Commercial Satellite Broadband Provider Feature Comparison

Here, we separate the consumer/residential -grade services from the business- and enterprise-class offerings. Pay particular attention to Usage Limitation and Contention Factor comparisons. These two items in general and contention factor in particular can be make-or-break issues for your business. If remote access or telecommuting capability is a must-have, then look closely at the VPN and Citrix comparisons - ViaSat's LinkStar, NetLink or iDirect is your only choice. Take special note - speed alone does not determine how well a satellite-based broadband connection works.

1. Acceptable Use Policy - Fair Access Policy. Otherwise known as bandwidth rationing, all satellite broadband service providers will reduce your bandwidth to dialup rates if you surpass a certain threshold. In the case of HughesNet, it's 169 mb per hour - that's about the size of a product manual in PDF format and it's far less than a Windows service pack update. They call it a 'Fair Access' policy. We call it unacceptable for business use. Some satellite ISPs, such as BroadSky Networks, have policies that are more in line with business usage.

2. Contention factor is a measurement of how many actual or potential processes or individuals may contend for a given resource. In this case, contention factor refers to how many customers are contending for a finite number of available network connections. Low factors are good (100 to 1 or less), high factors are bad (200 or more to 1). The higher the contention loading on the network, the more users are sharing the connection and therefore the slower your service. DSL and Cable providers try to maintain 125-1 contention ratios to deliver a favorable user experience whereas some consumer satellite broadband services operate with contention levels of 300, 400 and even 500-1, delivering a poor user experience.

 *  NOC - Network Operations Center

** As a rule, Ku band VSATs are less susceptible to weather-induced 'fade' than Ka band systems, but a well-implemented spot beam Ka band-based system combined with higher transmit power such as that deployed by WildBlue can overcome these issues.

***  Certain types of SSL-based VPNs work with the WildBlue service. WildBlue done NOT explicitly support any SSL based VPN clients and users should check with the software manufacturer to identify the type of VPN client they are using. IPSec-based VPN solutions either do not work at all or operate so slowly as to be unusable with any of the consumer-class satellite services. Neither WildBlue, StarBand nor HughesNet will support or troubleshoot VPN issues.