20 gig a month?

[Canibul]

This is pretty much what we're finding out. It can be done, if your pockets are deep enough.

[ShaktiGurl]

I worked from the boat M-F, 8-5 using a VPN and Remote Desktop. My usage was around 25-30GB/mo. Daily use age was about 200-300mb. If I needed to transfer large files or update my OS then I would have to jump on an unlimited wifi or up my monthly usage. But, cell signals throughout the keys and FL coast were great (mostly LTE) and I was able to work while traveling and at anchor just about everywhere. Haven't tried it in the Bahamas though. Where we stayed in the Berries or Abaco was fairly remote and I often had less than 2 bar signal. I'd love satellite but still too expensive.

[msponer]

My previous boat had a cellular repeater at the mast head. It extended the range of our cellular Internet from 'in town' to the super beautiful deserted island anchorages in the Sea of Cortez. Which is a big difference in vibe. In many places, if a town lit up the sky on the horizon at night, we had a cellular connection.

If I were to again work and cruise, I'd definitely put a system like this in my current boat. I'm not sure if its important or not, but a really good marine radio and electronics guy did the installation, and he used a hugely thick cable in the mast.

[Canibul]

Originally Posted by colemj

Can you hear me now?

You will be surprised at how far BTC has come with coverage and speed.

20GB/month won't be cheap - $216.

Mark

So...how far north of Duncan Town did you get before losing the signal?

[colemj]

We didn't even try it until Buena Vista, and it worked there. We just use a little Huawei MiFi device that we sometimes have to put out in the cockpit for a strong enough signal, but often it is fine sitting it the locker we keep it in.

Mark

[Canibul]

Cool. That helps. We've got the hardware, except I've been thinking of adding a Wilson amp to the boat. Use one in the Airstream and it makes a lot of difference up near the Wyoming border. Do you use an amp?

[reed1v]

You did checkout using ham or ssb systems?

[Foozinator]

It's a 5-10 years in the future thing, but SpaceX (among others) are trying to build a low-Earth-orbit network that would be much cheaper than the geosynchronous satellites. Apparently, even cheaper than the polar(?) orbit Iridium network (and probably much newer equipment on board).

In the meantime, is this what you mean by "weboost type of rig"?

[tdoster]

Originally Posted by Canibul

Honest, I DID try the search function, but get masses of links that don't seem to exactly address this. I know someone out there already knows all the simple answers.

My wife develops medical software. She essentially spends about 30 hours a week, during the business day, connected to a VPN in New Jersey. We've been using various mobil hotspots to do this, but would love to be able to sail more while she works. Get to some remote areas, without having to be within cell phone range. Cruising area is from the Bahamas to the Caribbean and Central America. She basically needs about 20 gig a month.

Fleetbroadband people tell me it's about $13K in hardware costs, and another $4k a month for a data plan. Is that still the only option?

I am also a software developer and maybe a thought would be to find a way to reduce that 20 gig a month demand. I can assume she is developing locally on her laptop and uploading builds as she makes them. What about using RDP to a workstation back at home to develop directly on. If the graphics are turned down, you can actually work using a clean 16K of bandwidth and I have yet to go over 4 gigs even with surfing on boardband and 24/7 connection. We maintain three carries (AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile) for boardband as each works well in certain places while the other does not.

We have had the issue on offshore oil rigs forever and have found you can get a lot of work done with 16K, even when splitting voice and data into 8K streams. Since broadband, we have lost site of compression and light weight payloads and impossible to even read the news anymore without dealing with video adverts and heavy sloppy code banners. But, we can compress RDP and voice to move the payload back to the workstation at home office.

The problem with a lot of the satellite is they are so unbalanced in upload download that it is fine to surf, but impossible to use VPN or upload work back home.

If you wait another year, the Iridium "Next" should be available for good reliable and inexpensive low orbit broadband that may eventually replace cellular. We tried SPOT, but abandoned and told to wait on "Next" to mature by 2016/17. Our grounds will be from Nova Scotia to the Bahamas seasonally until done working, then...

http://www.argo.ucsd.edu/sat_comm_AST13.pdf

[hellosailor]

Canibul-
Last I heard, the Inmarsat Bgan system was the least expensive option for "professional" satcoms.
BGAN - Inmarsat
But you'd have to find a "partner" reseller to get price quotes.


Rashly assuming your wife can reach out to some corporate IT support, the other question is whether she might be able to enable compression, or simply change the data type she is using, to cut down the bandwidth she needs. For instance, one email that is sent in the default "HTML+TEXT" format, is 5x the size of the actual text contents. The HTML portion, which is often just "pretty stuff", bloats it up by 4x the size and the original text is still attached, making the email 5x larger than it needed to be.
There are all sorts of programs, work habits, and file formats that do similar damage to bandwidth. But to the typical user, these are all invisible and they have no idea what's going on. (And frankly, most IT types wouldn't be looking at that either.)


So, Bgan and a close examination of the workflow might make it affordable for you. Whenever someone mentions the high cost of satcoms, I just ask if they remember when not so long ago domestic cellular service was $1 a minute, plus roaming, and could easily hit $4 a minute for roaming with long distance.

[colemj]

Originally Posted by Canibul

Cool. That helps. We've got the hardware, except I've been thinking of adding a Wilson amp to the boat. Use one in the Airstream and it makes a lot of difference up near the Wyoming border. Do you use an amp?

No amp - just the little mifi device with its internal antenna.

Mark

[colemj]

Originally Posted by reed1v

You did checkout using ham or ssb systems?

For software development and connection to a VPN 4hrs/day?

He doesn't want just simple email and grib downloads once a day.

Mark

[gamayun]

I've been going through the same thinking process, but figure everything will change in the next year, so no serious deliberations need to be made yet. I recently came across this article from Cruising World (On Board WiFi: Get Connected | Cruising World). I haven't read it, and it deals with hardware, which it sounds like you might have already worked out, but I wanted to be able to find this post again so I am sending it along as an FYI

[MYTraveler]

Originally Posted by OpusCalifornia

I'll need about 5GB/Mo which using Fleet One prepaid is $100 for 5mg/Mo.

$100 for 5 MB? did you mean 5 GB?

[hellosailor]

Am and SSB systems will, in real life, send data transmissions at 300 baud. Rarely 1200 on a clear day.


So if you figure 20 gigabytes of data at a rate of 300 Baud....that's gonna be some electric bill. Faster to mail it on a tape.(G)