Experience with satellite Internet
I have used the CScoms (now CS Loxinfo) IPTV satellite system
for a few years, and it has been OK
most of the time. The service has
generally been pretty good for the last couple of years.
Exception: when they changed the
frequencies at the transponder this year it
screwed up the system for many users, and they took days
to fix the problem which they had
created.
IP Star is still just a twinkle in Shinawatra's eye, as they
have yet to launch the satellite, in
spite of what you may read at the CScoms
website.
I have no experience with Samart, so can't comment about it. The
following refers to CScoms satellite.
The good news:
There is no hourly connection limit, so you can connect all day
if your telephone connection holds up.
3 baht per call, paid on your
telephone bill (assuming you use a dial-up number which is a
local call to you).
Even if your telephone line is not very good, you use the line
only for requesting info, such as
webpages, and for the occasional upload.
Since uploads are more or less limited to 33.6k on a
telephone line, this actually allows a
mediocre line to function OK.
I find that intentionally limiting my modem connection to 33 or
38k works well, and my connection
seldom drops out before a few hours have
lapsed.
The bad news:
There are download limits, but they are fairly reasonable,
unless you do a lot of downloading.
Be forewarned: they will cut off your service if you reach the
download limits for that month, unless you have
previously instructed them to
specifically allow you to exceed the limit you have chosen.
If you do request to exceed the limit, you'll have to pay extra
for every additional 100MB block (or
portion thereof) used- even if you use
only 1MB of the extra block.
They limit your bandwidth, but with a little tweaking, this can
be exceeded. See sites like
http://www.dslreports.com/ .
