:help: Is there anyone within the ODW family who uses a SATELLITE INTERNET CONNECTION?

I live in a remote area (Lake Argyle, north west Western Australia) & can only get dial up or a very, very slow 56k wireless connection. Obviously neither is good enough for trading or even Skype..........or downloading the chatline and talking to my ODW family :rant:

I've applied via Westnet for a sat connection but wonder if anyone can tell me in comparison to say Next G or broadband how good it is in their experience with trading. Or, if you have any tips of speeding up the process to get the dish (took me 4 weeks just to get my home telephone connected with Telstra). Or, any information in this regard would be great.

Thanks very much

Hello Aroha

I have a satelite connection with westnet as i'm unable to get adsl via phone line also. I only have the basic connection and it does have trouble some times with everything running live so I wouldn't go for the basic speed, go for higher and also you would need to have a higher download limit, 1gb is not enough if you watch any videos online.

Beware that westnet charge extra per MB when you go over your download limit, they don't shape your speed for satelite. I was lucky enough to get around this with the 3G wireless which now is available in my area and I run all my stuff through this now and keep satelite for back up and for general home us.

Hope this helps :scratchchin:

Cheers Errol:beach:

Hello Again Aroha

Is that your motorhome for sale on ebay.

The big blue bus, yes it is! Plenty of interest, just no buyers as yet. I've forwarded many people to ODW to help them finance!

Thanks for your info regarding the sat dish. Would you mind telling me where you are in WA and when you got Next G. Are you remote? What shire are you in? I've ended up contacting 2 remote areas today to ask them to help me campaign for the Next G signal. Some places just "got it", others like us will have to claw our way up the list to remind the govt we actually exist out here.

Cheers

Hi Aroha, I live in Murray Shire, we live up in the hills between Pinjarra & Dwellingup, I got the next G card only a couple of weeks ago, but the service has been available for around 15 months. No other service provider will work so thats why we got satelite first but Telstra have finally started to offer some competive pricing now so thats why I went and got a next G card.

Good luck with the Govt and telstra.

My wife is keen to travel now that we have seen some of the motorhomes around so I have another new goal to aim for now.

Cheers and turn your dreams into reality

Aroha,

One tip for sat connections is to make sure your provider is using the IPStar satellite as it is a faster and more robust service than bigpond. There are latency issues with voice over bigpond sat but these are reduced with IPStar and they actually advertise voip services for use with it. The latency means it is annoying for things like virtual private networking etc but quite ok for internet including high band width stuff. We have some dramas in times of heavy rain. You can get long range external aerials now for nextG modems which would possibly be better if you have a sniff of a signal. I am contemplating switching from bigpond sat to a 40foot aerial and nextG in SE QLD.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for that info. Never heard of it before but will Google & learn more. I can get 1 bar of a Next G signal if I'm half way down the lake but then I'd need a house boat. Modems don't work out here at all. It's either dial up or sat.

Thanks again. Ever bit of information helps.

Sorry, I meant a nextG modem that is wireless. There are high end units around that you can even plug in conventional phones/faxes. Basically you have a high aerial to access nextG wireless and you have a modem at the bottom that you can either plug into or run inhouse wireless broadband internet. There is no latency compared to the sattelites. I don't know how the charges compare though. If you don't think you would have a nextG signal, forty foot up, then go for the IPStar Sat. Check out some of these sites for more info. Cheers, Richard

http://www.ipstar.com.au/
http://www.powertec.com.au
http://www.fixedwirelessterminal.com/ericsson_w25/antennas.html
http://www.fixedwirelessterminal.com/ericsson_w25/index.html

Hi there Aroha,
Yes i use next g with a sierra laptop 7.2 card and it comes with a little aerial which hooks on your laptop and helps a bit,and you can now get aerials to hook in with a patch lead .To get the aerials you have to go privately because telstra shops dont like to sell them so i know of a good shop in perth that will send you a aerial and patch lead that you need and if it doesnt get signal you can send it back. They are much better than the original next g cards and I'm on a 10bg plan for 120/month and the card costs $290 and if you have another telstra service and bundle it they will rebate you the $290. I have 2 bars here at the moment and ive never been booted off and it is much faster that satellite and a little faster than adsl. If you want the name of the shop in perth skype me and ill give it to you. He sends aerials all over Australia so im sure he can help you. Just remember next g is different than 3g and only telstra sell next g.
hope that helps
regards Paul

Hi Aroha,
Looks like you've received some good feedback already from others but I just thought I reply with my experience with both satellite & Next G broadband. I live in semi rural area half way between Brisbane & Toowoomba where I cannot get ADSL through our phone line. About 18mths ago I gave up on dial-up and got satellite through a company called Bluemaxx who run off the Ipstar service and have quite reasonable plans. As has been mentioned heavy cloud will affect the satellite service and I found it was prone to dropping out a couple of times a week even in fine weather, although overall it was a definate improvement on dial up and I was quite happy with the speed of the connection.

About 2 months ago I decided to make the move to Telsta's NextG wireless service and as luck would have it I was in an area in close proximity to a recently upgraded Telstra tower and even inside the house I average download speeds of 2-3 mbps. Although it's alot more expensive then satellite the portability, reliability, increased speed and silent modem make it worth the extra expense. All the best with finding a solution to your internet situation.
-Brett

Thank you again for your contributions / information. Here's a note for anyone else who lives remote thinking about their connection : If & when I have the satellite installed, as we're remote it'll all be covered by government rebates (about $3K). BUT, that's for the initial installation. If I want to move it, it's at my expense & apparently, where I live, it'll cost approx $1000 per move! In the next 8 months I know for a fact I'll be moving house twice as we're moving from our motorhome to a house, then the house is being relocated at the end of the year.

In the big scheme of things, it's just another cost towards financial freedom, and hopefully I'll be able to claim it. My first ever trade made $2K. I'm also campaigning to have the Next G available out here so hopefully that'll kick in before I need to move a sat dish.

I'm off to confirm my living arrangements in writing before I do anything further...................:scratchchin:

You can check to where the nearest 3G tower is to where you live.
http://www.yourbroadband.com.au

Cheers Robin. It's alot more involved than that unfortunately as I live in a remote area - www.lakeargyle.com. I'll give an update of where I'm at soon.

Ultimately, I need $1.2 million :jawdrop: (not a misprint) to get a Next G tower installed here. :rant: :censored::help::reading::wallbash:PLUS :loco: TO GET TO :beach: It'll be worth it as I'm very confident it will go ahead. ...........Kimberley time..............

Here's a bit of an update for anyone interested, or who may require the same thing for getting a decent internet signal where you live -

- Since April, 2009 I've been campaining to get a Telstra Next G signal where I live
- I researched who else would need the signal & have support from ALL of them - local police, FESA, SES, shire, Marine & Safety, EVERY business, power suppliers, water suppliers - actually everyone who is involved with or use this area / Lake
- This has involved talks with - our local shire, local politicians, local development commission, regional development commission (Kimberley region), local funding departments (government funding), WA Telstra regional management, WA State Government (too many departments & people to mention! - including Brendan Grylls, infrastructure departments, funding, development.........)
- Due to all of this support, Telstra commenced a feasibility study which involved the head of WA Telstra coming up here & sitting on the roof of my husband's commercil vessel on the Lake to check signal availability.
- He has said if I can get the funding and a plot of land to stick it on, we can get the repeater station
- I need $1.2M from what was originally $400,000 (which was easily accessible at first due to the big business out here)
- I'm due to hear from the Water Corporation of WA on Monday to advise if they will give some of their land to install a repeater. I've had to wait as Telstra & The Water Corp have been in negotiations for months regarding rental agreements for the whole state. Once these are sorted out, they should be able to give me an answer.
- I just had my first letter last week from a WA politician advising they can't help me with funding & I should wait until the next "round" of funding. It's definitely a 'cut & paste' letter and I don't believe he looked into my proposal at all. I'll just cross him off the list & go to the next guy on the list.

I was a bit crushed at first because it's actually the first bit of negative feedback I've had really. Everyone I've dealt with has been more than helpful and if they couldn't help, have bent over backwards to forward me onto the right department or next up the management pole.

So as you can see, it's more than checking out where the signal is via the Telstra website. It has definitely been time consuming but I have learnt so much when it comes to government - local & state and confirmed more to me it's who you know & what you know sometimes. I'm constantly told it's my commitment & obvious passion for the area that picks up momentum and drive for other people to help. I have to say that I always have Bill's teachings of motivation (aswell as Robbo:1tu:) in my head & push until I get what I want.

It'll happen I tells ya!

So, in all seriousness, if you know a WA politician or have been involved in major development / infrastructure funding PLEASE CONTACT ME OR REPLY TO THIS THREAD.

Once all this goes ahead (and it will!) I'll be voting myself onto my kids school P & C committee. Look out!!