Satellite satisfaction?

Your local phone company laughs when you ask about DSL. And your cable company says "someday" when you ask about a cable modem. I feel your pain. My office is in a small town (pop. 5,000) in the wilds of Colorado. I love living here, except for the lack of high-speed connections to the Internet.

Industry figures suggest that about 32 million U.S. homes will never be eligible for DSL or cable modem service. I can get a T-1 for just $1,200 per month or ISDN for $225 per month - no thanks.

The great hope for many in my shoes is satellite data transfer. The first-generation consumer satellite data links, which providers call one-way links, let you receive data over the satellite link, but required a phone line to send it. These next-generation links operate two-way, so you don't need a phone line.

So what's out there? We found half a dozen vendors are rolling out service: DirecPC, Pegasus' Pegasus Express Pro, StarBand, Tachyon, Thruput Systems and WildBlue. Largely consumer-oriented, DirecPC and StarBand are starting to sell to the home office/small business market. In contrast, Tachyon and Thruput Systems focus most of their energies on high-end commercial accounts.

While WildBlue and Pegasus Express Pro seem to strike a middle ground, neither has yet to launch service. WildBlue plans to go live by spring 2002; Pegasus by year-end. We typically ignore products that aren't yet available, but we made an exception because WildBlue and Pegasus - which use the KA band satellite communications gear promising higher speeds - suggest the direction the market is moving.

All the services use small dish antennas and require a clear view of the southern sky. (If you can get satellite TV, you can get satellite Internet. Most services even use the same dish.)

Service stories

Offerings range and pricing models are oftentimes complex, suggesting the market is still finding itself. Be sure to examine the offerings carefully before you sign a contract providing service that doesn't meet your needs.

Take StarBand. Service starts at about $69 per month for 500K bit/sec download and 60K bit/sec upload speeds. You may connect additional users through WinProxy for free, and usage is unlimited. However, DirecPC's pricing is based on the number of users you'll connect to the system. (For instance, 10 users cost $179 per month.) Throughput is 400K bit/sec downloads and 128K bit/sec uploads with unlimited connectivity. Note: Because DirecPC claims 5% of its customers use 50% of its system load, the company reserves the right to reduce your available bandwidth if you exceed your usage.

Tachyon bills based on the bandwidth you request, without limitations. Thruput Systems measures the amount of data you move and bills accordingly. Thruput offers 1, 2 and 3 gigabyte-per-month plans, with additional usage being billed at 30 cents per megabyte. Recently, Thruput introduced two flat-rate plans, at $699 or $1,399 per month.

WildBlue says its pricing will be competitive with DSL and cable service. And Pegasus plans to offer T1-speed downloads, and 256K bit/sec or better uploads at competitive prices.

Speed dreams

While these services all tout speeds that approach or exceed that of DSL, it seems that some of the companies are selling the sizzle but not the steak. While vendors promise rated speeds from 400K bit/sec to 3M bit/sec, all too often that's the signaling speed, not your actual available bandwidth. Latency (or the time it takes a signal to make it to and from the satellite) is the culprit.

To send a signal from your antenna, to the satellite, to the service provider and then back again introduces roughly a half-second delay. Whether this is important depends on the application you're using. Playing a network game? It's the difference between life and death. Using a relatively slow character-oriented program such as telnet, you'll experience tremendous delays in data - as much as a half-second lapse between the time you type a character and the time it appears on screen. Downloading a file, loading a graphics-dense Web page or accessing an online database won't be affected much. The data flow will take a little longer to get started, but once it does, you won't notice delays.

Whether it affects your day-to-day usage, the idea of latency turns a lot of people off. As such, vendors are bound and determined to beat the laws of physics - or at least find a loophole. Some services cache Web content locally and tweak the communications protocol to allow more data to be sent with each packet.

Limitations list

DirecPC and StarBand show their consumer focus. While they let customers route LAN traffic to the Internet, you can't use a fixed IP address, which bars you from running an e-mail or Web server. There is a workaround, though. Dynamic DNS vendors such as the Tzolkin and Dynamic DNS Network Services let you link your dynamic IP address to your domain name, allowing others to locate your servers.

Then there's how to get your data from the satellite. Many services use USB adapters to connect the satellite antenna to your PC. Typically this requires you to use a Windows PC to route data from your network to the Internet. Better, some vendors have begun offering Ethernet-based connections, so the satellite adapter connects right into the LAN. This approach lets you use whatever operating system best meets your needs and means you don't have to dedicate a PC as your LAN's router to the Internet.

No doubt, all these packages meet someone's needs. At this point, we're keeping a close watch on what's coming next year. For instance, StarBand plans include a small business product that will eventually allow fixed IP addresses, and Pegasus plans to offer fixed IP addresses as well as VPN technology.

Satellite services scorecard

Contact Reviews Editor Mike Avery

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