Satellite Voip with Wild Blue

[guest]

Hi,
I am about to sign up with a satelite company Wild Blue who seem to be along way ahead of the Direct way satelite. I am looking at the pro package 1.5 down and 256K up.
Have you heard anything about them using Voip with this company or recommendations. I am in the country so I am on ISDN which is costing about $135 per month for the service. I Thank you for any feed back

Peter.

[Mike]

Hi Peter,
Thanks for your question. The main issue with satellite broadband is 'Latency'. This is an issue with all Satellite broadband providers. Latency will be a problem for any real-time applications, such as VoIP internet phone service and internet gaming, as examples. With satellite broadband the signals need to go from your dish, upto the satellite, back down to a 'gateway' and then to the internet, and vice versa. This delay can average 0.5 seconds. This will have a noticeable effect on your VoIP broadband phone service.
Looking at the Wild Blue website, they say that they currently do NOT support VoIP broadband phone service. Check out the following link:
http://www.wildblue.com/aboutWildblue/qaa.jsp#5_9

Hope this answers your question,
Mike.

[guest]

I'd like to add that Satellite has problems with packet loss occsionally, is subject to weather conditions, AND has problems with mildly corrupted data that doesn't normally affect normal use, but causes problems with audio on VoIP calls.

Thanks
VT