Satellite Internet Reliability (Anchorage, Fairbanks, Kotzebue: house, live, install)

[gshurley]

How is satellite internet reliability in the rural Fairbanks area? Hughes network's site mentions weather can be a factor, so does snow cause problems? Fog? Rain?

I would love to hear from people who live near Fairbanks and have satellite internet...

Thanks!

[starlite9]

Originally Posted by gshurley

How is satellite internet reliability in the rural Fairbanks area? Hughes network's site mentions weather can be a factor, so does snow cause problems? Fog? Rain?

I would love to hear from people who live near Fairbanks and have satellite internet...

Thanks!

Well I install them when I am not out playing with the boats, using it right now. Starband seems to be affected by the weather and we have been doing a lot of change out to Hughesnet this last year.

Using it here at the house and haven't had any weather related issues so far. There is a couple of sunspots that take the signal out in the spring and fall for about ten min's for a few days when the sun lines up directly behind the satellite, but no big deal.

[gshurley]

Sunspots! I had not thought of that, but being down for 10 minutes or so for a few days is completely tolerable - that is about the same reliability as the cable internet access I have now.

[Floyd_Davidson]

Originally Posted by gshurley

Sunspots! I had not thought of that, but being down for 10 minutes or so for a few days is completely tolerable - that is about the same reliability as the cable internet access I have now.

It isn't sunspots though, but otherwise the information is about right.

The sun is a very hot body, and produces an amazing amount of radiation of various kinds, including at radio frequencies. What is called a "sun outage" happens when the alignment of the earth and the sun put the sun directly behind the satellite of interest. An earth station antenna that is pointed at the satellite is also pointed directly at the sun. As the sun passes along behind the satellite, the RF from the sun is much stronger than the desired signal from the satellite. That happens every spring and every fall for a few days. It affects commercial telecommunications just as much as it affects the internet.

The timing of sun outages in Alaska is interesting, because of course it happens at a different time for an Earth Station in Anchorage than for one in Kotzebue, for example. So Kotzebue loses the use of any given satellite twice, once when their own station is down and once when the one in Anchorage is down. And, since ATT and GCI have different satellites, they lose use of each at different times too.