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I am looking at my options right now for the new place in San Quintin and I am down to wireless and satellite. Just curious as to how the rest of you access the Internet from Baja? Cable, DSL, wireless or satellite? Have you considered other options?

Only at my first place in El Comitan was I able to get a land-line; I've used satellite dishes at my two other locations for the past 5-6 years. I bounce from my place to my ISP's dish in El Centenario & from there to a dish he has in the hills across the bay & from there to a HS land-line. I'm not a techie nerd, but this set-up has been fairly reliable for me, with very little down-time.

Phone lines are currently within 1/4 - 1/2 a mile of my location, but TELMEX quoted the equivalent of $9K USD to bring line 1/2 a mile to my second casa, (that was MY piece of TELMEX'S total quote for 6 lines to existing homes along approx. 1/4 mile of beach road) so needless to say, I passed! My existing set-up works for me & I feel it's a good deal for $30 USD a month.

What kind of upload/download speeds do you get?

Originally Posted by beachbum

What kind of upload/download speeds do you get?

Oh yeah!! Publicly humiliate me! I SAID I'm not a techie nerd! I dunno! Rarely does it take "forfrigginever"....it's fast enough for MY needs! I'll just stick to taking & posting pics....something I'm better qualified with!

Sorry you asked, huh? ;)

We're on Starband Satellite. We chose it because they had an online class to become an installer. Not that we wanted to install systems for a living, rather because we are very far from anyone who can service it. I didn't want to rely on someone 6 or 8 hours away to install it and provide service. It was pretty easy to learn. A bit frustrating when we went to set it up the first time , but it got easier (we take the dish down when we're not there).

There were recently some Starband issues with them limiting the amount of customers that could use the satellite that serviced Baja, but from what I understand that's mostly for accounts South of Mulege. We were fortunate as our dealer was able to get us a slot on the current satellite. Where you are located, I don't think there's is an issue. Also, you may be able to get service with a normal size dish. We used http://www.orbitalenterprises.net, the owner's name is Max. He's very helpful both in getting the install cert, and helping you through the first time you set up your system. Cost is $69/mo now.

I am considering Starband as an option and since beach bum brought it up, what are your ul/dl speeds?

Next time we're there I'll check the speeds, if someone hasn't given an answer by then.

Thanks to the "Good Samaritan" who provided information for me to check my speeds!!

D/L = 1.77 Mb/s
U/L = 0.18 Mb/s

Good info in this thread. Thank you!

I check my speed with http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/

We're using cable and bought the fastest package available: 3901 kbps download, 352 kbps upload. If there was a faster package we could find, we'd buy it.

Our biggest issue is that 2/3 days per week the service is very intermittent in the afternoons. We're using it for our business and run Skype and Magic Jack off of it. We use our fax machine through Magic Jack. So when it goes off for 30 min or so, it's a pain.

We've been thinking about adding in a second service of some kind to act as back up, but it seems the DSL option is more expensive, slower and others tells us very unreliable.

Which means we're kicking around satellite. Is it possible to get faster speeds with the satellite?

As I tend to upload as much as download, I think I need to find something a little better. I was hoping for something closer to 350-400 kbps via wireless/satellite. Maybe I'm dreaming.

God knows it wouldn't be the first time...

Hughesnet is purportedly one of the fastest from what I see from US techie forums.

The issue with any satellite service is latency. I can't believe I'm even using that word, a week ago I thought that was a type of rubber glove.

Anyway, near as I can understand, the satellite will be 10 times slower than a DSL or cable because the packets of info take longer to get to outer space.

Still Hughesnet says they have 5 mbps in Mexico - so if the latency slows it down somewhat, it would still work well. The thing to watch out for, that I suspect everybody on this board already knows but it was news to me, is that the advertised amount is often the download speed. The upload can be much slower.

That's an issue for me as well. We work off of a remote server in Arizona, so need to be able to upload and download easily

Just talked to my techie friends in Nevada. Consensus is that no matter what speeds the Satellite guys are promising, it's all about the download. Upload is like dial-up.

It has to do with the latency. I don't have a good answer here, but I'd sure like to get one.