How good (or bad) is satellite broadband?

I live about four miles from the exchange and until recently enjoyed just over 1Mbps, but at the moment there is an intermittent fault, a quiet crackle, which was not present when the engineer called. At the moment the speed is down to 300Mbps, and it might drop out anytime. Probably it will worsen over time and I can fetch him back but I am just weary of the hassle
I was about to fork out for satellite broadband when I checked the postings on this forum, and they are not complimentary, describing it as as bad as dialup. Is that really true? The problem appears to be that successive pages load slowly and the advertised speeds only apply to larger downloads.
Is there a noticeable delay before the page loads, latency, or is it just slow due to contention.
How slow is slow? It is bound to be subjective, does it only feel slow if you are used to say a 4Mbps but not too bad if, like me, you think 1Mbps is fast?
At least it should not drop out.
Any other comments would be much appreciated.

Latency around 500ms, compared to use 30 to 40ms, so a page with lots of elements can take a while, and Geo location services still apparently show people as outside UK, so sometimes problems with iPlayer et al

I'd rather have 0.5 Mbps ADSL, than 4Mbps satellite

It works, but it can can be a pain with the various usage allowances that kick in, even on the unlimited products

Post deleted by billford

Edited by deleted (Tue 07-Aug-12 18:35:30)

That is really helpful. If there are say 10 servers used then it could take 5 seconds? If I understand correctly that seems (comparatively) reasonable. On my 0.3Mbps connection the BBC.co.uk page took 12 seconds, which seemed quicker than most, I have been loading various pages linked to Google News and it took 20 seconds or more each time.
Bearing in mind that it should be more reliable than a long 'phone line it is quite tempting.
thank you

A colleague of mine (Norfolk way) is in a similar situation to you and has had satellite now for quite some time. He has recently upgraded to one of the nextgen satellites (that can offer up to 10 Mbps).

Main things to think about really are, as Mr Saffron said, latency (prob fine for web surfing but a pain for real time interactive things such as gaming and VoIP) and allowances (those these are increasing gradually as the sector gets more competitive).

Thank you for that. I have decided to give it a go, not because I expect it to be great but it should be an improvement on a very long phone line. Just have to live with the delay, at least the connection should be stable. It is not cheap but I'm hoping to use VOIP and save the cost of line rental. Then it would actually be slightly less than the existing broadband and phone package. Still I expect if it is that simple it would a marketing ploy.

Are you absolutely sure you can't get a 3G signal on any networks where you are?

Latency can still be poorer than a fixed line, but VOIP is fine, and if it works well it's quite speedy.

http://speedtest.net/result/2116939089.png

Skype voice on satellite was fine, a small delay as epxected but for normal conversation tolerable.

Absolutely certain. We barely get 2G, and that is a very poor signal, there is a ruddy great hill in the way, I've used it but had to go outside. It is pretty sparsely populated around here (Mid Wales) and the Offcom website shows that 3G is only transmitted in the towns, which is understandable.
If VOIP is of useable quality then that makes satellite broadband an affordable option in rural areas. The dish can be supplied for £100 (though you can pay a lot more) and the self install version has a beeper to help line it up.
I will post again when it's up and running, clearly different people will have different views so I will try to be objective.

Is there not still a subsidy from the Welsh Assembly Government so you don't have to do the self-install if you don't want ? Used to be up to £1000 or so.

E.g. have you looked at
http://wales.gov.uk/topics/businessandeconomy/broadb...

Given the choice between satellite or a line of sight wireless link to nearby premises with decent land-based broadband, the choice is easy. Bill Ray at The Register wrote a couple of articles on how he did it, can't find them right now, but worth a look.

I'm not sure most people would class satellite VoIP as usable. Older readers may remember when transatlantic telephone calls went via satellite, and whilst it may have been OK for limited usage, emergencies, etc, it wasn't exactly satisfactory let alone comfortable.