I can't speak much to phone service but between Viasat and hughesnet, you'll have a way better experience with Viasat. Don't expect it to be full speed once you hit the caps. It will run slow during peak times once you hit the caps in the fine print. Off peak hours should be fairly fast. Latency also is above 700ms so don't expect twitch gaming to work. VPN is also bad. I also doubt Comcast is throttling your entire community. Have you escalated your issue with them? Maybe they have a congested node that needs to be split. Or their peering points could be running hot so certain services feel slow to you. On Fri, Dec 6, 2019, 3:55 PM Yosem Companys <ycompanys@gmail.com> wrote:
Hey All,
I'm new to the world of satellite phones + satellite Internet. I can't find an informative guide that will help me figure out the best options.
Anyone know where I could find such information?
Based on my exhaustive search, it seems the best generally speaking are Iridium and ViaSat, respectively. (For Iridium, that assumes one has line of sight.) But would it be best to do both or get Iridium Go only and use one's cell phone via a satellite link or have a dedicated satellite phone? More important, how can one assess whether one's geographic location is ideally suited for one service vis-a-vis the other?
For perspective, I live on the Silicon Valley Coastside (i.e., Half Moon Bay). Comcast and AT&T rely on PG&E's transmission cables for Internet access. As such, whenever a power shutdown occurs, many of us on the Coastside are left without cable or Internet access. I shudder to think what would happen during the Big One. Even when there are no power shutoffs, however, Comcast appears to throttle our community on a regular basis.
As such, I'm thinking about getting a combo of satellite phone and/or satellite Internet both to improve my Internet service and to maintain communication during an anthropogenic or natural disaster.
Any suggestions?
Thanks, Yosem