[Pblais]

Depends on where you cruise. You can check out the coverage area for TV. Internet is another matter.

For Internet, I had it here in VA for a year at our house not on the boat. The the equipment was $2000. The download was good at 1 mb but the upload was far far less. Mostly about the same as a good dial up modem connection. WE had terrible phone service here too. From anything other than a rigid platform the antenna will never work. Even the "mobile" systems need a stable platform to mount them on and the satellites are lower in the sky than the TV. That makes it harder to lock. The fact that you transmit on it too makes it even harder. I have seen the Internet dish mounted to a pylon in a marina. The TV dishes are small and more portable and far far easier to calibrate. There are lots of different TV systems that can work well aboard even under way if you have the power to run them.

The Internet dishes are wider and use far more power than the TV dishes. For the Internet service I used DirecWay at a low commercial level since I used it for business and it was $129 / month. TV is the same price you can get a price off the web and they do not share the same dish or equipment at all.

The really high level commercial service uses a larger fixed dish and works great and costs a lot. You see them mounted on top of convenience stores and are used to report sales information.

You'll only be able to run the Internet service at a marina and then you'll need a southern view to the horizon. The dish has to be mounted on something attached to land. The mobile version for vehicles is not that great and is very expensive and you need to be parked.

For communication and data at sea you need to think "US Navy". They own their own satellites and don't share them with anyone. There really is nothing available nor likely to be available from satellite coverage that is affordable. Sat phone service isn't going to get cheaper. Splitting the bandwidth is about as good as it gets now. The phones are rugged and relatively cheap, but the service is not. Buying large 1000 - 5000 minute bundles can save some money.

For global Internet service there is nothing really out there except sat phone and SSB radio. The SSB coverage is limited to plain text and weather and is affordable. The sat phone is easy to use and you pay by the minute and is not cheap at all. For really cheap you can get a USB drive loaded with a U3 launcher and just attach it to a land computer at a local Internet cafe. You can find them in more far away places than you might think.