Skybeam?

I'm considering Skybeam at my place in Bailey. I had this before when it was another company and it didn't work out. Has anyone had experience with them in Bailey? I know their service in Conifer was much better but there were problems with the Bailey service back then.

I've had them since they first came up here (Bailey) as WisperHell. The past year or so the service has improved considerably. I'd still go with Qwest if they'd run DSL here, but have been doing ok with Skybeam.

Just curious, what's the cost of DSL vs. Skybeam? I'm assuming that the Skybeam system is a VSAT antenna vs. DSL that rides POTS. I know switching technology has improved by leaps and bounds over the last ten years so even if your connection is riding old four wire control wire it still gets faster if you put new switches on the end of the wire so I'm happy with DSL. At the same time I'm curious to know if ASAT solutions using a VSAT antenna have gotten any cheaper and if they are faster (uplink being the lesser of the two paths of traffic).

EVCOHS has told us that we can now get 12 MBPS Century Link here in King's Valley.

DSL here only gives me around 700k but they charge for the full 1.5 M. Skybeam is microwave, not satellite. It's around the same cost but much higher speed. They knew when they bought Wispertel that they would have to replace many of the radios.

towermonkey wrote: DSL here only gives me around 700k but they charge for the full 1.5 M. Skybeam is microwave, not satellite. It's around the same cost but much higher speed. They knew when they bought Wispertel that they would have to replace many of the radios.

If it's line of sight microwave then weather like we had earlier tonight will degrade or knock down your connectivity all together; telephone lines don't fare much better when the sky opens up, especially when the infrastructure is old. If it was me I guess I'd side with more speed and the occasional loss or degraded signal, especially when the cost is a wash.

Where we're located I have no choice. It's either dial-up or Skybeam.

I looked at the Skybeam web site, they are considerably more expensive than DSL. I have been looking for an alternative to CenturyLink, but I don't want to pay more than double for the same speed. CenturyLink DSL runs us $20/month for 12mps....Skybeam at 10mps is $49.95......Right now I am considering using DISH Network for both internet and phone along with our TV service....they are almost exactly the same price as CenturyLink, but I get much better customer service from DISH....not that either one is great.

I use Hughesnet at one of my sites and the speeds are horrible. Look at the fine print. They cap your monthly downloads then reduce your bandwidth if you exceed it.

otisptoadwater wrote:

towermonkey wrote: DSL here only gives me around 700k but they charge for the full 1.5 M. Skybeam is microwave, not satellite. It's around the same cost but much higher speed. They knew when they bought Wispertel that they would have to replace many of the radios.

If it's line of sight microwave then weather like we had earlier tonight will degrade or knock down your connectivity all together; telephone lines don't fare much better when the sky opens up, especially when the infrastructure is old. If it was me I guess I'd side with more speed and the occasional loss or degraded signal, especially when the cost is a wash.

Good point, but at 5.8 GHz, the fade is minimal. You have to get up to 10 Gig before you start seeing major rain fade.