satellite. They need a way to educate themselves and their kids. W/O some sort of BB 40% is left out. We need to educate a few people in this country to build new ideas and overcome the seemingly complex but in reality solvable problems. Everything that was hard 20 years ago has mostly gotten a lot easier, not everything but we are accelerating so everyone needs to keep up. Things like satellites that work, if the government can read my credit card numbers, we should be able to educate the people who will be running what's left of this country in 40 years. We need help, look around things are not too good. What do we make.? What do we do.
G |
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Island Jeff
join:2005-07-18
·TDS
·WildBlue
| quote:
Trust me you don't care about latency, you just open multiple web browsers.
I just got DSL after 2 1/2 years on wildblue following 3 years on starband following a cable modem in 1999 and 2000. Trust me, I definitely care about latency -- the difference is a world apart between this 100 ms connection and my 1200 ms wildblue connection, even though the download and upload speeds are similar for large files.
But for those who have only dialup, satellite speed is definitely a huge improvement (I also got used to browsing in many tabs.) Just not nearly as good as low latency broadband.
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Very happy TDS DSL user | Wildblue in Lake Michigan |
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