Regular readers of this blog be warned – this article is about the internet infrastructure needed to insure Internet users are online in the first place. We can perform all of the search engine optimization (SEO) we want, but if our target audience isn’t online due to lack of access, our results are going to disappoint. Marketing professionals are thus warned: what follows is a look at a potential technical solution to the digital divide.
In the early 1980′s I discovered the net. As a university student in Maine, I kept in touch via e-mail with a friend at Cornell University in New York state. It seemed like magic – 80 character monochromatic video terminals allowed us to exchange messages in minutes. The net in question was Bitnet, an early type of Internet connecting educational institutions. Later, in the early nineties, I used today’s internet to exchange email and files with clients. A great improvement over sending pizza sized magnetic tapes across town or across country. In Trieste in the mid-nineties I was able to browse the latest New York Times with Mosaic. By the late nineties, I had an ISDN connection in my home office (thank you, Peter Friedenbach). Of course ISDN gave way to ADSL… or did it?
If you live in a rural area in Italy, there is only a 50% chance of having access to DSL service.1 So what is a country boy refugee from the big city to do? It appears that hope is on the horizon, at 13°, 23.5° and 33° east, to be more specific. Over the past year the satellite operators Eutelsat and Astra have launched “consumer oriented” Internet services using bidirectional satellite communication to reach areas not currently served by ADSL, WiMAX or courier pigeons.
Astra2Connect
Astra’s offer, Astra2Connect, was first launched in the German market in March 2007. Astra uses a satellite at 23.5° east and requires a 75-80cm bidirectional satellite dish. Download speeds are available from 256 kbps to 2048 kbps at prices ranging from €20 to €90 a month (€240 – €1080/year) depending on the maximum speed and the distributor.
Pricing is fairly homogeneous across Europe – probably due to an attentive marketing organization aware of the ease of price comparison possible thanks to the Euro. The major differences are to be found in discounts offered for 2 year commitments and 2 year prepaid agreements. As with Tooway service, there are three start-up costs to consider: equipment, installation and in some cases, a “set-up” fee. The equipment seems to be going for €300 – €400. Some dishes are also able to receive Astra Tv, presumably the predominately German language programming found on Astra 19° east. Some distributors offer hardware rental options, which might be a good idea if you think Astra2Connect will go belly up, as often happens with niche technology. Only a few distributors have announced pricing for the 2048 kbps option.
As Europe is officially a single market, EU consumers should be free to purchase service from ANY of the EU based resellers, despite any information to the contrary about franchise areas etc. In the auto sector there have been plenty of court rulings on the subject; in the banking area, the EU has been clear that fee differences between “national” and intra-Europe transactions are illegal. In the case of Internet satellite service, your relationship with a reseller requires you to speak their language in order to sign a contract and to log support requests. Almost all installations are handled by a third party, taking this element out of the equation. In practice, it is not clear if a reseller will supply you outside their “designated” service territories without a court reminding them of the law.
Satellite Internet suffers from strict “Fair Usage Policy” (FUP), also called “Fair Access Policy” (FAP), data transfer limits, and Astra2Connect is no exception. Such policies are suppose to impact “power users” during the peak load periods, insuring good service for those who are “just” browsing web pages or downloading e-mail. While Astra doesn’t seem to publish any FAP detail on their website, one of their resellers does:
| Plan | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 256 | 512 | 1024 | 2048 | |
| Exceed GB… | and your max speed drops to… | |||
| 1 | 128 | 320 | ||
| 1.5 | 96 | |||
| 2 | 64 | 160 | 768 | |
| 2.5 | 96 | 512 | ? | |
| 3 | 64 | 384 | ||
| 3.5 | 256 | |||
| 4 | 128 | |||
| 5 | 64 | |||
This means that if a user tries to download a full DVD, such as a Linux distribution, or a film, there is a chance their speed will drop down to sub-DSL levels – a penalty imposed for traumatizing 30 days! This does apparently happen in real life, if members of a German forum are to be believed. This throttling is apparently dynamic – you might not be penalized for exceeding certain data transfer limits as long as you don’t impact other users, i.e. you download in the middle of the night. The problem here is a lack of transparency – a typical user won’t know when they risk exceeding a moving target. This might not be so bad if the penalty – a slow as molassas connection – lasted just a few hours.
In the table below, we’ve attempted to provide comparison data taken from reseller’s websites. Unfortunately, the quality of the web sites and the level of information available is highly variable, making comparison a less than perfect exercise.
Digitaria‘s offer for the Italian market suffers from what appears to be overly expensive hardware – hardware which becomes useful as a boat anchor should Astra withdraw Astra2Connect service in the future. It might be worthwhile purchasing the hardware for half the price from StarDSL in Germany, assuming they would sell it separately.
| Distributor | Currently offered in | Equipment Package | Service Activation | Installation | 256 kbps download, 64 up | 512 kbps download, 96 up | 1024 kbps download, 128 up | 2048 kbps download, ? up | Vat | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| http://www.sonet.at/ | Austria | € 350 | € 90 | € 27 | € 37 | € 47 | ? | 2 year contract prices | ||
| http://www.astra2se.com/ | Belgium, Netherlands | € 450 | € 25 | € 37 | € 49 | ? | ||||
| http://www.viveole.fr/ | France: | € 350 | € 60 | € 20 | € 30 | € 40 | € 90 | |||
| http://www.stardsl.de/ | Germany | € 300 | € 40 | € 50 | € 60 | € 90 | Incl | |||
| http://www.yato-tripleplay.com/ | Austria, Germany, Switzerland | € 320 | € 100 | € 20 | € 40 | € 50 | € 80 | Incl | 256 price is for 2 year prepayment | |
| http://www.filiago-shop.de/ | Austria, Germany, Switzerland | € 320 | € 100 | € 135 | € 20 | € 30 | € 40 | ? | Incl | Prices based on 2 years paid in advance |
| http://www.dsl-o-sat.de/ | Germany | € 320 | € 100 | € 26 | € 36 | € 47 | € | |||
| http://www.nbb.ie/ | Ireland | included in monthly fee? | € 100 | € 125 | € 49 | € 59 | € 69 | € | Includes some telephone calls | |
| http://www.digitaria.it/ | Italy | € 600 | € 24 | € 24 | € 36 | € 54 | announced, but no pricing | Incl | ||
| http://www.x3mconnect.pl/index.php?page=oferta_ceny | Poland | 150 PLN | 230 PLN | 300 PLN | Incl | |||||
| http://www.elsat.si/detail.php?id=289 | Slovenia | € 385 | € 100 | € 80 | € 20 | € 30 | € 40 | 2 year contract prices |
Tooway
Eutelsat’s offer, cutely called Tooway (a play on two way in case you’re reading this before having the morning coffee), “…is based on ViaSat’s SurfBeam® DOCSIS® two-way broadband satellite system. … The SurfBeam system is well established in North-America with more than 250,000 users.”
The Ka-band at 13° should allow some specially equipped antennas to receive standard Hotbird 13° tv reception. The Ku-band service is offered from 33° East; it would be worth checking if a single antenna, with an extra LNB, could receive the Astra 28° signal, home of the BBC, as well. There is also a difference in maximum upload speed available depending on which antena is being used so be sure to checkout these details when service is being provisioned.
Unlike the Astra2Connect offer, the Tooway offer conditions are rather confusing. Officially, there are three service levels, Bronze, Silver and Gold. The problem is that these service levels are not standard from one reseller to another. For some the difference in the service levels is the data transfer threshold before the FUP (data transfer limit) kicks in. Other resellers also limit transfer speed based on the price level.
| Bronze | Silver | Gold | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Distributor | Currently offered in | Equipment Package | Set-up Fee | Installation | Price | Download Kbps | Upload Kbps | FUP | Price | Download | Upload | FUP | Price | Download | Upload | FUP |
| Sat2Way | France, Belgium, Spain | € 600 | ? | € 50 | 2048 | 384 | 3Gb | € 65 | 2048 | 384 | 5GB | € 100 | 2048 | 384 | 11Gb | |
| Internetagentur Schott | Germany, others? | not specified | € 100 | ? | € 40 | 2048 | 156 | 3Gb | € 56 | 2048 | 156 | 5GB | € 100 | 2048 | 156 | 10Gb |
| Sitmar | Italy | € 900 | ? | € 79 | 600 | 100 | 2Gb down/1Gb up | ? | 1024 | 128 | 3Gb down/2Gb up | ? | 2048 | 156 or 384 | 7Gb down/3Gb up | |
| Swisscom | Switzerland | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Bentley Walker | United Kingdom, Spain | ? | ? | ? | € 55 | 600 | 100 | ? | not listed | 1024 | 128 | ? | ? | 2048 | 156 or 384 | ? |
Tooway has a strong Italian connection – the Skylogic SkyPark operations center is in Turin. Yet Tooway’s pricing in Italy is detrimental to high consumer acceptance. Both the initial hardware cost and the monthly fees are inexplicably high compared to what is being offered in other countries and by Astra2Connect. Is the Italian reseller Sitmar targeting an ill informed wealthy consumer market?
HughesNet
There is also a third consumer operator, HughesNet. Yet Hughes resellers don’t seem to be promoting in any clear way their consumer offerings for Europe.
Why Satellite Broadband is the choice of last resort
The commitment of Astra and Eutelsat to surmount the digital divide is to be commended. Yet potential customers shouldn’t be under any illusions as to satellite service limitations:
- Latency. This is a fancy way of saying delay. Add about half a second to the usual delay from when you make a request for a web page or to download a file. This additional delay is due for the time needed to communicate from the earth to the satellite and back for the request and response. Internet applications which require quick response times, such as video gaming, won’t work. Web browsing delays can be mitigated by tweaking browser settings. VOIP talk applications should work with an annoying delay.
- Download (and upload) limits. Satellites are expensive. In order to keep per user costs down, many users must share the same limited resources. This effectively means downloading large files during peak usage times is frowned upon by Fair Use or Access Policies (FAP/FUP). Do “too much” of it, and your connection speed will be slowed down – making dial-up look attractive. You might be able to start bittorrent in the middle of the night, but this is not clear. You can forget about IP TV. From a provider point of view, this is all your fault. To quote HughesNet, …“many of those subscribers are not using HughesNet for its intended purpose”. Translated: Satellite Internet is intended for ocasional web surfing and downloading e-mails without those fancy slideset attachements someone forgot to zip.
- Weather. Heavy rain or snow may interfere with satellite transmission. Snow build up on your antenna can also be an issue – I speak from experience.
- Installation space. There may be zoning or space issues which impede installation of a satellite antenna.
- Startup costs. Between hardware, installation and “activation” fees, the start-up costs alone make satellite broadband uncompetitive with traditional DSL services.
Other DSL Broadband Alternatives
The best solution would be greater commitment to wired access. The last thing the world really needs is more electro-smog. Yet that won’t happen anytime soon.
WiMAX on the horizon
Probably the biggest threat to satellite broadband is the impending rollout of WiMAX service. WiMAX shouldn’t suffer the latency nor download limitations which afflict satellite broadband. Pricing should be competitive with wired DSL. Italy recently auctioned off spectrum licenses – it remains to be seen if national players such as AriaDSL make the most of the opportunity.
Remember ISDN?
In some countries, it is possible to have a persistent internet connection at 128kbps – using the ISDN technology from the 1980′s. Admittedly it isn’t broadband, but it is faster then dialup. In Italy, the cost is €24/month plus the monthly cost of the ISDN line, all of which is rather unfair as it isn’t your fault that Telecom Italia has neglected infrastructure investments – but at least you won’t have problems downloading too much data! Telecom Italia doesn’t promote this option on their website, its not really something they’re proud of, but you can ask their call center for details.
T1/T3 leased line
Telecoms companies have offered leased data lines since the 1960s. There are available even in rural areas, but are generally very expensive. Ask Telecom Italia about their “CDN” offerings.
What’s your experience with DSL Internet alternatives?
Don’t hesitate to leave a note about your experience.
1 Broadband Coverage in Europe, Final Report, 2007 Survey, (IDATE, October 2007), page 114.
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Sean Carlos is a web marketing consultant & teacher, assisting companies with their Search (SEO + PPC = SEM), Social Media & Digital Media Measurement strategies. Sean first worked with text indexing in 1990 in a project for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Since then he worked for Hewlett-Packard Consulting and later as IT Manager of a real estate website before founding Antezeta in 2006. Sean is an 
bravo, the article is well done and, without doubt, will be useful to many!
In the section on Other DSL Broadband Alternatives, Mobile Internet should be included.
As an example, MOBI is the first wifi router / SIP mobile broadband solution (54Mbps data rates) available in the Italian
market.
Further information in English is available here:
http://www.italiamobile.mobi/
Excellent research Sean!
if you ask for feedback…
VSAT (call it whatever you like, but VSAT has been around for years and that’s it what is offered) or (I
don’t remember how it is called) the one with the return channel by land
(usually phone line), always had obstacles:
- Costs, always, always high; what you have noted are fair use offers
because the sellers are desperate (see the broad band coverage
statistics) and are trying the consumer market. But in the end, the
price is the same.
- Latency, isn’t just a simple delay in opening a web page. It is
something much more serious, In my experience IP over DVB latency is
usually higher than that the one stated by the provider, because it is measured in ideal
conditions which are always far from reality. And if the latency is a delay
of about 2000ms in any TCP connection that happens, then one must
consider not only the opening of a page, but every image, every script,
every css .. in reality you have the feeling that you are browsing with
dial up or in the best case with a single ISDN channel. On the other
hand, the “bandwidth” does becomes broadband after the connection is
established; you can take advantage of higher download speeds, but not
in reality because of their fair use conditions.
In the end, what’s the point of broadband if you’re not allowed to use
it: Web browsing is slow, you can not download large files, p2p
applications do not work due to either latency or the NAT (all VSAT
providers operate NAT)?
VSAT was a connection type that was used in shared mode by the digital
divide worldwide (Africa, Asia, Latin America), by ISPs who use it
as backhaul and sell Internet access to end-users.
It was never defined as broadband. Neither has the technology been
changed nor the prices. The conclusion is clear I think …
Some comments on the feedback from Michael: indeed latency is an issue when using TCP/IP of satellite. However, using techniques like TCP acceleration and HTTP-pre-fetching and compression, the performance has been greatly improved, where the delay in comparison with DSL or cable is almost comparable. Further enhanced with modern traffic shaping, the broadband experience really exists on VSAT. Modern systems like Sat3Play (www.newtec.eu/sat3play) use this kind of technology.
To be honest, your arguments are outdated, so please try broadband over satellite. You’ll be surprised !
it is very useful but what about DVB-RCS? On a good satellite you can have upload 512 kbps using an antenna 75 cm diam. It is much faster than Astra2connect for.ex. Only terminal is expensive…
Petr, 512kbps on Astra2Connect will be possible soon too, but the choice for lower return speeds is influenced by more than just technical possibilities. Also the cost to have 512kbps in return is an element, which will be reflected in higher monthly subscription fees (as with DSL). And indeed you’re right, DVB-RCS is much more expensive than Astra2Connect (factor 2 to 3 more expensive).
Visit our web site for more info about the new Tooway service. http://www.europe-satellite.com
We did a first test with TooWay via http://www.speedtest.net/ . Download 1971 kbps, upload 270 kbps.It is 3 time faster than Astra2Connect can do!
Astra2Connect with 0.5W BUC will never go to 512 kbps. TooWay using KA-SAT will multiple speed in 2011. Terminal price is not very different, FAP Skylogic is for an user more acceptable than FUP Astra.
The so-called “fair use” is very limiting.
By the end of the month I am forced, like now, to turn to an ISDN connection. Astra2connect (distributed in my case by Deutsche Telekom) is too slow to be used even for simple web browsing.
Hi Sean,
Thanks for your excellent article. I am one of the guys pretty frustrated about FUP. I purchased the tooway solution at http://www.numeo.fr They mention FUP on their website. That’s it.
When I installed the equipment I got amazing speed 1900bps down and 120 up
After downloading about 70 Mbytes I was cut back to 15kbps!!! After one hour I was back at full speed.
After downloading another 250 Mbytes I was back at 15 kbps, but now for the rest of the week!! After a power dip the modem downloads first its firmware, but being at 15 kbps this took days, leaving me without internet.
I understand the FUP policy but cutting you down at 15 kbps is the same as cutting the connection.
Apart of that Numeo is a disaster to work with. They are very badly orgainised, technical support very very overloaded and they do not respond to any of your questions or issues.
In the meantime I canceled my contract with them and are still waiting for a reply on my request to communicate their return address.
about FAP – it is working as specified in the contract, if the speed is not limited when your download is higher than the window, your consumption is exceeding your profile/price. There are for ex. theses limitations:
eutelsat-basic-1h 1h 30 MB
eutelsat-basic-4h 4h 60 MB
eutelsat-basic-1d 1d 180 MB
eutelsat-basic-1w 1w 480 MB
eutelsat-basic-4w 4w 1200 MB
eutelsat-bronze-1h 1h 53 MB
eutelsat-bronze-4h 4h 100 MB
eutelsat-bronze-1d 1d 300 MB
eutelsat-bronze-1w 1w 800 MB
eutelsat-bronze-4w 4w 200o MB
So you have to buy the appropriated product Gold-Silver-Bronze-Basic in order to avoid this bad surprise. FYI – we have from 13 Tooway only one terminal exceeding 1 week and 4 weeks window..BTW, the support is a question of your local distributor, in my experience the Skylogic support is working well.
Does anyone know of reasonable rates for the HughesNet network packages?
I currently use a HughesNet system, have done for the past two years, as living in rural France this is still the only reliable communication tool I have with the world.
However, I can’t say I’m really happy with the current set up and wanted to put a question out to your readers …
I currently pay (exchange-rate dependant, as I purchase the connectivity from a UK-based company) between 90 and 120 Euros a month for a download speed of 512 kbps and an upload speed of 128 kbps. I not an excessive user: 200mb to 1Gb per month at present. I use BitMeter to measure my usage, so I’m pretty confident of these figures, and I would use it considerably more if I weren’t throttled all the time.
I don’t watch videos, don’t download large files, simply browse the web, research, upload the odd website, do maintenance for small clients …
Yet if on anyone day I exceed about 50mb (which to be frank is easy to do if you are uploading a website or making changes or listening to BBC radio!) … then I suffer the dreaded throttling.
And yes, even for a light user like myself it does make things tiresome.
So I’ve looked at HughesNet distributors Europe-wide (as I speak German, Spanish and French and can read Dutch and Italian so language is no barrier) … but their service offering seems to be lamentable compared with the Astra2connect and Tooway offerings.
The sites are hard to find, and when you do their offerings are less rarely comprehensible, and frequently less than enticing.
I’m not keen on the idea of junking my dearly bought HughesNet satellite system for another system (it cost me 1800 Euros at the time) … but is this the only alternative?
So, does anyone know of reasonable rates for the HughesNet network – I’m looking for equitable packages to the French http://www.numeo.fr : 3.6Mb download, 384Kb upload, 4.8Gb bandwidth.
Even half these speeds would be an improvement, but at the current price of approx 250 – 299 Euros a month for a lesser service than what Tooway seems to be offering, I’m loathe to pay HughesNet for it!
Any answers?
And thanks Sean, for a great article!
You can get Astra2Connect from SES Astra for 320 EUR (all-in equipment, not installer charges as you can install it yourselves), and monthly rates between 20 and 50 EUR. (www.astra2connect.com)
http://www.tooway.com/tooway-distributors.html
look for a tooway distributors in France
speed is much higher than Astra can have, choose a good package – see tha FAP. pricing starts on few Euros..
Just installed Astra2connect, 1024 kb/s package. During daytime, the highest download speed is around 400 kb/s, dropping to less than 40 kb/s around 18.00 hours !!!!!
In the middle of the night the nominal speed can be reached: downloading 2400 Mb of navigation maps was completed in 6 hours.
I will keep the ISDN line and GPRS stick and would not have purchased the Astra package if the information about it would have been the truth.
Living in the countryside after having triade all mobile solutions, i passe to tooway with opensky. Speed is decent, but it is not the issue, the issue are the very limiting 4gb that are not at all 4GB beacause of the FAP. I’m not a heavy user, since i try to’ do most things from Office, but still it is very limiting and frustrating: download a couple YouTube videos and a small app. from the Applestore and for a week forget about navigating the web. Just emails. They definitedly should upgrade their limitations allowing for the changes occurring on the web and amongst web users towards multimediality, heavier web pages, etc.
Roberta, the 4 Gb limit is imposed by your provider, not by Astra.
Change provider and you can have unlimited data transfer. There is however the ‘fair use policy’ which may cause reduced performance for several days or weeks, depending on when you started downloading large volumes.
FYI SwisCom details are burred here: http://www.swisscom.ch/res/beratung-service/infrastruktur/breitband/privatkunden/alternativen/index.htm?campID=src_satellite&
You seem very knowledgable in this field. We are looking for a practical, inexpensive solution for a reasonably fast internet connection to our house in rural Tuscany, no phone line, nearest broadband wifi in village at 5 km. Local people use a “chiavetta” stick but is this sufficient for streaming and is it practical for being online several hours a day at least?We need a minimum upload speed of 768KB I think. What do you recommend we do? thanks
As far as I know, none of the Sat operators will allow you to upload at 768 kBs. The maximum today is 512 kB but that is just a theoretical value you might reach around 3 AM only. In daytime you probably achieve 50% of the speed the providers offer.
We offer 2 Mbps upload and 10 Mbps download speeds. Visit our Hylas site for more info.