I recently moved to a place with some more space and land south of San Jose. It just so happens that where I moved to all though not far from San Jose is still the country by all definitions. Including its lack of Internet access. I exhausted ALL my options for high speed broadband before having to go with what I feared the most which is satellite broadband. During this transition I was without any Internet connection in our new space for almost a week. It has been a long time since I was that un-connected. I believe in unplugging from time to time but there is a difference between a conscious choice to unplug and the inability to be plugged in. I never realized how almost completely useless my computers are without the Internet. That is a whole topic of conversation for another day. About mid-week I figured all though the lots are quite a bit bigger where I moved to there has to be some neighbors with a open wi-fi connection somewhere. So I grabbed my computer and told my wife I was going on my quest for the Internet. So with my Mac flipped open constantly scanning for wireless networks I traveled up and down our whole property hoping to find an open connection. Finally I found one, so I grabbed a chair and planted under a tree to do my e-mail and surf the Internet.
Days later after clinging to my spot under the tree every time I need to send e-mail the satellite guys came and installed my satellite connection to the Internet. So here are all the reasons I don't like satellite Internet.
#1. Expensive - It is much more costly then DSL or Cable broadband even for slower speeds
#2. Slow - It is quite slow and because of the satellite connection there is severe latency. Even the slowest DSL speeds are faster then the 1.0 MBS package for satellite Internet. The latency though really bothers me. When I do a speed test it says I am getting around 1.0 MBS. Yet when I go to say the NY Times website it takes on average 5-7 seconds longer to load then the cheapest DLS package. This is due to the latency of the satellite having to send the signal up then get the data packets back down.
Since I am always highly critical of the user experience of everything we work on, I am quite displeased with the Internet experience satellite broadband brings. Which got me thinking that the broadband industry needs to really focus on true pervasive broadband if they want to truly deploy all the wonderful services they hope to. Because of the latency and satellite Internet I can no longer do VOIP, video conference or play console or computer games online.
It appears WiMax is my only hope.