RSSWal-Mart to Sell Broadband Access
By Tim Conneally | Published October 9, 2007, 12:45 PM
Wal-Mart's presence in rural American life continues to grow. Today, the company announced it will begin selling HughesNet Broadband service at 2,800 stores across the nation, with a notable presence in rural areas where terrestrial broadband services are still largely unavailable.
HughesNet is a satellite-based Internet service, formerly known as DirecWAY, which relies on "a clear view of the southern sky" to deliver broadband speeds.
Bringing broadband access to the most rugged American soil has been a quest for many groups of late. Since 2004, the federal Agriculture Department has given grants and loans totaling over a billion dollars to providers targeting rural markets.
Yet the President's lofty goal of providing every American with access to broadband by 2007 still has a long way to go.
"This relationship is a powerful way to make broadband a reality for the millions of Americans and small business owners who cannot get high-speed Internet access from cable or DSL providers. Through Wal-Mart, we are able to offer more Americans the opportunity to experience the convenience and benefits of high-speed Internet in business and every day life." says Mike Cook, Senior Vice President of the North American Division of Hughes.
Instead of bringing America closer to the reality of total broadband coverage, however, Wal-Mart may now just be encroaching on the land-based telecom businesses that the government has been attempting to aid.
There's a lot of territory that can't get broadband... and I'm not talking places out in the middle of nowhere. Satellite is problematic. Where the heck is BPL? That's the solution.
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|You're better off with dial-up in my opinion. We tried satellite and the lag on doing anything interactive was just awful.
Another option for some rural areas (like mine) is a cellular card (like a Sprint aircard). We have one and while its far from perfect (there are times when it slows down to ISDN-like speed and storms seem to play havoc with it) for the most part its close to DSL speed and fairly reliable. Its worth looking into all of the cellular carriers in your area to see if one may have hispeed available. I was surprised to find that Sprint offered it where I live.
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|I have DirecTV and i wouldnt take thier internet for free.
First of all, getting a Wal-Mart customer to pay $500 up front for broadband access is just insane. They would have trouble selling a $149 HD-DVD player because those idiots that shop there are so cheap.
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|Satellite internet...Broadband yes...High speed no. This is a ping I just ran on my Wildblue satellite system. Hughesnet's pings are a little better, but not much and their downloads tend to be lower and their caps are lower as well. Either way they both SUCK! I wish they would spend that money building a terrestrial service that doesn't make you want to shoot your modem with a 50 cal.
Pinging google.com [72.14.207.99] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 72.14.207.99: bytes=32 time=1205ms TTL=234
Reply from 72.14.207.99: bytes=32 time=1356ms TTL=234
Reply from 72.14.207.99: bytes=32 time=1389ms TTL=234
Reply from 72.14.207.99: bytes=32 time=1369ms TTL=234
Reply from 72.14.207.99: bytes=32 time=2085ms TTL=234
Reply from 72.14.207.99: bytes=32 time=1256ms TTL=234
Reply from 72.14.207.99: bytes=32 time=1301ms TTL=234
Reply from 72.14.207.99: bytes=32 time=1341ms TTL=234
Reply from 72.14.207.99: bytes=32 time=2424ms TTL=234
Reply from 72.14.207.99: bytes=32 time=2710ms TTL=234
Ping statistics for 72.14.207.99:
Packets: Sent = 10, Received = 10, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 1205ms, Maximum = 2710ms, Average = 1643ms
I pay $80 for 1.5 down and 256k up w/ pings like the above...What a steal!!! /sarcasm
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|I'll put i this way....as long as you don't try to download oh say a 700MB Linux distro all in one go you should be fines with this. Try to download the whole thing at once and your service will be useless for a day or so. Oh I just used the distro disk as an example for size sake.
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|On HughesNet systems the limit is actually 160-something MB before they nuke your connection for a day.
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|I managed to get 309 MB last night and have slightly better than dial-up speeds tonight. Should be back to normal by tomorrow but I have better than 300MB left to download.
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|Sounds like a real good idea, but it's gotta work a hell of a lot quicker than it takes to get through the checkout at Wallyworld.
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|"HughesNet is a satellite-based Internet service, formerly known as DirecWAY, which relies on "a clear view of the southern sky" to deliver broadband speeds."
Mmm. A ping you can count.
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|I read that there was a 1/2 sec delay when using satelite..... not good for games ....
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|not good for "road warrior" vpns either. often, meaning not always, a vpn will interpret a delay as a capture and forward situation of someone trying to examine packets and break the encryption resulting in the vpn server breaking the connection. i wonder if there is an easy workaround?
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|Try 3-4 seconds. :\
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|many years ago, you needed dial-up for upload. I wonder if it is still that way. IF it is, sharing photos could be an allday event.
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|Pretty sure it is. I don't think they set up satellite transmitters on rooftops as it would be cost-prohibitive (and big). They're just receivers and a dialup modem is still required for your upload requests. It's part of the reason the ping is so high.
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|Nope, I can say for sure that dial-up isn't needed for uploads anymore. I upload photos to Flickr all the time.
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|I have been a satellite tv customer for years now, I called customer service about internet access...$500 up front, $100 per month there after plus your tv plan. In the most rural parts of the country its dialup,the above, or nothing. If this is what wal-mart plans to sell no thanks. The internet should not cost someone $100 a month.
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|Not sure who you were speaking about, but HughesNet is $70 a month, and the purchase price is slightly higher than $500.
It's no deal, but it is slightly better than dial-up. You can always hope that WiMax comes your way soon.
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|just wanted to clarify that,hughesnet, if you buy it upfront is $400- $100MIR= $300 out of pocket and $60 a month for basic service, if you go the promo route you will pay about $82 a month for 24 months. i have had their service for almost 3 years, its ok when it works but horrible when it dont. WalMart is setting themselves up for alot of unhappy customers, that will be back at the store complaining about service. IMO this is a BAD MOVE on their part. Hughesnet has horrible customer support!! I found this out first hand, when i had problems with the service. I really wish that DSL would extend the service 1,000ft so i can get it.
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|Huges has something called "FUP", Fair Use Policy. I had Hughes Directpc, I bought all the equipment up front. My first download started great, good speed but then about 15 seconds into the download, the speed dropped to less than I could get with dial up. Called tech support and found that I had to pay more money to get better access. I was girdled for 12 hours then back to normal, started download again, same thing. Called Hughes, dumped the whole thing. Was not a good service for me.
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