I have been an advocate for satellite broadband service as a solution for providing broadband in parts of Canada that cannot be served economically by wireline or terrestrial wireless technologies.
This summer, I have put my faith in satellite technology to power my connectivity from my office in Muskoka. Last week, I had broadband service installed by Barrett Xplore and it is working well, delivering all of the capabilities I need to run my consulting practice.
Now, there are some who have suggested that
anyone who thinks that satellite is an effective alternative should be required to use it. And then we’d see just how effective it is as an alternative.
I have been using it – and satellite is an effective alternative. New high-throughput satellites are being launched in 2011 and 2012.
Let me flip around the statement: anyone who thinks that satellite isn’t an effective solution should be required to try it. If my tax dollars are going to be used to subsidize broadband, I’d like to see that we are looking at cost effective solutions. There are a lot of households that cannot be reached any other way without obscene levels of public subsidy.
Let’s be sure Canada explores other innovative options to bridge the rural and remote digital divide – and Barrett Xplore is providing just that.
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That’s fantastic, I am very curious to know about the performance of current and next-gen satellites for broadband. Especially latency and upload speeds.
Any chance we could convince you to post some speedtest.net results for your satelite connection?
for reference, here’s how terrestrial wireless does. Bell turbo hub by Ericsson in Ontario cottage country (7.2MBps HSPA device):
Upload: 2.8 MBits/sec
Download: 0.6 MBits/sec
Ping: 75ms
Latency is always going to be an issue with geostationary orbiting satellites. Signals go up 22,500 miles, and back down – and then back again. Minimum of a half second for 90,000 miles of travel at the speed of light.
Here is a Speedtest: http://bit.ly/arWMqF
Next gen satellites (available next year at this time) will deliver this package at consumer friendly prices.
Is that service using the satellite for bidirectional data transit, or are you using dial-up/DSL/other for the upstream traffic?
The service is Ka-band satellite bi-directionally. Dial-up for the upstream is 10 year old technology. If DSL is available for upstream, there would be no need for satellite! Typical rural /remote phone plant can’t support dial-up at anything close to tolerable speeds. Hence the need for an alternate approach.
EDIT: I mixed up the upload/download for hspa
DOWNload: 2.8 MBits/sec
UPload: 0.6 MBits/sec
Ping: 75ms
Latency is a big issue. That’s great bandwidth for streaming or downloading, but web-apps have got to be sluggish, or anything synchronous like voice, gaming has got to be a non-starter.
Obviously, for remote areas, any broadband is better than none. But in a future leaning towards more and more computing, storage and apps migrating to the cloud, 1 second latency is going to be a problem.
Whether we like it or not, the gulf between 500-1000ms latency and the single-digit pings possible for urban wired broadband is likely to lead to a fundamentally different digital experience.
hey, that’s not bad speed on the satellite going up or down.
I’m getting same off a DSL on a dry loop from Teksavvy (actually less on the download)…
I agree that there will be two very fundamentally different web experiences in future due to broadband accesss. but the point about Canada being difficult to connect without HUGE subsidies is well taken.
Pehaps satellite should be a mid-range goal instead.
Just look at our Canada Post system, twice as expensive (or more) than the US post… because of our geography. To provide a quality service across the board, without throwing huge heaps of money at it? I think Mark has a good point.
Satellite is “workable”.
If all Canadians were connected even at those speeds, AND they became more productive, the issue of the money for true broadband connections would be solved on it’s own. We’d just BUY what we need then, and without need for subsidies, probably.
cheers.
Vince.