There are not many and it depends, in the first instance, how much money you want to shell out.

1. Satellite. £1200-ish for the hardware and £59+ monthly with restricted bandwidth - basic is 512 kbps down 128 kpbs up. Uses the Sky satellite.Try these guys. Persistent connection.
2. Satellite & Dial-up. Using your sky dish (as long as you have multiroom or are prepared to shell out for the upgrade to your dish) you can get 512kbps download and a 0800 dial-up number for upload (ie 33-56kbps). Good if you don’t need to send big emails.
3. 3G. Using your 3G capable phone as a modem. Cost is variable because not only do you pay for the connection but also for all your data. Expensive to run.
4. OnSpeed. Compresses data through your normal dial-up connection achieving the equivalent (if you degrade the pictures you get) of x4 the speed. For £24 pa. this is a reasonable deal, however you still have to contend with the connection dropping out - which happens alot here.

So that’s what’s available. Emerging technologies might help us out in the next 2-5 years – broadband over electricity (they’ve got it in Crieff), wide-area wireless broadband (via Microsoft and a way off yet - potentially v. expensive) and improvements in ADSL technologies.

In the end we might have to persuade BT and others to fund a better set of copper wires. Maybe make calling each other in ColGlen better too!

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 4th, 2006 at 9:36 am and is filed under FAQs, Internet & Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.