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me11111111
@comcast.net
| Do you think there will ever be a satellite internet service
Pretty much sums up the question I am asking in the title. Do you think that they will ever come up with a satellite internet service that is capable of the speeds you get on cable internet? Is it even possible?
I know about the satellite internet they have today such as the hughesnet network, but from what I gather, it is nowhere near as fast as normal cable internet.
The reason I ask is that it would make the net available to people where normal cable internet service is impossible to get. It would also give people like me an option to have another provider than crappy comcast!
But I am moving soon, so comcast will be history. But I still wonder if they will ever offer a satellite services as fast as the speeds you get on cable. | |
dbirdman
Premium,MVM
join:2003-07-07
Eureka, CA
| If only answering the question that is being asked, then the answer is yes, it exists today.
The missing part of the question has to do with cost. A single transponder, which can have throughput somewhere between 30 and 90Mbps, costs around $1.5 million per year to lease, and then you need a ground station with associated hardware and ground bandwidth to match.
You do the math on what has to be charged to get cable speeds.
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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 2-watt Datastorm G74|Sprint Broadband U595+MBR1000 router+Wilson Antenna/Amp|1990 Blue Bird Wanderlodge Bus "Blue Thunder" | |
Island Jeff
join:2005-07-18
 ·TDS
 ·WildBlue
edit:
April 19th, @06:07PM
| I'll answer this a little differently than dbirdman based on the meaning of the word "speed" here.
Do you mean throughput or quickness?
Even if I were grossly wealthy and could lease a whole transponder just for myself, I still wouldn't trade a low-latency consumer broadband connection for it.
Why?
Latency.
With consumer satellite, you see latency of 1200-1400 ms typically due to the scheduling/shaping they do to maximize bandwidth utilization.
If I were wealthy enough to have a commercial connection for $500-$1000 a month (or even if I could lease a whole transponder or a whole satellite for millions a year) I would then see latency close to the physical minimum due to distance of around 600 ms.
But with a terrestrial broadband connection, I get latency of 50-100 ms depending on where the other endpoint is from one coast to the other.
As I use an online control panel, or go through my online bank account, login to a remote computer, etc. the difference between a 1200 ms $100-$200 consumer satellite system and a 600 ms $500-$1000+ commercial satellite system is a big difference. But the difference between either and a 100 ms dsl or cable system is just as noticeable and that much better yet again.
Of course if everyone on the planet were connected via satellite, web pages and applications would be designed for 1+ second latency (a few large elements vs. lots of small elements; everything on one page vs. lots of back and forth ajax elements, etc. etc.)
Even consumer 2-way satellite is a world better than dialup, but for my current real-world web, ftp, email, itunes, ssh, rdp usage, I wouldn't trade my $100/month dsl connection for even the most expensive satellite connection. The throughput of a very expensive satellite connection would be awesome on a speedtest, or if I wanted to download a DVD in a couple seconds, but for my current web usage and applications, if a page or task loads in under a second over dsl/cable no matter how much throughput the satellite offers and no matter how you tweak your local connection to run many tasks in parallel, it's pretty difficult to overcome the 6/10 second of latency.
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Very happy TDS DSL user | Wildblue in Lake Michigan | |
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