[Bogey78O]

What's your set-up? I don't know much but I could probably help a little. DSL may be available where you are in the next few years. They developed a way to extend it's range up to 60,000 feet.

[lmr]

Did you call your cable company (If you have one in your area) to check on the availability of High Speed Internet? Some rural areas in my state already have "Roadrunner", and my state is mostly rural.

[hoot2]

"On March 31, 1999, FCC price controls on cable TV ended. Under deregulation your cable company can charge you whatever it wants. (Just like the Gas and Electric Co. in California.)"

wouldn't use dishnetwork....this is n out n out lie....
the "public utilities commision" controls prices in kalifornia...libereal politicians...thats why the electric co is bankrupt....

loral? is this a chinese rocket?

[usconservative]

I've been looking at 2-way satellite internet connectivity for my inlaws, who live in a very rural part of the Upper penninsula of Michigan.

Anyone have any real-life experience with DirecWay, or DirecPC satellite systems? Would love to hear some feedback before I pop $500-$700k for one.

[spycatcher]

StarBand

"In addition to the two-way satellite Internet service, the StarBand system can also be configured to receive satellite television service from EchoStar's DISH Network."

[Aaron_A]

You should check out some of the services provided by Gilat. I do not use their services but came across them during my some research. (They are a public Israeli company trading on the NASDAQ).

http://www.gilat.com/Home.asp

[Aaron_A]

You should check out some of the services provided by Gilat. I do not use their services but came across them doing some research. (They are a public Israeli company trading on the NASDAQ).

http://www.gilat.com/Home.asp

[hoot2]

"The Starband service offers 500 Kbps downstream (from the Internet to the PC) and 150 Kbps upstream
according to spokeswoman Sandy Colony. Colony said Radio Shack is packaging the Starband service
with new Compaq computers for $59.95, but does not offer upgrade products for PCs.
The service is also being sold as part of a package
by resellers of Echostar's (DISH) satellite TV service, the Dish Network."

keep your dialup....let someone else "experiment" with it...mho

[Gore_ War_ Vet]

I use DirecDuo and LOVE it. DirecTV and DirecPC on one dish, purchased from OrbitSat for $199. Upgradable to 2 way. Go for it I generally get speeds of 800 KB (twice what they advertise) on my dial return system (one way).

Good luck, you won't be sorry!

[DeSoto]

I have been a customer of Starband for nearly a year. I have not been disappointed at all. Their service is very fast, they have had minimal down time, and they are everything that they said that they would be.

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.

[sasquatch]

Help with Dish for PC
Dish=Ann Coulter

[VinnyTex]

Click here

[SlickWillard]

I used DirecPC last year, before we got cable modems in this area. It is a BEAR to set up (I was using the SatServ router product), but once you get it going, it's OK. Know before you call that NO ONE in the DirecPC call center knows ANYTHING about the product. I ended up teaching myself everything - and when the most senior engineer in the company finally called me back about six weeks later, I knew more about the product than he did.

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.

[2Trievers]

Dub, stop! Think this through. I have an AOL dish ... most we ever got was 52K ... Switched to WinXP recently and no mattter what ANYONE tells you, AOL 7.0 and their dish are NOT compatabile w/ WinXP. I have abandoned it. In it's prime, with the dish, a moth, cloud or one raindrop suspended the service. I am too in a remote area ... so I thought this was the solution ... big mistake. The regular modem connection is more reliable, IMHO.

[Dallas]

Try the newsgroups...

alt.satellite.direcpc

alt.satellite.starband