Broadband News
News, views and analysis
Tooway 2M For All
04 May 2009 | 10.25 Europe/London
Eutelsat communications has launched their "Tooway" satellite broadband service with a pitch for providing Lord Carter's 2Mbits/s "Universal" Service Obligation (USO). This is a 2-way satellite service with 2Mbits/s download and 256k or 384k upload depending on the satellite chosen. Faster services up to 10M are forecast for 2010.
Although proclaiming "Affordable broadband for homes faced only with dial-up" we found the upfront cost from one UK distributor (Bentley Walker) to be £795 including the first three months service but excluding dish installation by a local installer. The monthly fee of €35 (about £31) for the "Basic" service includes 1.2 GB of data on a rolling 4-week basis, with the £400+ "Gold" service including only 6GB.
If the upfront cost were to be subsidised or paid by a grant, as with the previous RABBIT scheme, then the service may be "affordable" to those with no alternative. The bandwidth is rather limited, which should not be a surprise given the high cost of launching a satellite and the inevitable constraint of a shared downlink.
Some indications of service qualtiy from the documentation include "A minimum of 50% of the peak Speed 90% of the time", "A Minimum of 20% of peak speed 95% of the time" and "Very low speed and priority on all peer to peer applications". If a user exceeds the bandwidth limits the service is restricted to a lower speed under the "Fair Access Policy"..
Latency or response time will always be an issue with satellite services as it takes 120 ms for a signal to travel from earth up to the satellite. Requesting a web page and getting it back requires four of these (you - sat - earth station - sat - you) which means a minimum return time of 500 ms. An ADSL broadband connection would typically have a return time below 40ms, for comparison.
[ Tooway ] [ Bentley Walker ]
Although proclaiming "Affordable broadband for homes faced only with dial-up" we found the upfront cost from one UK distributor (Bentley Walker) to be £795 including the first three months service but excluding dish installation by a local installer. The monthly fee of €35 (about £31) for the "Basic" service includes 1.2 GB of data on a rolling 4-week basis, with the £400+ "Gold" service including only 6GB.
If the upfront cost were to be subsidised or paid by a grant, as with the previous RABBIT scheme, then the service may be "affordable" to those with no alternative. The bandwidth is rather limited, which should not be a surprise given the high cost of launching a satellite and the inevitable constraint of a shared downlink.
Some indications of service qualtiy from the documentation include "A minimum of 50% of the peak Speed 90% of the time", "A Minimum of 20% of peak speed 95% of the time" and "Very low speed and priority on all peer to peer applications". If a user exceeds the bandwidth limits the service is restricted to a lower speed under the "Fair Access Policy"..
Latency or response time will always be an issue with satellite services as it takes 120 ms for a signal to travel from earth up to the satellite. Requesting a web page and getting it back requires four of these (you - sat - earth station - sat - you) which means a minimum return time of 500 ms. An ADSL broadband connection would typically have a return time below 40ms, for comparison.
[ Tooway ] [ Bentley Walker ]