Re: Rural Broadband

["Paul Gale" <psghome@xxxxxxx>]

The BT Business Satellite 500/1 or 500/4 service DOES give upstream
connection at up to 120Kbps (or it's meant to). I've got the service
and have had since it's launch and had a number of problems.

Until recently, download speeds have rapidly dropped off (got to
around 20-30 KBps from 60-80 KBps at the start). BT support
recognise this problem - Gilat (the providers) are moving a large
number of BT's customers (1500 total at the moment) to a new network
that (should) cope with the demand. At least, that's what they say!

I've also had a lot of problems with the quality of support from the
BT Satellite help desk. I've spent many hours talking to their
engineers and rapidly found out I knew more about their system than
most of them! (especially when it came to any aspect of networking).
But then, this was no surprise to me, having managed a support
department for a large computer company for many years. I've yet to
have a call back although I've been promissed 4-5 "within 1-2
hours". I recently raised a series of formal complaints which are
still going through the mill (a slow one though).

The service also had severe problems just recently (now fixed) where
browsing would suddenly stop (a problem with the Internet
Acceleration technology they use to speed up browsing).

I've tried playing one game via the service (Battlefield 1942).
Latency is such a problem, the game wouldn't run (ping times of
around 800-900ms).

Secure sites (such as banking sites) have some problems - they
generally don't work well through the acceleration system. This can
be bypassed though by modifying the proxy server settings in IE but
the sites can be excruciatingly slow, taking minutes to load (I
sometimes revert to a single ISDN dial up for this).

Although I've had quite a few problems, it's still the only
alternative for me and downloads are still fast on the whole. With
the migration to the new network, I expect speeds to pick up again
(as they are slowly doing now). It's also considerably cheaper than
an equivalent set of ISDN connections (I used to have 4 channels
combined by a Cisco router).

If anyone wants more in-depth info on my experiences, let me know
and I'll post them here or privately, whichever.

Paul.

--- In ukha_d@y..., "Kenneth Watt" <kwatt@f...> wrote:
> > Yeah, all great stuff, except BT won't publish trigger points for a
> lot of
> > exchanges, including mine. Grrrr.
>
> That is more than mildly annoying really.
>
> > I'm pinning my hopes on satellite now (I don't really need
always-on,
> > though
> > it would be handy).
>
> Hmmm, I've looked at satellite and I'm not impressed, very bad lag at
> times, useless for online gaming, no upstream connection (so you
still
> need a phone line and an ISP) and *DOUBLE* the cost of ADSL from
BT, I
> think not! So I would still need my ISDN for the second line
anyway so I
> struggle to see the point really.
>
> I know there are a few cheaper providers out there of satellite BB but I
> still do not think it offers good VFM. I reckon a better bet is an
> "always on" ISDN, but that's =A340 a month, IIRC, so still m= ore
expensive
> than a better service...if you can get it of course. :/
>
> K.

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