Liquid Telecom's VSAT Internet tested and reviewed

Those ping and speed times are pretty good... I've just got back from a game reserve (in South Africa) with no ADSL, Telkom, Vodacom, MTN, Cell-C and VSAT was the only internet connectivity option!
 
VSAT for one of our company users is about the only option to have better than dialup internet at his home near Oudtshoorn... only Telkom analogue farm telephone, so only has dialup to use. Mountains all around him, so no cellula signal from any network, not even GPRS.
But the cost + connection quality + ping just makes this a no-go option, so still have to give it a miss.
he has to drive out to town to connect with voda 3G modem if he wants to download anything more than basic emails
Still looking for some solution ....

umh... business oportunity anyone? put office near Telkom in Oudtshoorn, get one or more 10Mbps ADSL connections.... put wireless mast.... hop over a few kilometers to the mountains with line of sight, then beam to the farming community in the valley and provide them with fast wireless internet.... anyone? :-)
 
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CeeBee said:
umh... business oportunity anyone? put office near Telkom in Oudtshoorn, get one or more 10Mbps ADSL connections.... put wireless mast.... hop over a few kilometers to the mountains with line of sight, then beam to the farming community in the valley and provide them with fast wireless internet.... anyone? :-)
Click to expand...
You're in "kilos" territory! PM him.
 
Johand said:
The problem is not back haul related - speedtest does not accurately measure the throughput on high-latency connections - see more at http://www.speedtest.net/qna.php#q13. The sweet and short is that latency effects throughput because of TCP's congestion avoidance algorithms - mostly it takes a long time for a high latency connection to hit peak throughput http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TCP_congestion_avoidance_algorithm.

To really test the satellite' peak throughput I would try to use a bit-torrent protocol, or a really really big download.
Click to expand...

Thanks for weighing in. I downloaded a number of large files, as well as tested some torrents to give a better "real world" picture of the performance of the connection.

article said:
Single-threaded downloads from sites such as those of Ubuntu and Adobe achieved speeds of between 1360 kbps and 1760 kbps. Files downloaded over the BitTorrent protocol ran from 800 kbps up to 2000 kbps.
Click to expand...
 
CeeBee said:
umh... business oportunity anyone? put office near Telkom in Oudtshoorn, get one or more 10Mbps ADSL connections.... put wireless mast.... hop over a few kilometers to the mountains with line of sight, then beam to the farming community in the valley and provide them with fast wireless internet.... anyone? :-)
Click to expand...

Unfortunately no 10 Mb/s lines in Oudtshoorn only George CBD , the valley en route to Laingsburg has the same problem
http://www.speedtest.net/result/1101672771.png
No cell, very slow Telkom dialup via Carrier phone system

Cheers
Justin
 
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Quantum Theory said:
, atm's .....
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- hence our rediculous banking charges. Sorry, slightly off topic but yes, the Banking sector uses this as we pay for it anyway. We have two ATM's at our local Spar, both use VSAT. We know the Spar's owner pretty well and he uses a normal Telkom ADSL connection and, apart from power outages, has not had a problem in the past 12 months....Go figure.

Let's not complain about VSAT as it is deffinately a great thing for remote areas; we should rather complain about companies that we all use that waste our money for nothing.
 
I have a few clients in KZN on VSAT(due to same reason as the Outshoorn issues above)
Some have moved from Telkom VSAT to Vodacom Business VSAT and seem to be quite happy with it apart from the costs but have no choice. Vodacom appears to be cheaper than Liquid's at least for the Gold. Not quite sure what Vodacom charge for the install
 
elL0L said:
Edge, yes. 3G, no.

Only high populated areas have 3G.
Click to expand...

True but even in high populated areas, many pockets exist without 3G. This defies all logic. Why can't a place like Pretoria have 3G everywhere! Can someone please explain this to me. And second of all, why can't all cellphone networks use the same 3g network? Clearly, some cellphone networks have better 3G network coverage than others.
 
Liquid commented on some of the statements made in the review and I have updated it accordingly.

Nothing significant has changed, but I believe the details are more accurate.
 
What about ISDN

Can use normal POTS but gives you a longer distance from exchange -- longer than ADSL

Combine both channels for 128kbps / synchronous / ( better than nothing and better than normal POTS )

What about BGAN ?

BGAN


Radio Holland South Africa


Just Google "BGAN Africa"

LOTS of info
 
African Space Port

iCare said:
I have a few clients in KZN on VSAT(due to same reason as the Outshoorn issues above)
Some have moved from Telkom VSAT to Vodacom Business VSAT and seem to be quite happy with it apart from the costs but have no choice.
Vodacom appears to be cheaper than Liquid's at least for the Gold. Not quite sure what Vodacom charge for the install
Click to expand...

From that VC site link
The architecture involves remote sites that communicate via geosynchronous satellites (these are positioned is space and are within a specific footprint).
The satellite communicates with other remotely deployed sites, either directly or via a VSAT Hub earth station.
The earth station is the point of aggregation, where the satellite hub elements are connected to the managed Vodacom Business IP network.
Click to expand...

Can anyone tell me WHERE the VC VSAT Hub Earth Station is ??????

For a long time I have said that someone needs to set up an SA / African Hub earth station where all the African trans-continental FIBRE's land --
LOTS of redundancy now.
Just plug the landing cable's straight in.

Your African ping times will be in the region of 850 ms

//Edited after working on another thread //
 
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Hi guys, sorry to burst your bubble, but Qkon also has a local hub in Midrand at Business Connection. They only sell through resellers though.
 
New Dawn

Key said:
Hi guys, sorry to burst your bubble, but Qkon also has a local hub in Midrand at Business Connection. They only sell through resellers though.
Click to expand...

Details please .........

WHO are the resellers ?

Is this the same "hub" that New Dawn are going to be using :confused:

Thanks
 
MidnightWizard said:
From that VC site link


Can anyone tell me WHERE the VC VSAT Hub Earth Station is ??????

For a long time I have said that someone needs to set up an SA / African Hub earth station where all the African trans-continental FIBRE's land --
LOTS of redundancy now.
Just plug the landing cable's straight in.

Your African ping times will be in the region of 850 ms

//Edited after working on another thread //
Click to expand...

The reason for locating our hub in the UK is due to rain fade as Africa based Ku band VSAT hubs are subject to rain fade concerns.
 
Hi Jes

Liquid Telecom’s Broadband over Satellite is offered as a wholesale offering and caters for a wide variety of business market applications from the busy home executive, the small business owner requiring Internet connectivity to larger businesses wanting reliable data connectivity.

Regards
Craig
 
Hi Guys

Liquid Telecom’s Broadband over Satellite hub is based in the UK and this is due to low rain fade and access to more cost effective internet. Vodacom Business does have a VSAT solution and Liquid Telecom’s Broadband over Satellite is competitive in cost. Our ping times are 600-800ms.

Regards
Craig
 
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