For the past year I’ve been a customer of Hughes network’s DirecPC, a satellite internet service. The way it works is fairly simple; you have a satellite dish installed on your roof and a wire from the dish goes to your computer. Network traffic from your computer goes through the dish and into the sky. It then bounces off the satellite and arrives at their NOC, where it is routed out to the web. A single round trip takes 800ms under ideal conditions. The average round trip was typically between one and five seconds, and sometimes longer.

If you live in a remote area where nothing else is available, it’s not a bad idea, but if I were to do it over again I would have ordered a phone line and used dial-up. You don’t get any bursts of speed, but for browsing the web dial-up is cheaper and more reliable. It reminds me of the tortoise and the hare. Dial-up is slow and steady, while DirecPC is 100K/s on one day and not working the next. Sometimes the latency would be so high it was too frustrating to use.

The install was a nightmare and things went downhill from there so when I found out that Comcast Broadband was finally available, I immediately called and scheduled an install. I then called DirecPC to ask about when I could cancel my service. I told them I wanted to cancel my service because I was changing to another ISP in five days and they told me if I called on the first of July I wouldn’t be charged for another month. When I returned home the connection was down and remained down for the rest of the evening. At midnight, I called them to find out what was wrong, fearing they had cancelled early. My fears were confirmed. The guy had shut it down on my initial call. It’s par for the course as far as I’m concerned. From start to finish they have been one of the worst companies I’ve ever dealt with. I’m elated to finally be rid of them.

The comcast installer arrived 15 minutes early and told me he was new so he hoped I knew a lot about computers. I thought it was going to be another unpleasant installation experience, but he took the initiative to ask a more knowledgeable installer for help. The two of them made more progress but when they ran into another problem, called a third guy who was very competent. All three were pleasant and friendly and in a little over an hour the connection was working.

The great thing about the switch to Comcast is that I get a faster, more reliable connection, competent service and no annual contract all for $20/month less than I paid for DirecPC. The install cost $99 but the first six months are discounted to absorb the cost of the install, plus some. So, if you have the option of a satellite or cable internet connection, go with cable.