Big Dish found a reason for people to keep it...

[Ray_Clum]

$29.99/month satellite broadband internet!

Report from Sky Retailer (http://www.skyretailer.com/archive/sept2002/r092402.htm#one)

[Richard King]

The $29 plan is a "bring your own ISP" program. The "Use Our ISP" program is $44 per month. This is a one way satellite internet system still requiring a telephone line for uploads. Download speeds are "up to 400k". I find it interesting that they suggest using your existing BUD system for internet access. None of their systems includes a dish, simply a Power Passive Satellite Splitter. This eliminates any possibility of surfing the net and surfing the sky at the same time unless you go out and buy a dish.

[Mike123abc]

Do you really need an ISP? If you get email from someone like yahoo, and you route your packets through the dish, you probably do not need an ISP.

[JohnL]

Originally posted by Mike123abc
Do you really need an ISP? If you get email from someone like yahoo, and you route your packets through the dish, you probably do not need an ISP.

Mike,

Since you need a Uplink feed to a Modem on your computer then you will need somesort of ISP to send data upstream like Requests for data as well as uploads to send out email.

John

[CanOBeans]

Ya.....you are definitively gonna need an ISP.....your "internet feed" has to come from somewhere......

[Mike123abc]

True, I went and read the site and they use a phone modem to send out packets and the sat sends back the replys. I was thinking it was 2 way sat like some other services.

[lee635]

For your ISP:
Netzero.net with free ad supported internet access up to about 10 hours a month and about $11 or so a month for all-you-can-eat access wthout the ads.

I just signed up with highstream.net at $8.66 a month for all-you-can-eat if you go monthly or less if you pay quarterly or annually. In my area there have been no busy signals and good connection speeds.

So somewhere between $29.99 up to $40.99 gets you two way satellite internet access with ISP.

I had the direcpc one way system where you use an ISP to upload and a ku dish to download. It was quite speedy late at night, but like any service, it slowed down in the early evening with everyone on the system. You can pick up a ku dish and the direcpc modem for a reasonable price on ebay.

I don't know if this BUD service is on ku or not. If it's on ku, you could buy a smaller dish (like a 30 incher) and dedicate it to your internet access and use the bud for surfing. It's still not a bad deal. We paid about $90 to get DSL hooked up.