Why don't you simply use a broadband satellite connection?

Some people have asked us why we put up with land-based carriers (that is, Qwest) when we could be using broadband satellite.

People who have asked this question seem to have either of two suggestions: some suggest that each of our homeowners should install his or her own broadband satellite connection, while others suggest that our DSL coop should install a single broadband satellite connection and then use the DSL network to connect our homeowners to the satellite connection.

If each of our homeowners were to install his or her own broadband satellite connection, this approach would have several drawbacks as compared with our DSL approach. First, it would cost more. Broadband satellite to the home costs more than the sixty dollars per month we plan to charge at the outset, and more than the long-run monthly charge that we will charge after we have paid off the launch costs. Second, broadband satellite has substantial latency. This is a problem for videoconferencing, game-playing, and virtual private networking. Third, it is very assymetrical in its bandwidth, with uploading a lot slower than downloading. There are other problems with broadband satellite, such as the need to dedicate a computer for caching and sacrificial firewall purposes if you wish to pass the connection along to two or more networked computers in your home.

The other suggestion we have received is to install a single broadband satellite connection and then use the DSL network to connect our homeowners to the satellite connection. This doesn't really help us. This approach leaves us dealing with Qwest over rental of subloops. Getting a broadband connection to our DSLAM hasn't ever been a big issue for us.

Residential broadband satellite service providers forbid reselling a residential satellite connection to others (e.g. neighbors). So if we were to follow the approach of installing a single satellite connection and distributing it around the neighborhood using DSL, we would need to get a commercial satellite connection. These are very expensive, especially compared with the cost of an ordinary T1 or frame relay T1. It's cheaper for us to do what we are doing now, which is using a frame relay T1 and our own point-to-point microwave link.