- Jan 15, 2015
- 24,196
- 8,976
Starband. This was a satellite service I had it for a few years beginning in the middle of 2002 before I got the terrible CenturyLink dsl.
Starband came with a modem but no router and required software on your pc to actually work. So, I had to get a second network card and have one pc work as a router in order to share the crappy connection. The speed was 256kbs download and about 1/4 of that upload with typical satellite lag times. Price was $69 per month and modem required replacement after a couple of years.
After a few years, Starband finally sold out their capacity and instead of expanding service (and spending money), they imposed a bandwidth cap of 250mb/month. If you exceeded that, they throttled you to 1/2 dialup modem speed for the rest of the month. There was no accurate way to track your usage so, all of a sudden, your service would just slow to less than a crawl. One time I called customer service to complain, they told me I must have been watching too many youtube videos which was ridiculous since, even at its best, you couldn't watch a video with their service.
I finally decided to drop them in favor of a dial up which would cost less and at least be consistent. Fortunately, I was finally able to get DSL service so I didn't have to go back to dial up.
They're out of business now -- no surprize.
Starband came with a modem but no router and required software on your pc to actually work. So, I had to get a second network card and have one pc work as a router in order to share the crappy connection. The speed was 256kbs download and about 1/4 of that upload with typical satellite lag times. Price was $69 per month and modem required replacement after a couple of years.
After a few years, Starband finally sold out their capacity and instead of expanding service (and spending money), they imposed a bandwidth cap of 250mb/month. If you exceeded that, they throttled you to 1/2 dialup modem speed for the rest of the month. There was no accurate way to track your usage so, all of a sudden, your service would just slow to less than a crawl. One time I called customer service to complain, they told me I must have been watching too many youtube videos which was ridiculous since, even at its best, you couldn't watch a video with their service.
I finally decided to drop them in favor of a dial up which would cost less and at least be consistent. Fortunately, I was finally able to get DSL service so I didn't have to go back to dial up.
They're out of business now -- no surprize.
