<span class="highlight">Internet</span> Options

I can't comment on satellite. We are also on Telstra mobile slowband.

With the large dish size for remote schooling - they will have minimum speeds to accomodate their modes of delivery. They probably require enough "bandwidth" (is that the right term) to carry video conferencing, run certain programs remotely, etc, so they set a high minimum speed to avoid ongoing problems. You might not need that much speed to do what you want.

I have heard (but haven't experienced) that satellite can be slower than telstra..... although at times I am not sure that it is actually possible.... what's slower than slow?

IMO the setup you have is the best available. Are you hosting the websites locally? If so, why don't you set them up with a hosting company? Thousands of those around and it doesn't matter where it is. That way the only traffic to the web site (on your account) is you doing the admin.

Satelite internet sucks as it's hellishly expensive for a 2 way setup. Most use satelite for the down link only and rely on dialup for uplink...

Hi Livin On The Road,
We have just recently spent a month on the road.
Here is a Google Map of our road trip.
We used Virgin Mobile Broadband, which uses the Optus Backbone.
We couldn't get connection at the following places. Silverton, Leigh Creek, Wilmington, Don't know about Manilla because our monthly usage had ran out, which don't bother us because we were only a day away from home. Here is what we were able to upload in this month on the road. Our Road Trip When we got home I was able to tweak it a bit.

Here is their Coverage Map, I had access to the net in most bigger towns we went to.
I was able to upload to our site with good speed and not to many dramas.
We choose a $30.00 for 2GB a month plan with BYO modem.
This served us well, when we couldn't get reception, I loaded all the pictures and made text documents of the the stories and set it all out ready to upload when we able to.
You don't mention how remote or how far from major towns you'll be while wanting to use the internet, if you will be a big distance from bigger centers than maybe this isn't for you.
Anyway, hope you find a good plan and good speed.
Happy & safe travels.

We have Satellite broadband and only because we live rural, dialup here is half the speed it should be so it's too painful and we don't have access to ADSL. NextG reception is only just good enough for phone calls and mostly outside!

If I could go onto Telstra Next G rather than Satellite I probably would. Here are the plans from my provider to show you how pathetic the value for money is...and something they love doing when it comes to Sat is giving you bugger all quota for the peak period when most people actually use the internet and half if not majority of the quota is off peak. Don't forget uploads are generally counted as well.

This is under the Aus Broadband Guarantee
Skymesh ABG Plans

NBN, not sure if it's applicable yet and to whom
Skymesh NBN plans

Hi Livin on the Road

Is that the best price Telstra/Bigpond can offer you for a larger usage plan? Hardly large usage at 15 gb/month anyway. Unfortunately Telstra Next G is the only option that gives any sort of coverage, the lack of which you know, without going to satellite.

The link i have on my communications page for satellite internet is the one recommended by friends. They needed daily internet for business purposes, but not nearly the amount of download/upload that you are needing, hence they are on a small plan. It seems setting up the satellite dish each stop is no problem for them.

No doubt you've been looking at all options to reduce usage, such as preparing everything off line then uploading, and being selective in which websites the children access to avoid the heavy download ones.

Good luck finding a solution.

Motherhen

interesting comments, you seem to want city speeds at remote locations and put simply you wont get them unless you pay for them, why do you think people live in citys :-) .... i have a small ovel shaped dish, two way broadband and costs me $ 59 a month from memory, about 5 feet accross and transmits and receives .......... it is slow, but i can set it up anyware in Australia and log on to my e-mails and internet ... yep slow speed but that is remote living .....
I often find people fall into a trap where they compare there home speeds with what is available out in the bush but seem to forget one thing, they left "home" to get away from the fast paced life style and slow things down a bit but get upset when they cant get fast internet speeds .... dudes, that is why you left, kids in the outback never had fast internet on school of the air so we need to remember that eh....
On the 3m dish thing, dont get to freaked out about the size, when i did a set up for a remote road crew i made up a fold up frame, i also attached spirit levels to the legs and a compass to it so it was simple to set up, you simply had a formula to enter your location with the gps and it gave you the degrees for the compass and it was very simple to set up, you adjusted it by the signal level ........ and it all folded up flat for travel ...
Cheers guys and good luck with it ...... throw money at anything and it works :-)
Joe

G'day
Been on the road 17 months now and originally purchased the australian Nomad Technologiessatellite setup ($2500). After three months on the road we discovered Mobile broadband and purchased the modem router from Bigpond. Apart from the issues mentioned and a little overheating problem, we have been quite happy with it as it is faster and a lot easier to use than the sat system. We have 2 children 10 and 13 who we home school and use the internet for about half of this.
If you are in a place without mobile service for long enough, then the sat system may be for you, but the plans are expensive. Once set up ( about 30 or 40 mins depending how much yelling is done),the system is fast enough for 4 of us to surf at the same time. We have a standard sized tv sat dish and the internet sat dish is only 100mm wider.
Check the website
If I haven't put you off, we finish our trip in 6 weeks and will be selling for half price. Will have it listed in the for sale on this site soon.
Cheers
Joel

15 gb not enough? What are you downloading? My plan at 4gb enough for most uses. Email and surfing for most things shouldn't use up that much. Are you sure some movies aren't being downloaded as well as the normal things. Even Skype with video, which is bandwidth hungry, shouldn't be that hungry.
Have a look at your setup and see if you can disable some features that use a lot of bandwidth.
Just a thought, but have fun traveling. That's the main thing.

I live rural in the SW of WA. Had Optus satellite originally but it was slow and expensive. Changed to NextG wireless a year back - it is much faster, less expensive and have had no reliability problems. Had to put an antenna on the roof which plugs into the Bigpond Elite USB modem.

4GB is more than enough for me which is just under $40pm.

I've worked for Telstra and also on the old NBN project and I will guarantee you Telstra NextG is a better option than Satellite and anything else available.

Not sure that your issue is uploading photos. For a photo on a web page to take up the whole page should be a bit less than 1MB. So you should in theory be able to upload 1500 photos per month within the allowance.

Not sure how School of the Air runs but if they use video - there's your issue.

Id be having a closer lool at what the kids are doing on the computer

15gb is a heck of alot and then some

Why not get 2 modems at a slightly lower download rate. eg: we use the Telstra bigpond service with their Ultra dongle and a 7GB plan for $60/mth, if I had 2 I could have 14GB for $120.
We stayed at a remote WA cattle station for a couple of months and they had a 1GB satellite plan and were told they could not get anything else from Telstra (wrong I'm sure). The satellite was much slower than anything we've ever had with our 3G dongle.

If you're travelling around OZ, just forget anything but Telstra. Our mobile phones are with Optus and Vodafone and there have been many times when we've had no phone coverage but still got internet thanks to NextG (and there's always Skype).