anybody have experience with this outfit?

[Bill Campbell]

On Mon, Jan 10, 2005, Net Llama! wrote:
>On Mon, 10 Jan 2005, dep wrote:
>> and yes, it is my last choice, too -- i've watched satellite teevee
>> during a bad rainstorm and watched it turn into pixellated hell, for a
>> start -- but i think it is the only alternative to dialup. it would be
>> good if there were some competition in the field, and i guess there
>> will be in due course, but for now they seem to be the only game in
>> town today. the latency makes sense -- the bird is at 25,000 miles, so
>> the speed of light alone guarantees close to a third of a second delay
>> (that weirdness we seen on television in interviews with persons
>> overseas and by sat phone). the upside -- the lipstick on this pig --
>> is that it is certainly bleeding edge, isn't it? something to look back
>> on in a few years in much the way that we now look back on setting the
>> interleaf on an mfm drive (or hard file, as ibm called it).
>
>I don' know that i'd call this the bleeding edge.  The future of broadband
>seems to be BoP (broadband over power lines).  I think this satellite
>stuff is a relic of an older age when everything over satellite seemed
>like the way to go.

We looked extensively into satellite options almost ten years ago when we
were setting up ISPs in remote areas.

Satellite was only considered the way to go by people who either didn't
consider the basic physics of satellite communications or have absolutely
no other way to do broadband.  The latency due to speed of light and
distrance considerations simply won't go away although putting something
like Akami on the bird can cut it in half for commonly accessed web pages.

Rural areas with ancient copper telephone lines and relay operated switches
are often served reasonably well using a central point with T1 access using
line of site or near line of site wireless to implement the broadband over
fairly limited areas.

Bill
--
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