PDA

View Full Version : NBN satellite internet gone live



.RC.
29th Apr 2016, 09:55 PM
Just a heads up for people a couple of days ago the NBN satellite service went live for anyone who lives away from it all and suffers from slow expensive internetz. The official starting was today.

Although the monthly quotas on the NBN satellite service are not very good, they are still better then what we can get now.

You can now apply through an ISP that will supply NBN sat services. Although the big three ISP's, Telstra, Optus and TPG group are not at this stage offering NBN sat services.

A page showing a graph of providers and plans is here. https://birrraus.com/satellite/satellite-providers/

Oldneweng
30th Apr 2016, 12:08 AM
How long ago did you sign up?

I mentioned it in one of my posts at the time I signed up. Supposed to take up to 10 months to get all installations done. Just need to wait and see. This may be the first time in my life that I have had access to reasonable speed. Should be faster than the 2400 baud I started with.

Dean

.RC.
30th Apr 2016, 08:09 AM
If you signed up months ago your installation should be one of the first. I only tried to sign up with an ISP a few days ago but have been informed my application can not yet proceed.

chambezio
30th Apr 2016, 10:13 AM
Because of our location we have Satellite every thing. Austar, free to air TV, and Internet. We enrolled with the Australian Satellite quite a while ago. My wife checked the other day and said that we had missed the first batch of subscribers so hopefully we will be in the next batch.
We tried Dial up but it was next to useless, so then we went with Satellite. It was a lot quicker than Dialup initially but is now quite slow. We can't stream movies/U Tube due to the lag.
The new set up can't get here quick enough!

Oldneweng
30th Apr 2016, 01:41 PM
If you signed up months ago your installation should be one of the first. I only tried to sign up with an ISP a few days ago but have been informed my application can not yet proceed.

I hope that is the case. I received an email from my provider with a link to sign up. This was in mid January. Naturally I jumped straight on it and signed up.


Because of our location we have Satellite every thing. Austar, free to air TV, and Internet. We enrolled with the Australian Satellite quite a while ago. My wife checked the other day and said that we had missed the first batch of subscribers so hopefully we will be in the next batch.
We tried Dial up but it was next to useless, so then we went with Satellite. It was a lot quicker than Dialup initially but is now quite slow. We can't stream movies/U Tube due to the lag.
The new set up can't get here quick enough!

What is dial up like now? I was not aware that dial up modems had received any advancements in years. Mind you, I have not bothered checking. I used to keep up with computer developments, but moved on to other things. My last modem was 56k. I have had 1700k reported from satellite by Speedtest.com. It has been a while since I used this test as it is Flash based and I have disabled Flash on my computer. I don't know if these 2 figures are directly related tho. 56k is baud and 1700k is bps. I think they are the same, but not sure. Wow, it has been a long time.

Satellite is not considered good enough for streaming. The lag is a problem, but also the speed. I have never considered movies as they take up huge amounts of data and that amount is not available on satellite plans that I have access to. I download and save YouTube videos for later viewing. YouTube does not like this, but I have no other option. I only download 360 resolution. With the extra data allowance available for offpeak with the NBN plan I will start downloading higher resolutions. My plan, from memory will allow 50G data offpeak. The program I use to download video will enable me to schedule the download for a later time.

We had satellite TV installed. It cost nothing due to some govt scheme. They tested our existing aerial and decided it was not good enough so went satellite. I moved the TV aerial and lifted it higher. It had a pole with about 5 telescoping sections, but not much was in use. After this improvement we started getting pretty good reception. This was around the time city channels started to be made available in rural locations. The biggest problem is that all that technology does not change the content available. The satellite TV does not connect now. Probably because I refused to leave it turned on all the time and updates etc were missed. Some months ago I disconnected the TV aerial amplifier power supply while checking for an RCD tripping fault. I still have not reconnected it and due to the difficulty in reaching behind a cupboard to do so, have no intention to. This means I have no access to any form of TV. No problem. I think it is over 2 years since I bothered. What's the point when there is nothing to watch.

Dean

YBAF
30th Apr 2016, 02:06 PM
.....Some months ago I disconnected the TV aerial amplifier power supply while checking for an RCD tripping fault. I still have not reconnected it and due to the difficulty in reaching behind a cupboard to do so, have no intention to. This means I have no access to any form of TV. No problem. I think it is over 2 years since I bothered. What's the point when there is nothing to watch.


We can't have that. If you dont watch TV ya wont know how you should think about the 'issues'. God forbid! without TV you might closely research the 'issues' and actually think for yourself and have some independent thoughts :oo:

I haven't had a TV conection for some time and now find when I see one when out and about that the programs are juvenile at best.

With the high end any subject education available at any time on the internet why waste time watching the idiot box.

Oldneweng
30th Apr 2016, 03:12 PM
We can't have that. If you dont watch TV ya wont know how you should think about the 'issues'. God forbid! without TV you might closely research the 'issues' and actually think for yourself and have some independent thoughts :oo:

I haven't had a TV conection for some time and now find when I see one when out and about that the programs are juvenile at best.

With the high end any subject education available at any time on the internet why waste time watching the idiot box.

Yes, all very true. I do like watching documentaries, but found that I was only finding out about them after they had aired. Of course if I had pay TV I would be fine as they would be repeated 4 times a day for a month and then this cycle repeated 6 months later. I would still have to watch ads tho. I know download doco's from YouTube.

Ads are one of the biggest problems other than the total lack of watchable content. I can sit thru an ad once. The second time I get annoyed. The third time I realise that an intelligent person would not waste that much of their life on them. What value do people place on their time?


We can't have that. If you dont watch TV ya wont know how you should think about the 'issues'. God forbid! without TV you might closely research the 'issues' and actually think for yourself and have some independent thoughts :oo:

Yes. Scary isn't it. "Issues"? I am constantly amazed at the polarised attitudes most people have towards many issues. 99% of issues are too complicated and misreported for us to know even a tiny amount about, yet people still know "the truth"! Yea right!

Dean

.RC.
30th Apr 2016, 10:31 PM
I hope that is the case. I received an email from my provider with a link to sign up. This was in mid January. Naturally I jumped straight on it and signed up.

You could ring them up and find out if the order has proceeded.






What is dial up like now? I was not aware that dial up modems had received any advancements in years.

Satellite is not considered good enough for streaming. The lag is a problem, but also the speed. I

Dial up is still a max of 56k, always has been, always will be.

Satellite is usually very good at UDP streaming. That is about what it is best at as there is no need to send data both ways.

Satellite's downfall is when there needs to be transmission both ways like with most normal internet usage. Due to the latency that can never be avoided it can play merry hell with your internet usage.

Oldneweng
1st May 2016, 12:32 PM
Dialup is still at 56k! I guess everyone has to try it to see what it is like. I thought it was fast when I first used it. To put it in some perspective tho, my first computer had a 100M hard drive. For the younger ones, YES that is correct. 100M. Even on my slow connection I can download 100M in a few minutes. I remember when downloading a 1M file was just a dream. I can only download 100M in a few minutes as I do this with a download manager. Firefox cannot hope to get anywhere near this speed.

Dean

Oldneweng
4th May 2016, 12:51 PM
I was going to ring and enquire at some point, but I have just received an email from my provider. I will be staying close to the phone for a while.

Dean

Oldneweng
18th May 2016, 10:39 AM
Had a visit from the installer on Monday. He came to do the installation. He couldn't do it.

The huge gum tree to the North of the house was in the way. The existing dish points at it as well. Maybe this one is more sensitive to interference. He said his instructions were not to install in this situation. He had to put in a report and let my provider make a decision about installation options.

He mentioned 2 options, but said that as the service was so new, these had not been given the ok yet.

1. Put the dish on my shed and cut down 2 smaller trees. 300 - 400mm trunks.
2. Mount the dish on a pole next to the paddock fence. This will put the dish under the trees here. They will have to dig a trench back to the house, about 50m.

Number 2 sounds good, but I have to wait for my provider to get back to me. I spent a lot of time cleaning up the study and rearranging the network components. Its years since it was so neat and accessible. :D The original satellite modem was located on top of a computer cupboard I made, which has a lift up top to get to the scanner underneath it. Duh! Some people are totally clueless. That really pi55ed me. The cables were not long enough to reach any further. At least this bloke was a local professional installer. Networks etc.

Dean

Oldneweng
6th Jun 2016, 02:42 PM
Excert from another thread


I suspect some of my issues are related to having a slow satellite connection, which may see a lot of timer related errors on servers.

I hope these problems will be largely fixed next week as I am hoping my NBN Satellite service will be connected. I have had major problems with organising this as nobody seems to know what is going on. This NBN satellite thingy is brand new after all. My setup is non-standard. There has to be a direct line from the dish to the satellite without interference. The existing dish peeps thru the foliage of a massive gum tree. There is nowhere on the house where this is possible. The office people seem to be totally incapable of passing this information on to the installer. I expressly asked them to pass the information on and still they managed to fail.

The end result is that I have to provide a trench for the installer to lay conduit/cable from the ground position next to a paddock fence back to the house. I still have not been told exactly how deep this trench needs to be. I am going 450mm. The installer thought either 300mm or 450mm. The trench will be done Tuesday and the installer comes on Thursday.

Dean

This morning I received a call from Sky Bridge who arranges installations. I have a new time set for Monday 13th June. What about Thursday? Nothing about that on the system! (I have grave doubts about their system). They rang the Thursday installer. He can't make Thursday. Thanks for letting me know that, not. The new time is with the first installer. At least it is not a completely new guy, and he has at least been out and had a look.

I finally got annoyed enough about the runaround that I raised my voice, politely. I had to ring and cancel the booking for the trench digger, which has been booked from Wednesday until well after I need it. Nice. I had it booked for tomorrow morning. I suppose I should be grateful they did actually ring today. I don't want the trench open any longer than it has to be. Probably be a distaster. Luckily there has recently been a new rental place opened up. They had what I needed. Cheaper too.

I demanded that the installer ring me personally and soon, not the day before the installation. At this stage I have very little trust that what they say will actually work out. He is meant to ring today. He is a nice guy. I hope it works out, of course, but the installers cannot do anything without having it all preapproved. They have to have all the materials available and it is only sent out just before the job. No spares.

Dean

.RC.
6th Jun 2016, 03:17 PM
Not sure why you have to dig the trench. It is up to NBN to do and pay for everything.

Oldneweng
6th Jun 2016, 05:26 PM
Not sure why you have to dig the trench. It is up to NBN to do and pay for everything.

I was told that because it is a non-standard installation it is my resposibility to do that part. The second installer said that he would be able to arrange someone to do it, but at my cost then he rang back and said that would not be possible. Then he did not ring back and tell me he was unable to make the appointment. It was lucky I got the phone call today and queried this because I may have had a trench sitting around doing nothing for some time. Not really a good thing at this time of year without considering the inconvenience to us.

At least they are supplying the conduit and cable. It may be because a contractor would have to dig the trench. $180.00 for all day Saturday for the trench digger and we are making up a list of trenches that need digging for other reasons. There is about 15m of poly water pipe to be laid across the rear of the yard. There is one tap there that is supplied by a very old poly pipe that has had to be repaired a couple of times already. This pipe runs under the floor of my shed. I think I missed it by a whisker when I laid the lathe slab. There are a couple of other places water pipes can be run . I have most of a roll of 32mm poly sitting doing nothing so the cost is minimal. When I moved the lathe out of the implement shed with the assistance of "Don" and his loader fork lift, one of the things I got him to do is lift the poly roll up out of the kikuyu behind the house yard. :D I doubt I would have been able to without resorting to poison.

Dean

Oldneweng
13th Jun 2016, 10:08 AM
A couple of posts ago I mentioned that I have an appointment set for today. My other half pointed out earlier that today is a public holiday. What are the chances?

In that post I also said I had demanded a phone call from the installer ASAP. I am still waiting.

The credibility of Skybridge is pretty low at the moment.

HaHaHaHa.......

I remember seeing "Google reviews" when looking them up. I just had a look. There were two. One said nothing, which probably says it all but had two stars, the other says


Why NBNCO use such an inept installer for their Skymuster installs I will never know.

and one star.

If we get a "normal winter" they had better get off their ar5es or digging will be impossible.

Dean

.RC.
13th Jun 2016, 02:57 PM
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.

Oldneweng
13th Jun 2016, 08:08 PM
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. :oo: I prefer the idea of having the dish up in the air.

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

Dean

Normanby
14th Jun 2016, 07:23 AM
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.

.RC.
14th Jun 2016, 08:34 AM
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.

Oldneweng
14th Jun 2016, 12:20 PM
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.:rolleyes:


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".:rolleyes:

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

.RC.
14th Jun 2016, 09:07 PM
I see you have been posting there. Not my most favourite forum. It is not like this one.

Oldneweng
14th Jun 2016, 10:47 PM
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. :D 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

Normanby
15th Jun 2016, 10:51 AM
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

.RC.
15th Jun 2016, 11:00 AM
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.

Oldneweng
15th Jun 2016, 09:50 PM
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

Oldneweng
15th Jun 2016, 09:57 PM
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

.RC.
14th Sep 2016, 08:49 PM
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.

Oldneweng
14th Sep 2016, 11:09 PM
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

.RC.
20th Nov 2016, 11:39 AM
We are still under water.
Dean

I hear you are now connected. Good luck.

Oldneweng
24th Nov 2016, 10:02 AM
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. :D

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