Astra2Connect and Tooway close the Internet digital divide with satellite to home service, maybe.

Regular readers of this blog be warned – this article is about the internet infrastructure needed to insure Internet users are online in the first place. We can perform all of the search engine optimization (SEO) we want, but if our target audience isn’t online due to lack of access, our results are going to disappoint. Marketing professionals are thus warned: what follows is a look at a potential technical solution to the digital divide.

In the early 1980’s I discovered the net. As a university student in Maine, I kept in touch via e-mail with a friend at Cornell University in New York state. It seemed like magic – 80 character monochromatic video terminals allowed us to exchange messages in minutes. The net in question was Bitnet, an early type of Internet connecting educational institutions. Later, in the early nineties, I used today’s internet to exchange email and files with clients. A great improvement over sending pizza sized magnetic tapes across town or across country. In Trieste in the mid-nineties I was able to browse the latest New York Times with Mosaic. By the late nineties, I had an ISDN connection in my home office (thank you, Peter Friedenbach). Of course ISDN gave way to ADSL… or did it?

If you live in a rural area in Italy, there is only a 50% chance of having access to DSL service.¹ So what is a country boy refugee from the big city to do? It appears that hope is on the horizon, at 13°, 23.5° and 33° east, to be more specific. Over the past year the satellite operators Eutelsat and Astra have launched “consumer oriented” Internet services using bidirectional satellite communication to reach areas not currently served by ADSL, WiMAX or courier pigeons.

Astra2Connect

Astra’s offer, Astra2Connect, was first launched in the German market in March 2007. Astra uses a satellite at 23.5° east and requires a 75-80cm bidirectional satellite dish. Download speeds are available from 256 kbps to 2048 kbps at prices ranging from €20 to €90 a month (€240 – €1080/year) depending on the maximum speed and the distributor.

Pricing is fairly homogeneous across Europe – probably due to an attentive marketing organization aware of the ease of price comparison possible thanks to the Euro. The major differences are to be found in discounts offered for 2 year commitments and 2 year prepaid agreements. As with Tooway service, there are three start-up costs to consider: equipment, installation and in some cases, a “set-up” fee. The equipment seems to be going for €300 – €400. Some dishes are also able to receive Astra Tv, presumably the predominately German language programming found on Astra 19° east. Some distributors offer hardware rental options, which might be a good idea if you think Astra2Connect will go belly up, as often happens with niche technology. Only a few distributors have announced pricing for the 2048 kbps option.

As Europe is officially a single market, EU consumers should be free to purchase service from ANY of the EU based resellers, despite any information to the contrary about franchise areas etc. In the auto sector there have been plenty of court rulings on the subject; in the banking area, the EU has been clear that fee differences between “national” and intra-Europe transactions are illegal. In the case of Internet satellite service, your relationship with a reseller requires you to speak their language in order to sign a contract and to log support requests. Almost all installations are handled by a third party, taking this element out of the equation. In practice, it is not clear if a reseller will supply you outside their “designated” service territories without a court reminding them of the law.

Satellite Internet suffers from strict “Fair Usage Policy” (FUP), also called “Fair Access Policy” (FAP), data transfer limits, and Astra2Connect is no exception. Such policies are suppose to impact “power users” during the peak load periods, insuring good service for those who are “just” browsing web pages or downloading e-mail. While Astra doesn’t seem to publish any FAP detail on their website, one of their resellers does:

This means that if a user tries to download a full DVD, such as a Linux distribution, or a film, there is a chance their speed will drop down to sub-DSL levels – a penalty imposed for traumatizing 30 days! This does apparently happen in real life, if members of a German forum are to be believed. This throttling is apparently dynamic – you might not be penalized for exceeding certain data transfer limits as long as you don’t impact other users, i.e. you download in the middle of the night. The problem here is a lack of transparency – a typical user won’t know when they risk exceeding a moving target. This might not be so bad if the penalty – a slow as molassas connection – lasted just a few hours.

In the table below, we’ve attempted to provide comparison data taken from reseller’s websites. Unfortunately, the quality of the web sites and the level of information available is highly variable, making comparison a less than perfect exercise.

Digitaria’s offer for the Italian market suffers from what appears to be overly expensive hardware – hardware which becomes useful as a boat anchor should Astra withdraw Astra2Connect service in the future. It might be worthwhile purchasing the hardware for half the price from StarDSL in Germany, assuming they would sell it separately.

Tooway

Eutelsat’s offer, cutely called Tooway (a play on two way in case you’re reading this before having the morning coffee), “…is based on ViaSat’s SurfBeam® DOCSIS® two-way broadband satellite system. … The SurfBeam system is well established in North-America with more than 250,000 users.”

The Ka-band at 13° should allow some specially equipped antennas to receive standard Hotbird 13° tv reception. The Ku-band service is offered from 33° East; it would be worth checking if a single antenna, with an extra LNB, could receive the Astra 28° signal, home of the BBC, as well. There is also a difference in maximum upload speed available depending on which antena is being used so be sure to checkout these details when service is being provisioned.

Unlike the Astra2Connect offer, the Tooway offer conditions are rather confusing. Officially, there are three service levels, Bronze, Silver and Gold. The problem is that these service levels are not standard from one reseller to another. For some the difference in the service levels is the data transfer threshold before the FUP (data transfer limit) kicks in. Other resellers also limit transfer speed based on the price level.

Tooway has a strong Italian connection – the Skylogic SkyPark operations center is in Turin. Yet Tooway’s pricing in Italy is detrimental to high consumer acceptance. Both the initial hardware cost and the monthly fees are inexplicably high compared to what is being offered in other countries and by Astra2Connect. Is the Italian reseller Sitmar targeting an ill informed wealthy consumer market?

HughesNet

There is also a third consumer operator, HughesNet. Yet Hughes resellers don’t seem to be promoting in any clear way their consumer offerings for Europe.

Why Satellite Broadband is the choice of last resort

The commitment of Astra and Eutelsat to surmount the digital divide is to be commended. Yet potential customers shouldn’t be under any illusions as to satellite service limitations:

• Latency. This is a fancy way of saying delay. Add about half a second to the usual delay from when you make a request for a web page or to download a file. This additional delay is due for the time needed to communicate from the earth to the satellite and back for the request and response. Internet applications which require quick response times, such as video gaming, won’t work. Web browsing delays can be mitigated by tweaking browser settings. VOIP talk applications should work with an annoying delay.
• Download (and upload) limits. Satellites are expensive. In order to keep per user costs down, many users must share the same limited resources. This effectively means downloading large files during peak usage times is frowned upon by Fair Use or Access Policies (FAP/FUP). Do “too much” of it, and your connection speed will be slowed down – making dial-up look attractive. You might be able to start bittorrent in the middle of the night, but this is not clear. You can forget about IP TV. From a provider point of view, this is all your fault. To quote HughesNet, …“many of those subscribers are not using HughesNet for its intended purpose”. Translated: Satellite Internet is intended for ocasional web surfing and downloading e-mails without those fancy slideset attachements someone forgot to zip.
• Weather. Heavy rain or snow may interfere with satellite transmission. Snow build up on your antenna can also be an issue – I speak from experience.
• Installation space. There may be zoning or space issues which impede installation of a satellite antenna.
• Startup costs. Between hardware, installation and “activation” fees, the start-up costs alone make satellite broadband uncompetitive with traditional DSL services.

Other DSL Broadband Alternatives

The best solution would be greater commitment to wired access. The last thing the world really needs is more electro-smog. Yet that won’t happen anytime soon.

WiMAX on the horizon

Probably the biggest threat to satellite broadband is the impending rollout of WiMAX service. WiMAX shouldn’t suffer the latency nor download limitations which afflict satellite broadband. Pricing should be competitive with wired DSL. Italy recently auctioned off spectrum licenses – it remains to be seen if national players such as AriaDSL make the most of the opportunity.

Remember ISDN?

In some countries, it is possible to have a persistent internet connection at 128kbps – using the ISDN technology from the 1980’s. Admittedly it isn’t broadband, but it is faster then dialup. In Italy, the cost is €24/month plus the monthly cost of the ISDN line, all of which is rather unfair as it isn’t your fault that Telecom Italia has neglected infrastructure investments – but at least you won’t have problems downloading too much data! Telecom Italia doesn’t promote this option on their website, its not really something they’re proud of, but you can ask their call center for details.

T1/T3 leased line

Telecoms companies have offered leased data lines since the 1960s. There are available even in rural areas, but are generally very expensive. Ask Telecom Italia about their “CDN” offerings.

What’s your experience with DSL Internet alternatives?

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