Oh man I wish that were wholly true... Satellite/VSAT has another very
very important attribute: it's not subject to the whims of the local
government or regulators. So when there's an election or some unrest or
coup or the prime minister has very bad flatulence, and some person says
"turn off the Internet," your non-terrestrial connection is there so
that you can continue to do business.
Right now I'm in the middle of a project installing more than 300 VSATs,
replacing an incumbent provider, and the rationale for all that money
and all that equipment and all that work is "the bits must flow."
(Plus, there are also still many places outside of capital cities in the
world where the Internet is truly awful and if you want bits, you have
to bring your own)
jms
Oh man I wish that were wholly true... Satellite/VSAT has another very
very important attribute: it's not subject to the whims of the local
government or regulators. So when there's an election or some unrest or
coup or the prime minister has very bad flatulence, and some person says
"turn off the Internet," your non-terrestrial connection is there so
that you can continue to do business.
Very true, except there are still a few countries that require a single
operator to have all "gateway" access out of the country, even via
satellite. So yes, install, for sure. But if someone does the rounds and
catches an "unlicensed" installation, that could be interesting.
(Plus, there are also still many places outside of capital cities in the
world where the Internet is truly awful and if you want bits, you have
to bring your own)
I did mention that use-case, already, in a previous post.
Simple applications such as ATM's in remote locations is still quite
typical.
Mark.
Not quite VSAT, but in the bad old SA days (pre-demicracy), I did some work for a company that used a UK-based satellite provider for data to the client (data was sent in the VBI), and dial-up for the traffic from the client.
Still relied on a local provider for the dial-up, though, so could be censored.
Before TICSA, I also looked at buying a private (pirate) satellite earth station. The Russian government were selling off surplus 8-wheel-drive military satellite earth stations, and I was thinking of parking one in my back garden (I lived on a farm).
paul
Yes, in these scenarios, we called the uplink the "back-channel" :-).
And it could be anything, including dial-up.
It was not uncommon to buy uplink via SCPC from one provider, and
downlink via DVB on an inclined orbit satellite from a totally different
provider. This was a very common model between 2000 - 2009, where your
uplink and downlink ISP's were vastly different.
And who says the Internet must be symmetric :-)?
Mark.