June 8, 2006

Satellite Internet Service Review from a Vermont's former Secretary of Transportation

Last April I wrote about Wild Blue, a company that provides internet service via satellite. If you can't get DSL or Cable, satellite service is a viable option. Tom Evslin who blogs at Fractals of Change writes about his experience in using the service in Vermont. Tom Evslin's career has taken him from nerd to CEO to novelist and consultant with a brief stop as Transportation Secretary for the State of Vermont.

He speaks about two issues that are detractors for the service - not just Wild Blue, but any satellite based internet service:

He writes that one problem is Because the service uses satellite, I know there will be problems during heavy precipitation but don't know yet how severe and how frequent. Because the satellites are geostationary (always above the same point on the equator so that a fixed dish can point at them), over two tenths of a second of delay (latency) afflicts every packet in each direction.

The other problem he writes about is ..the "fair access" policy. It IS fairly spelled out and prominent at WildBlue so you know what you're getting. On the plan we subscribe to, we are entitled to upload 3 billion bytes and download 12 billion bytes in any thirty day period. If we exceed that, we get throttled back to near dialup speeds until we are in compliance.

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