Too good to last (Starspeeder.co.uk)

Member Name: Bezuk

Product:	Starspeeder.co.uk
Date:	15/06/01 (497 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Downloading at 50kbps is simply a revelation, allows you to download (fast) and surf at the same time, 100% availability, Seems highly reliable, Good monthly price

Disadvantages: High installation cost and a complex procedure, High pings, No fast uploading, Requires upstream modem connection [Currently Not Available]

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UPDATE 05/09/01

As anyone who follows this service will know, it unfortunately no longer exists, due to funding problems at CBL, the operator. Starspeeder are looking to become the UK reseller for another satellite service, Actisat, but I've not heard any reliable news on this for a couple of weeks. I also heard that Starspeeder were going to try start up their own service, but I don't expect this to happen for a good few months, if at all.

One thing that does seem to be a general theme - the £15+vat per month paid for this service does not seem to be considered realistic - £25/month and up for new services will be likely.

Other satellite sites to look at:

Actisat: http://www.actisat.com/
http://satellite.tiscali.com/

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UPDATE 15/06/01
In response to a comment by rob_writer:

When using this service, you must provide your own ISP for the upstream part. Therefore, the ISP you use can be as metered or unmetered as you like. Starspeeder do not provide any modem ISP option.

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Broadband Net access in the UK, then. What a dismal business. Thanks to the consistent efforts of BT and its ilk, the UK is something like 50th in the worldwide broadband league table. It was with this state of mind that I was trawling the major ADSL and Cable websites, checking availability for the nth time, to be greeted with ?sorry, not until 2037 in your area?. I then stumbled across a little gem ? satellite access.

Satellite access involves two elements: a satellite dish fixed to your residence in some way, providing a high-speed download service, and a regular old modem, 56k or otherwise, to send stuff back up. 2-way satellite communication is of course possible, but you?ll be needing a sat dish the size of a block of flats, and a similarly-sized wallet.

On to Starspeeder. They provide, for £15 + VAT per month, 400 kilobits of downstream bandwidth.
That equates to download speeds of around 50 kbps compared to 3 or 4 on your 56k. This isn?t a hard limit either ? seeing download speeds of 60 or 70 kbps is not uncommon. And, for me, it?s been extremely reliable. Providing you follow my piece of advice in the next paragraph, you?ll get 40-50 kbps or higher on every download. It?s compatible with every imaginable protocol, so you can do all your Napster(or similar), IRC, ICQ etc with it.

When using this service, I can?t stress enough the importance of using a multi-threaded download manager with it. What I mean by this is a piece of software that splits files into multiple segments and downloads them simultaneously. The two that I can recommend are FlashGet and Download Accelerator Plus. Both can be obtained from a file site such as download.com. If you don?t use one of these, you?ll probably only be using about a third of the service?s massive potential. Downloads from such as IRC therefore are bound to be slower. The best thing you can do is to find some sort of optimisation for your IRC client or simply download a load of files at once. The service will be able to take it.

Advantages, therefore, are obvious: 100% coverage. There are very few people who can?t receive this. The only situation I can see is if you have a building or tree in the way of the signal. Chances are you?ll be able to find a workable area for the dish. Then you?ve got the wonderfully fast, reliable downloads. Price is also great, though if you remember that you?ll still be paying whatever you currently pay for your modem ISP it gets higher, though not up to ADSL?s extreme of £40pm. And from what I can tell, it seems better than ADSL, complaints are many about BT?s service, erratic download speeds being one of the main ones.

It?s not perfect, though. I?m just lucky in that I?m not affected much by the disadvantages. Firstly, because you?re using a modem, upload capacity is 56k, no higher. This connection redefines t
he word ?asymmetric?. Therefore if you run a web server or other such thing then you?ll obviously be better suited to a cable modem. Second big disadvantage is for gaming. Doing some mathematical mucking around with the speed of light and the distance from the satellite to earth reveals that ping times are going to be around 500ms at all times. Personally, I never had problems with gaming on my 56k, probably because my online gaming is restricted to strategy and role-playing. So, when I want to play a game, I just turn the satellite off.

There?s something else not going for this as well ? installation. In terms of both expense and difficulty. The hardware (dish, and internal PC decoder card) will set you back £130 all in. Then, unless you feel ready to go up on the ladder and guess where to point the dish, you?ll need to hire an installer. This will cost you anywhere from £50 to £250 depending on how much the person or company try and rip you off. (If you live in the Warrington area, email me at bezuk@btinternet.com and I?ll send you the phone number of one I can recommend). Then, hook it all up and follow the software instructions on the Starspeeder site and you?re ready to go.

Sorry for the long review, but this is new to most people and I had to be sure I?d included everything. J

All I can say overall is this: I downloaded a 139 MB file today in 41 minutes. Go figure.

(Price below is monthly, inc VAT)

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