Roaming wifi

[Sheldon T. Hall]

Andrew Hakman writes ... ...
> On 11/22/05, Sven Aerts <aertssven at mac.com> wrote:
> > What happens if you have a sattelite internet 
> > provider? if you can see
> > the sky I guess you can get internet ?
> > I thought that was common in the USA?
> 
> The pointing of a satellite dish is pretty precise - it's far from "if
> you can see the sky". It would be fairly tricky to make an
> autopositioning mount that could track well enough to be ok'ed by the
> satellite operator for transmitting - they get pretty touchy about
> cross-pol and spatter on adjacent satellites.

There are auto-aiming satellite ground stations designed for moving objects,
albeit slow-moving ones.  Yacht-sized ones run about $12-15,000 (US
Dollars), but the real cost is the airtime, which is only a little less than
satellite-phone time.  Figure $1.00 per minute unless you're buying in bulk
like the cruise lines do.

A more reasonable solution is the cellphone type conneciton offered by most
of the big US cellphone companies.  It works in a lot of places, although
not nearly everywhere.  Speed can be OK, or it can be slow; it all depends
on the network and the location.

-Shel