Posted on 01/01/2002 5:52:07 PM PST by Dubya
I want to change from ISP to Dish. DSL will probaly never be where I live in my life time. I sure can use some help on which one to use. And any other help I can get. Thanks.
Good luck, you won't be sorry!
Be sure that you order Dish Network at the same time as it is virtually "Free" equipment to you but pays the installer double.
Starband by itself does not pay the dealer/installer enough to make it worth his while, so if you don't order the Satellite service, he will probably be conveniently 'sold out'.
Starband is partnered with Dish Network and I have a package deal where I get hundreds of stations of TV (which I don't watch much, but my family does) and I have Satellite connection to the internet, both upload as well as download.
The cost for this is slightly more that I was paying before. We used to pay for two connections to to cable TV (for my house and my mom's mobile home next door), we paid for an additional dedicated telephone line, and for monthly ISP charges as well. After cancelling all of the above, installing the dish, we are paying about $10 to $12 per month more than we did previously.
We have several times more TV channels, including Fox News (which was unavailable from our old cable company). We have internet speeds usually in the range of 500 kbps upto 1 Mbps.
Their tech support has been excellant as I have been having computer problems ever since I bought this junky computer and they have been very helpful in helping me.
I hope this helps and if you have any questions please feel free to ask.
I don't have as much love for Dish as I did. They have gone right along with the NC legislature to tax satellite TV with no opposition, but when they want the "right" to carry local channels Dish is more than willing to cry, whine and beg for support.
I'm pretty happy. I have my DSL via BellSouth, who I also work for, and they rank consistantly in the B/B+ from DSL Reports.
There was a thread at SlashDot last December that included some comments about DirecPC tech support:
1) The "Glory" Of Tech Support
2) Re:It is all so very true.
3) Anyone out there ever use DirecPC
4) Re:Anyone out there ever use DirecPC
From the third of these:
I would go so far as to say that DirecPC is a worse service than PacBell DSL because it has no potential for doing what is is purported to do. We were explicitly instructed to lie to customers and tell them that the reason their bandwidth was so low was a "problem with IRQs" or anything else under the sun other than that we were intentionally restricting their bandwidth. We even had a page on which we could enter the customer's account information and it would tell us that they were, in fact, having their bandwidth massively throttled. This was to let us know when to stop troubleshooting and when to start lying. I absolutely kid you not.
I used MindSpring as my terrestrial ISP; their IP tunneling seemed to work fine, when I didn't get a busy signal. A warning about MindSpring, though: at that time they had TERRIBLE DNS servers; their DNS would go down for two or three hours a day. MindSpring has since merged with Earthlink.
I'm pretty happy. I have my DSL via BellSouth, who I also work for, and they rank consistantly in the B/B+ from DSL Reports.
alt.satellite.direcpc
alt.satellite.starband
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