internet providers?

[marianne]

Here's a breakdown of costs that I've recently gathered:

Satellite:
equipment & installation: $480-700 for internet (they charge you $480 in twelve monthly payments but also charge you a little over $200 if you need the dish installed on a pole rather than your house). TV installation is usually free with a promotion.

internet service: $60/month. no discount if you have satellite tv service.

TV service: depends on your package. we pay about $40/month


Cable:
equipment & installation: $30 for internet, $35 for TV, $20 for additional TVs

internet service: $58/month. Reduced to $46/month if you have cable tv service.

TV service: $15/month for basic cable. I don't know what their packages cost but figure it's about the same as satellite.


So you see, cable and satellite cost abouth the same amount each month and there's no satellite internet discount if you have satellite TV. The big $ difference is the cost of installing satellite internet. I have a posting on the somd.com classified for my satellite internet. I think I asked about $200 Or Best Offer. But I do have to warn you that you need an FCC licensed person to install the equipment (I'm guessing that would probably cost another $100 but don't really know). So it's not that cheap an alternative. I only recommend it if you're in an area without cable or DSL.

And Zoomzoom is right - there are things you can't do with satellite internet. If you need the Internet for secure transactions you'll have a problem with satellite. You can't establish a VPN or SSL with satellite internet.

There are other options such as ISDN but I have not looked into those in nearly as much detail as satellite and cable. I'm pretty sure ISDN is over $100/month.

[Ken King (Premo)]

I have been thinking about wireless but have yet to be able to get these guys to come do the free survey, I live right on the fringe of their coverage area. They might be an alternative to cable or dish while we await DSL. http://www.somdwireless.com/

[zoomzoom]

You can have as many users on a Local Area Network (LAN)as you desire. However, you are subject to the law of diminishing returns. If you have 5 users all downlaoding at the same time your speed is cut equally by those 5 users. So a 250 KBPS speed gets reduced by dividing it by 5. However, odds are that all users will not be online at the same time or downloading at the same time. Most people just surf pages which are quick and use little bandwidth. You can get as fancy as you want with a local area network including using repeaters to cover more area and different locations. Get a good book on LAN's and enjoy.

[dustin]

Originally posted by zoomzoom
You can have as many users on a Local Area Network (LAN)as you desire. However, you are subject to the law of diminishing returns. If you have 5 users all downlaoding at the same time your speed is cut equally by those 5 users. So a 250 KBPS speed gets reduced by dividing it by 5. However, odds are that all users will not be online at the same time or downloading at the same time. Most people just surf pages which are quick and use little bandwidth. You can get as fancy as you want with a local area network including using repeaters to cover more area and different locations. Get a good book on LAN's and enjoy.

Good info zoomzoom I'll have to set aside a couple hours to read up in books-a-million.

[marianne]

It's good to know the high speed modem access really is high speed.

There was one major reason I was willing to spend too much $ for broadband in addition to speed: I wanted to use my phone.

At first I had dial up modem. It was slow and I was unable to use the phone while on the net. Not only was that inconvienient, it was unacceptable when I wanted to work from home.

So then we got a second phone line. The cost of the second line was about $40/month. Add to that the cost of an ISP and you're looking at (surprise) $60/month.

In an effort to save $, I got rid of the second phone line and regretted having done so. I tried using my cell phone to make outgoing calls in combination with software that let you know you had an incoming call while on the internet. But that didn't work as well as I had hoped.

So now I've pretty much resolved it will cost $60/month for internet access and am focusing on the quality of the connection.

[frogger]

What about hooking your cell phone up to your computer? Is there a way to do that? If so, people with unlimited nights and weekend plans could use it all the time right?

I have the same problem as some of you...
Satellite TV, no home phone line (my choice, but DSL not available anyway), and wireless signal blocked.