Not so new for some, but for many of us very specialist. Why am I thinking this is something Choice might want to explore? My experience living on the South Coast of NSW at the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020. Also, but not directly related, sith current (January 2022) volcanic eruption near Tonga.
In such disasters, conventional communications such as telephone and mobile, go down. With the link into the future of the NBN to one’s “landline”, if the Internet goes down, so does your “fixed” line.
There is no copper wire back up as has been the case for years.
I realise that many reading this probably don’t have a home phone that is separate from their mobile account.
Most commentators think that the next-to-arrive 5G network is going to run the NBN out of our lives.
So, investigating satellite technology may be desirable, even at this early stage.
Telstra offers at their <satphoneshop.com> a device called the Zoleo “Global Communicator” that allows you to connect to your smartphone to the Iridium network. Has Choice ever reviewed this device or something similar?
On a different order there is the Elon Musk <starlink.com> global satellite system. Anyone ever evaluated this system for use in Australia?
There may be other satellite technologies of which I as an ordinary citizen am unaware.
But a Choice report would be very welcome.
We are on the SkyMuster satellite NBN. I don’t know if it is just us, or everyone, but it is painfully slow, some websites just don’t come up, it goes out when it rains and is severely degraded when overcast. Latency is terrible. We were advised to keep our landline because of the unreliability of NBN satellite.
Starlink isn’t here yet. It was available in Victoria. A friend (with an electronics business) in Qld recently signed up for it - $700 for the equipment and $136/month IIRC. The latency is much lower due to the lower orbits. ABC did an article Pilot project uses Elon Musk's Starlink satellites to provide connectivity to regional farms - ABC News
Telstra issued my remote roadworks camp with an Iridium satellite phone at landline prices when they discovered just how far out in the desert we were. It was terrible - one way communication at a time with a long latency, which sounded like talking in a washing machine. Once you got used to it and the “Ah Ah Ah Amen” over and over, and counting to 10 before replying. It might be better with advanced technology.
I doubt 5G will make it to my neck of the woods in the next few years, because 2G and 4G haven’t made it yet.
I tracked a Loon travelling over remote parts of Qld. That’s a “free” internet, but they drift and even if you knew how to connect it may drift away before you got much use out of it.
I would like a better, affordable internet solution too.
My condolences. I was on it for a bit over a year too, but went back to using an Optus phone plan with more data for less cost, better speed in practice due to lower latency, and much better reliability. The NBN dish is still on the roof, they don’t want to take it down in case I want to use it again, which wont be happening, so I might take it down myself.
Satellite services can be great for any use where latency is irrelevant and a data stream can be maintained at sufficient speed to avoid buffering underflows.
I keep an NBN VOIP ‘landline’ because my mobile service (Telstra and Optus) is unreliable 1km from the tower! Sometimes I cannot make an outbound mobile call unless I go outside my ordinary brick veneer house. 
I presume you are focusing on emergency use.
The average consumer might have as varied experiences with this service or that service as they do between Telstra, Optus, and Vodaphone/TPG so comparisons may be, at the end of the day, interesting yet meaningless. Might the ACCC be a better place to organise such data collection to complement their NBN reports? More data is always good overall even if not terribly relevant to any specific individual.
Is that something Choice should be spending its finite resources on when it would be the province of governments and telcos, not that the former seems to give a toss about ‘fit for service’ and the latter is all about P/L?
Sky Muster is old technology now. It doesn’t work well when it’s raining. (I wish that statement were a joke.) It’s also a LONG way away, so particularly awful for short-ping applications (like gaming.)
Starlink is a low orbit, fast ping, CONSTELLATION of satellites. There are some 1,600 up right now and 42,000 planned!! (Astronomers are NOT happy.)
Costs are reasonable (for satellite internet) at $800 setup plus $139 pcm unlimited data, and the roll-out of dishes really seems to be rocking now.
Reported bandwidth is between 100 and 300 mbps, so WAY faster than my NBN.
HOWEVER, as take-up continues there are no long term price/bandwidth/download guarantees.
Looks a very good deal right now for those with crap internet.
@g.mccall You may be interested in an older related topic When there are no emergency communications
I’m in rural Victoria, and have a Starlink service. My wife and I both work from home, and use Starlink for extensively for video conferencing. While the latency is slightly higher than you’d see on a typical xDSL service, the service typically performs pretty well. Current Speedtest results (while my wife is streaming a show from SBS On-Demand):
Server: Telstra - Windsor (id = 18714)
ISP: Starlink
Latency: 55.89 ms (4.02 ms jitter)
Download: 146.79 Mbps (data used: 201.6 MB )
Upload: 17.38 Mbps (data used: 21.2 MB )
Packet Loss: 0.0%
I’ve seen speeds peak at over 300Mbps, the above is fairly typical.
As @zackarii noted, the latency on Starlink is much lower than you’ll see on SkyMuster due to the satellites being in a low-earth orbit, rather than geo-stationary. Speeds are much higher as well.
Service is currently only available in areas that have satellite coverage and ground stations. Number of subscribers per “cell” is also limited as each customer is allocated beam coverage - thus you could find a situation where your neighbour has a service but you’re put on a waiting list. I guess I was lucky in that regard: I ordered on a Sunday back in April 2021, it had arrived on my step before Friday that week.
Note that because capacity is allocated, you can’t just pick up the dish and take it somewhere else. Next door is probably fine, but if you move too far you’ll be out of your cell, and the service won’t work. You can do a change of location via their account portal, takes a few seconds - but there is no guarantee that there will be capacity if and when you try and move it back.
Aside from mounting the dish to something (if required) and running the cable indoors, setup is as simple as plugging it all in. The dish is motorised, and will automatically rotate and point itself in the right direction. Takes less than 15 minutes to get online.
Overall, I’m extremely happy with it.
The market is evolving and NBN cannot claim a monopoly on sat services any longer, if they ever could.
