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Taking the New Ka Band Satellite Internet On the Road

| Updated Jun 16, 2016

I got this new kind of satellite internet dish last fall in Arizona, and got it working when “home” in Florida for the holidays, visiting my family. My earlier report covered its blazing speed and gigantic data allotment. That's all fine and well, but the real test is… how does it do out on the road? The whole purpose of mobile satellite internet is to be able to get connected no matter where you are – if you can't do that, it's useless. I needed to test it out as I moved around the country.

Here's Mike's old Ku band dish we got workign up at the Montana meetup last summer.
Here's Mike's old Ku band dish we got working up at the Montana meetup last summer.

The difference between the old Hughesnet and Starband satellite internet systems and the new one is modern technology. The older Ku band systems sprayed one big signal across the whole continent, which was great for coverage, but bad for signal strength and bandwidth. I even used it up in Canada when marooned in Kitchener – my data card wanted to charge me crazy prices for internet, but the satellite is out there in international waters, and didn't care where I was shooting from, as long as I had a good line of sight.

echostar_beam_map
Here are the existing beams (orange is covered, blue is not). Each elliptical coverage area is one beam.

The new Ka band system has spot beams – individual transmitters and receivers for localized areas, like satellite TV does for your local channels. Each beam is about 150-200 miles in diameter, so if you move out of the beam you're in, you need to get on another one. I was one of the first people to get this new system and have the system configured so I could switch beams. Stationary installations are locked – try to move it and you'll get the dreaded “satellite dish move not allowed” error message. I worked with my satellite guru, Barb Nolley, to get mine unlocked, which happened when we were in Florida.

Up and running out on the Texas plains.
Up and running out on the Texas plains.

So we hit the road in March, west on I-10 and headed for the California coast. We drove pretty much nonstop until Texas, using our datacard, but decided to stop for a few days. I tried out the dish. Success! A beam that wasn't even on the old map I had, beam 4, was right there, and I was online. It's the Oklahoma City beam, and I was southwest of the center of it, right across the river in Wichita Falls, TX.

Up and runnign again out on the big blue- Cambria, CA.
Up and running again out on the big blue- Cambria, CA.

One thing about this latest and greatest system – it's not complete yet. The eastern half of the country and a strip up the west coast are covered with beams, plus a few extra beams for Phoenix, Denver, Spokane, etc., but everything in between is waiting for the next satellite, EchoStar 19, to go up later this year. So we drove straight through to Cambria, CA, where we finally got on the big blue water, and out came the dish again. Sure enough, we got right on beam 19, which was sitting there waiting for us.

Up and running yet again in Big Sur. This is where i had to be dishonest about my location in order to get online. You'd lie too, to stay here.
Up and running yet again in Big Sur. This is where I had to be dishonest about my location in order to get online. You'd lie too, to stay here.

As we moved north, we've gone out of beam 19 into beam 35, and are now on beam 27 as we leave California and enter Oregon. There was one scary moment when the system gave a strange error – “no satellite available for your location” – but I figured out how to cheat by lying about my location to the software and get online anyway. The system is self-ranging (it calculates the distance from the dish to the satellite automatically), so the location input is pretty much just to assign a beam. I was able to share this information with the other prototype users through Barb Nolley – we're all learning as we go, so it's a cooperative venture as we all figure out how to make this stuff work.

Booya. Killer speeds.
Booya. Killer speeds.

I am VERY happy with this new system – it's 40 times as fast as my old Ku band system (20 Mbps compared to 500 kbps average) lots more data per month (50 gigs of anytime usage a month as opposed to a quarter gig a a day – use it or lose it), and much more stable – no losing the signal when clouds pile up overhead or an inversion layer sets in. It will stay up for days at a time, as reliable as cable in a sticks and bricks house. But the really rewarding part has been being one of the pioneers who started this whole mobile Ka band stuff, and learning as I go.

So join me in praying for a successful launch for Echostar 19 later this year, so that we'll have spot beams coast to coast. There's a lot of good camping out there in the interior of the west. Meanwhile, I'll struggle along this summer with what I have – the Pacific coast 😉

 

RV Lifestyle

Published on 2016-06-16

4 Responses to “Taking the New Ka Band Satellite Internet On the Road”

June 23, 2016at11:47 am, Quisling said:

What is the upload speed? A test at http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest would provide that info.

June 16, 2016at11:13 am, treasonx said:

Great article and those speeds are amazing!

Question how is the latency? What are the ping times like? Have you tried video calls, such as google hangouts with it?

What is the pricing like?

June 16, 2016at11:58 am, sharon campbell said:

it’s 23,000 miles up to the satellite, and 23,000 miles back. latency is in the 1/3 to 1/2 second range – enough to make VOIP very frustrating. you can use it like a walkie-talkie and say “over”, but you can’t call your grandmother. it’s $80 a month right now for 50 anytime gigs and another 50 gigs in the wee hours – that may change for the worse as the VARs take over. they aren’t set up yet.

June 16, 2016at12:01 pm, treasonx said:

Thanks!

I didn’t know if the spot beam method had any impact on latency. I know it can’t overcome the speed of light problem 🙂

Thanks for the awesome article. I just subscribed to the podcast!

Comments are closed.

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