Its interesting that the first post here is dated 2005, but the truth is that even in 2008, there is nobody that is doing broadband connectivity in this Country.

All that Starcomms and their bunch are making noise with are no broadband at all.
have u ever wondered why its always frustrating to watch even a 2mins video on You tube in Nigeria? not to talk of watching web TV or full lenght movie?

our only hope of enjoying full broadband connectivity is when GLO tidies up their fibre optic submarine project that will be terminating in Europe by Q1 of nxt yr.(according to their plan).
Till then, we'll be stuck in these marketing criminalities of recycling junk dial up connectivity/VSAT.

Christino:

@ NaijaEcash,

You are probably using a Ku-band VSAT. Not all VSATs change faces! Get a C-band if you can.

Bandwidth is costed by ISPs or SPs regardless of the connectivity medium. If the ISP can not "throw" a cable to your village then you must get a V-SAT equipment (if they can provide for it).

@ All,

Don't blame the communications minister, He can easily sell DoPC's VSAT to Netcom should a better deal come up tomorrow. VSATs are mobile, you can even ship one to your village for christmas. Mobile VSATs can sit atop buses and are used at Trade fairs, Exhibitions. Don't bad mouth VSATs if you have little knowledge of them.

@ Samir,

I don't know why all this fuss about VSAT or no VSAT.

It's like keeping a PitBull in your couch and locking the poodle outside!

VSAT is basically for remote locations and places where you don't have fibre/ADSL. It is also for mobile connectivity. VSATs should NOT be used in cities where there is access to broadband connectivity (people here only think INTERNET, common wake up, connectivity does not necessarily imply internet!)

Glo/Nitel won't trunk an optical cable to downtown Mutum Biu or Takum! For rural connectivity, especially mobile telephony, your best bet is VSAT, as rightly said, Gilat are leaders in that regard. I concur.

The high latency you experience with VSAT is obviously due to the distance of the satellite from the earth and the fact that signals have to go up and then down (double latency). As a result you can run a ping test and never get below 500ms in a whole year . Nevertheless, demand for VSAT connectivity increases year in year out. Don't sit here and complain, google is your friend. Trade your VSAT in to these VSAT companies (i'm sure they'll jump at it because it's always a scarce commodity) then go buy your DSL. Shikena.

ps: Christino is a Certified "Network" Specialist (embryo expert)


In addition,

Wimax/wi-fi do not work independently, they are just means of extending network connectivity, i mean they cannot provide start up connectivity. You cannot compare them with V-SAT. In remote areas, VSAT gets the signals and pass it on to Wimax to enlarge the coverage area and not the other way round, Wimax cannot sit in a remote area and get signals from a distant location. You get the maths and the "catch"?

Ma guy, you are just making a lot of noise. Have you gone round lagos, abuja and port hacourt and seen the number of people using fibre optic or adsl broadband with its designed speed ?? Everywhere you go in nigeria, you see vsat, vsat, vsat. Even in the major commercial cities, talkless of the rural areas. Almost 90% of our banks use it for their connections. I have always believed that vsat technology is meant for rural areas so they too can have access to the internet, make calls, mobile medicine etc. I don't see the use of vsat in a full blown commercial city like lagos. This is where lack of basic infrastructure comes into play. Our towns are not networked with fibreoptic lines or copper apart from the ones set up by the gsm companies for their backbone connection on their network. The nitel copper lines have either been removed, plundered or are just plain not working. Tell me, how am i to get a full broadband connection ? So, vsat is a necessary evil in nigeria until we can put in place a solid infrastructure for networking all our major cities with fibre optics or copper lines. My problem is with the vsat isps who give you connections without getting the advertised speeds and charge a lot because they know you have no choice and this is nigeria. Imagine a fully networked lagos, abuja, kaduna etc with fibre optics, with the sat3 and glo-1 backbone connections providing dedicated and high speed conecctions. Then we can say vsat is doomed.

P.S who cares about your being a network specialist

cecegorz:

Its interesting that the first post here is dated 2005, but the truth is that even in 2008, there is nobody that is doing broadband connectivity in this Country.

All that Starcomms and their bunch are making noise with are no broadband at all.
have u ever wondered why its always frustrating to watch even a 2mins video on You tube in Nigeria? not to talk of watching web TV or full lenght movie?

our only hope of enjoying full broadband connectivity is when GLO tidies up their fibre optic submarine project that will be terminating in Europe by Q1 of nxt yr.(according to their plan).
Till then, we'll be stuck in these marketing criminalities of recycling junk dial up connectivity/VSAT.

My point exactly. vsat technology can never surpass a fibre optic connection in terms of speed. So without a dedicated fibre optic connection linking nigeria's data to the outside world, we would always experience slow speeds. Add the fact that we have a huge network now of over 50 million subsribers on our gsm networks. You can see the need for such a connection such as glo-1 to start working soon. It will cut cost and be faster.

am thinking of going for dopc vsat 4 now its seems the most reasonable what do you think ?

Well, this an old thread but time is showing us the changes that have happened in Nigeria. 2 new submarine cables have landed and commenced operations and the GSM companies are deploying fibre backbones across the country. Truly, VSAT is dying.