Comments on: Astra2Connect and Tooway close the Internet digital divide with satellite to home service, maybe.

By: Karmen

Karmen — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 07:21:51 +0000

Good morning Cheryl,
I would like to refer you to the websites: http://www.astra2connect.com which refers for Italy on to http://www.digitaria.it
You can find the options for broadband over stallite for rural areas on their website.
I hope you can find a suitable solution there.

By: Cheryl

Cheryl — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 08:55:06 +0000

Good Morning-
The original article was written in 2008 and I am just doing research on getting satellite now, 2012. Is there any updated information regarding the information given here? We are, in fact, in a rural Italian town and cannot get DSL (yes, I know, 2012 and we are without a valid connection). Any additional info would be much appreciated. Thanks!

By: europe-satellite.com

europe-satellite.com — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 16:23:50 +0000

We offer 2 Mbps upload and 10 Mbps download speeds. Visit our Hylas site for more info.

By: Cornelis Koger

Cornelis Koger — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 09:08:57 +0000

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.

By: Orazio Castagno

Orazio Castagno — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 18:40:31 +0000

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

By: LostInSwiss

LostInSwiss — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 23:19:13 +0000

FYI SwisCom details are burred here: http://www.swisscom.ch/res/beratung-service/infrastruktur/breitband/privatkunden/alternativen/index.htm?campID=src_satellite&

By: CDK

CDK — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 07:27:08 +0000

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.

By: Roberta Schiavulli

Roberta Schiavulli — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 06:22:03 +0000

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.

By: CDK

CDK — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 10:06:22 +0000

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.

By: Petr

Petr — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 08:59:22 +0000

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..

By: Tom

Tom — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 08:48:36 +0000

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)

By: Simon Williams

Simon Williams — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 08:24:07 +0000

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!

By: Petr

Petr — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 13:27:34 +0000

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.

By: Kees Wijnen

Kees Wijnen — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 10:35:09 +0000

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.

By: Steven

Steven — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 13:28:25 +0000

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.

By: Petr

Petr — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 08:49:28 +0000

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.

By: El Molino Systems S.L.

El Molino Systems S.L. — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 15:21:54 +0000

Visit our web site for more info about the new Tooway service. http://www.europe-satellite.com

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 07:10:52 +0000

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).

By: Petr Vecek

Petr Vecek — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:10:14 +0000

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…

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 14:37:30 +0000

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 !

By: Michael

Michael — Mon, 05 May 2008 16:10:31 +0000

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 …

By: Andrey Golub

Andrey Golub — Mon, 05 May 2008 07:48:37 +0000

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/