Telecommunications Satellites Bring Broadband to Europe

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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May 9, 2000
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If you live in the UK or parts of Europe where the only solution to surfing the Internet is dialup, the times are changing. A pair of net-dedicated satellites will enable the 10 million households to connect to the Internet at broadband speeds.

These new satellites can handle a much faster throughput of data, and that is reflected in the services they'll be offering.
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Nice. Its too bad that running Fiber is so expensive in the UK , Its great that people are getting broadband its just too bad its from Satellite (considering the huge delay and pings making it virtually unusable for some applications).
 
Godmachine said:
Nice. Its too bad that running Fiber is so expensive in the UK , Its great that people are getting broadband its just too bad its from Satellite (considering the huge delay and pings making it virtually unusable for some applications).
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40/40 fiber /w HDtv + voip for 80 quid a month and norway is generally twice as expensive as uk (big mac index) and pays are average twice as high.
Can't complain :)
and i'm living in a very small town :D

uk will boost fiber stuff quickly as they will be lagging behind again, keeping up with technology is a key for a country to do good.
 
AtkinS said:
40/40 fiber /w HDtv + voip for 80 quid a month and norway is generally twice as expensive as uk (big mac index) and pays are average twice as high.
Can't complain :)
and i'm living in a very small town :D

uk will boost fiber stuff quickly as they will be lagging behind again, keeping up with technology is a key for a country to do good.
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The US is so fucking fucked then.
 
Tbh, as someone who has experienced HughesNet here in the US I can tell you that satellite based Internet is balls (like you Brits would say). Bandwidth is only half of the equation, the other half is latency and there's nothing that can be done to bring down satellite based latency.

For web surfing it will be fine, downloads also, but anything that requires 2-way comms, such as gaming, forget about it. Hughes has 700ms on a ping on a good day.
 
Thuleman said:
Tbh, as someone who has experienced HughesNet here in the US I can tell you that satellite based Internet is balls (like you Brits would say). Bandwidth is only half of the equation, the other half is latency and there's nothing that can be done to bring down satellite based latency.

For web surfing it will be fine, downloads also, but anything that requires 2-way comms, such as gaming, forget about it. Hughes has 700ms on a ping on a good day.
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we're getting 200 ms on a shitty african sattelitte connection at my job, the 4mbit sattelitte connection cost the same as our main office 3x 1gb!
WOOHOO!
getting internet in the worst parts of africa is downright impossible, cables, they're getting stolen, copper is like enough to feed a family lol.
 
"The ping tests to a server in California via Ka-Sat that I saw this week recorded a very stable 900 milliseconds."

That is nearly a full second of latency. Long latency times is inherent in satellite internet. No way around it. I work from home and use a IP phone. I can live anywhere in the country as long as I get descent broadband. I would like move as far away from the city as possible and live in the mountains. But there is no broadband and it looks like future sat based tech will not improve the latency issue. The bandwidth is more than enough, but the latency is a deal breaker. :(
 
The one thing they can't overcome is Latency though. It will be fine for email, web, etc... but any sort of gaming will probably be out of the question. Video may or may not be watchable.

I have a feeling it's going to be expensive too.
 
AtkinS said:
we're getting 200 ms on a shitty african sattelitte connection at my job, the 4mbit sattelitte connection cost the same as our main office 3x 1gb!
WOOHOO!
getting internet in the worst parts of africa is downright impossible, cables, they're getting stolen, copper is like enough to feed a family lol.
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200ms is damned fine for a sat connection!
 
Not all online gaming is out of the question if the user is limited to satellite broadband. I suspect that a 1 second delay isn't a big deal when playing turn-based games like the Heroes of Might & Magic, Disciples, and Age of Wonders series.
 
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