Thread: NBN satellite internet gone live

I have been reading there have been quite a few issues that are the sole creation of NBN co.

Congestion is now a problem at times due to the way NBN co have set up selling bandwidth to ISP's. NBN co is not letting ISP's buy bandwidth to stop congestion.

So even if I get the dish set up, I am still going to have issues. Sigh.

The installer did turn up today. He did a quote, now it goes to Skybridge and then to NBN for approval. The best position for the dish without having it a huge distance from the house is next to the fence where we generally feed out hay and grain. The normal ground mount is 1200mm high. There is however a high mount which puts the bottom edge of the dish 1800mm above the ground. About 150mm diam pipe retained by 24 bags quickset. I prefer the idea of having the dish up in the air.

The installers attitude about Skybridge is roughly the same as mine.

Dean

I have been connected since 31st May to NBN Skymuster with ISP Skymesh. No real installation problems except installer turned up in the morning after I had driven 55Kms to town because the booking was from 1:00pm to 5:00pm. Said he had a cancellation and Installation company did not supply contractor with my phone number, only address! Also was supposed to ring me the night before so did not.
I had hoped to get the dish installed on another part of the roof but when I came home it was in place using previous mounts. (MY wife was home and phoned me so I came back).
Took about three hours all up to get an acceptable signal. Couldn't connect to the internet then but about four hours later it was activated.
Since then speeds much faster, getting 23Mbps average download and 4.5Mbps average upload. Current plan has approx four times as much capacity as previous one and about $10pm less.
Have had a few more disconnections and outages than before but nothing too long. Plenty of off peak capacity in plan but not much time to use it (NBN off peak 1:00am to 7:00am), Skymesh had much more spread of off peak hours.
All in all happy to be connected and can usually look at videos without buffering stops.

Originally Posted by Oldneweng

So even if I get the dish set up, I am still going to have issues. Sigh.

Not really, it all depends on where you are in the grand scheme of things. They have been having teething problems.

Originally Posted by Normanby

I have been connected since 31st May to NBN Skymuster with ISP Skymesh. No real installation problems except installer turned up in the morning after I had driven 55Kms to town because the booking was from 1:00pm to 5:00pm. Said he had a cancellation and Installation company did not supply contractor with my phone number, only address! Also was supposed to ring me the night before so did not.
I had hoped to get the dish installed on another part of the roof but when I came home it was in place using previous mounts. (MY wife was home and phoned me so I came back).
Took about three hours all up to get an acceptable signal. Couldn't connect to the internet then but about four hours later it was activated.
Since then speeds much faster, getting 23Mbps average download and 4.5Mbps average upload. Current plan has approx four times as much capacity as previous one and about $10pm less.
Have had a few more disconnections and outages than before but nothing too long. Plenty of off peak capacity in plan but not much time to use it (NBN off peak 1:00am to 7:00am), Skymesh had much more spread of off peak hours.
All in all happy to be connected and can usually look at videos without buffering stops.

Said he had a cancellation and Installation company did not supply contractor with my phone number, only address!

Fairly typical for Skybridge to forget details from my little experience. A roof mount installation is simple because they are authorised to do these straight up. It is the non-standard installations that cause the problems.

Also was supposed to ring me the night before so did not.

I have had calls on 3 occasions regarding visits. On one of these occasions the installer did not make the appointment because I informed him it was a non-standard installation, during the call. He had not had this information passed on to him. He was expecting to do a standard install. The other installer called before both visits, but only 30mins before yesterday. That was ok tho. I was expecting him.

Since then speeds much faster, getting 23Mbps average download and 4.5Mbps average upload.

I presume you have selected the higher speed option then? This is 25Mbps download max. What were you getting before? Mine is terrible. If you were with Skymesh previously then you may have been getting a lot faster than me. Reports I have read indicate up to 7Mbps were possible. My line of sight at the moment passes straight thru a big redgum. Always has actually.

Current plan has approx four times as much capacity as previous one and about $10pm less.

Yes but most of the capacity is off peak, which is harder to make use of. I am hoping to do some scheduled downloading, but these can fail due to YouTube resetting the pages, or something like that. General downloading will work ok. I use a download manager that can do scheduling at any time you choose. I have not had a plan with peak/off peak for a long time. I will lose 5 Gig per month of peak which will be offset by 50 Gig per month of off peak.

Richard, I don't know where your info is coming from, but I have been looking at Whirlpool forum the last couple of days. Whirlpool covers all the stuff that woodwork/metalwork forum doesn't. I should have done this right at the start. There is a huge amount of info there. Too much to read, for me anyway. Apparently there is an issue with the bandwidth only being given out by NBN as the previous bandwidth has been filled. This is not allowing for the time it takes to get the bandwidth allocated after applying for it which means trouble for subscribers.

Skymesh has an active staff member on Whirlpool dealing with relevant issues. He can get details via pm and check out what is going on and fix things. Great if you are with Skymesh, not so great for Activ8 customers, sigh. He reported a method they were using to avoid the bandwidth problem. They are taking subscribers out of previous bandwidth allocations and putting them in the new allocations. The current allocation fills up, they apply for more and meanwhile put new subscribers in previous bandwidth allocations that now have available space. Or something like that. Skymesh seems to be a company that actually tries to do something for their customers. Paul Rees has been a member of Whirlpool for over 6 years. How long he has been an ISP (Skymesh) rep on Whirlpool, I don't know. He calls the method descibed above as a "cunning plan".

When I first read about how fast some satellite subscribers connections were, I contacted Activ8 to see what could be done in my case. This was probably over a year ago. There are a number of attitudes a company can exhibit in relation to problems. I have had a very good response from Activ8 in relation to specific problems with my connection. These have all been dealt with quickly. When it comes to what can be done with the connection speed that is quite different. The reponse was like hitting a brick wall. No interest. You are stuck with it. We can't do anything. Maybe that was true, but they did nothing at all to check whether there were issues that could be dealt with. Like the redgum blocking my signal. I have no idea how much this affects the signal, but I was talking to my wifes friend yesterday. She said the installer had to find a position where there were no trees blocking the line of sight. Whats different with mine? On the other hand, Skymesh seems to have a totally different attitude. At least they try to make things better.

Dean

I see you have been posting there. Not my most favourite forum. It is not like this one.

Originally Posted by .RC.

I see you have been posting there. Not my most favourite forum. It is not like this one.

I knew I should have picked a different user name. It will be found in a couple more forums around the world. Mostly just manufacturers forums where I have been sorting out problems.

No it is not like this one, but it covers most tech stuff and has a huge amount of info. I only use it for specific reasons. I don't visit regularly like this one. If you want to buy something it is always worth checking. Some years ago we had a problem with a washing machine. If I had checked Whirlpool first I would not have touched it in the first place. The replacement checked out very well. Sometimes it is the lack of mention that is the most telling.

There are worse forums. Don't get me started on the reno forum.

I am hoping to get a better grip on my broadband situation. I need to have something on my side.

Dean

My previous download speeds with Skymesh varied between two and five Mbps with uploads slower. I meant to do some speed tests before the changeover for a comparison but didn't happen. A couple of years ago may have been a higher speed because sometimes I could watch live MotoGP races on low resolution but not lately. I will try this again this weekend to see how well I can watch a race. After about 7:00am downloads usually slowed down but so far with Skymuster the download speed is fairly stable all day.

The group arranging my installation was Hills Installation Team based in Brisbane so maybe this was for Queensland customers.

I am aware that NBN has some conditions attached to usage with Skymuster regarding fair use but I need to read it again to get a clearer understanding.
Hope your installation goes ahead ok soon considering your non standard installation.

Gerry

Originally Posted by Oldneweng

No it is not like this one, but it covers most tech stuff and has a huge amount of info.

I was thinking other issues not appropriate to talk about on another forum No point lowering the tone of this great forum.

Originally Posted by .RC.

I was thinking other issues not appropriate to talk about on another forum No point lowering the tone of this great forum.

I did get your meaning. My post could have been worded better.

Dean

Originally Posted by Normanby

My previous download speeds with Skymesh varied between two and five Mbps with uploads slower. I meant to do some speed tests before the changeover for a comparison but didn't happen. A couple of years ago may have been a higher speed because sometimes I could watch live MotoGP races on low resolution but not lately. I will try this again this weekend to see how well I can watch a race. After about 7:00am downloads usually slowed down but so far with Skymuster the download speed is fairly stable all day.

The group arranging my installation was Hills Installation Team based in Brisbane so maybe this was for Queensland customers.

I am aware that NBN has some conditions attached to usage with Skymuster regarding fair use but I need to read it again to get a clearer understanding.
Hope your installation goes ahead ok soon considering your non standard installation.

Gerry

Those figures beat my speeds hands down. The best I have seen is 1.7Mbps and I think there was a tail wind.

The group arranging my installation was Hills Installation Team based in Brisbane so maybe this was for Queensland customers.

I have noticed different arrangements for Queensland for a number of things at times. Wonder what the reason is?

Dean

I am now on the satellite internet on a 12/1 speed plan. It is better then I was expecting. It is different to my 6mbps 3G connection. In that it would start to load a page straight away, but take some time to do it. The satellite does nothing when you click a link, then takes a little while, then the page loads straight away. It might be slightly faster then my 3G for web browsing.

The only downside is the lack of data for the price. Everyone else on the NBN gets the option of unlimited data plans. Satellite users pretty much the only affordable plans have around 30-40GB of data monthly during normal awake hours of 7am to 1am. There is a lot more data available during off peak 1am to 7am. 100GB or so, but due to the hours it is not really usable. Shaping speeds are very slow as well, only 128kbps which is a bit 2005'ish.

There seems to be many many issues with the satellite and they seem to happen to random users. But so far mine is working well. Also many issues with people using unexplained large amounts of data very quickly.

Good to hear your connection is going well.

We are still under water. We have had more rain this year that we have had for many years so that is a good thing. I have a tentative appointment for an installation on 3rd October, but this is looking unlikely.

Dean

Originally Posted by Oldneweng

We are still under water.
Dean

I hear you are now connected. Good luck.

Originally Posted by .RC.

I hear you are now connected. Good luck.

Who told you?

I thought it was time to follow up this thread. I have had a lot of catching up to do. I still have.

Last Saturday I was connected to NBN Satellite. Within a couple of hours I was using it. I have had a perfect run with it since then. There is a thread on Whirlpool Forum about NBN Satellite connections. There are lots of stories about major issues with connections and intermittant service. At one time about 20% of connections were having issues. The service providers were having so many calls they were overloaded. I contacted my provided via email and kept following this up. I finally sent an official complaint to them about 8 weeks later and got a reply saying they had could not find any of my emails. I read that another provider's email server was not taking emails because it had reached its capacity. These issues are slowwly being fixed so hopefully I should have an easy run.

My internet service has been a bit strange in the last couple of months. This forum is the one place it shows. It must have a pretty quick reset time. I have only rarely been able to read any threads during this time. Constant page resets. I could usually load the sub forum page, but nothing else. This is the only site I noticed any problems. The Woodworking Forum was the same. As I said I have a lot of catching up to do.

Dean