I guess websites like Newsmax are just catching on to the fact that there are people in some parts of the world who don’t have broadband. I told one city friend I didn’t have it at home and you’d have thought I’d told him I lived in a cave! But telecommuters are persevering in seeking alternatives. A friend of mine uses satellite. Some outlying areas around rural communities are served by local broadband.
One biotechnology consultant who lives 40 minutes (over a mountain range) from Google’s headquarters can get DSL so he has to use an $85 per month satellite connection.
There are still lots of complaints … the more successful the companies are at selling their service, the slower everybody’s service gets. They try to strike a balance, it seems, between making it fast enough so you won’t stop paying $85 per month, but not so fast you’d really keep it if you had any other option on earth.
But for the people investing big bucks in satellite hardware, their expectation is that for all the talk, we’ll be switching to satellites long enough to make them rich.
HughesNet and its main competitor, WildBlue Communications Inc., are betting hundreds of millions of dollars that their lock on that market will last. They’re more than doubling their capacity this year with two new satellites.
Links to satellite broadband providers mentioned above:
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