SatDrive Interview

1. Is Satdrive a new Company?

Yes and no. Yes, it is a new Company, having started our service in September. The truth is that the Company has been up and running since last year, however.

2. How long have they been in the Satellite business?

The Company was started to promote this particular product, so I suppose you could say that it is for the same amount of time. I have worked in the satellite industry for a number of years beforehand, and this is why I started the company. I used to work for TELES (which is a German company specialising in Telecommunication technology).

Their product , I felt, was a winner and we licensed it for ourselves.

3. BT is claiming that interest in Broadband is rising dramatically, have satellite businesses such as yours experienced the same?

Very much so. BT's current advertising is free advertising for ourselves. I believe the general public are starting to realise that the chances of them getting ADSL in a non activated ADSL exchange from the major Telco's are now getting slimmer by the day, and our product is there to bridge the gap. This has resulted in a booming line of enquiries.

4. I notice on your site ( http://www.satdrive.com ) that Peer to Peer is never mentioned, does this mean that it can't be used?

Not at all! Peer to peer networking works well using Satdrive. We just don't advertise the fact. Not only because this isn't the market we are aiming for, but the legality of these programs are a grey area at present.

5. Why don't you wish users of your system to make use of P2P

I never said that we don't want users to use P2P, just that we don't advertise that it does work. In fact, most P2P's work under it, I think it is the latest version of Morpheus that has problems with it.

6. Satellite is a contended service, how heavily contended is it?

I'm afraid that contention isn't the issue with satellite. It is entirely different from conventional landline systems. With satellite, the difference is that all the data goes to the satellite as fast as we can get it there.

The bottleneck is how fast can you take it away. An analogy, water and a funnel, The funnel holds a lot of water, but the bottom of the funnel where it comes out is the limiting factor. When our satellite transponder reaches optimum capacity we then activate a second transponder and so on to provide ever increasing capacity for the customer base.

7. I know that games playing on satellite systems is pretty useless, due to the high latency, I have also heard that web browsing in general isn't much faster........is this true?

On two way satellite systems this is true as the time it takes to connect up and down both ways to the satellite makes browsing no better than using a 56K modem.

With our one way service browsing can be greatly improved, once your dial up request to the website has been made the return path for browsing benefits from the fast satellite download connection. So content rich sites appear much faster than they would through an ordinary modem service.

8. You have a list of programs that work via satellite, is there a list of programs that don't?

We have a FAQ on our site and this is being constantly updated. Users of our system comment on various aspects and these are included. This includes programs and anything else that our users have found noticeable.

9. BT has recently ( with some judicious prodding from OFTEL) announced that their minimum contract for ADSL will now be 90 days as opposed to one year, are Satdrive going to follow suit?

We don't see the need. Our contract is for 12 months, but anyone is free to give a months notice after six months. As our user base expands, this may alter slightly, but really, we are in for the long haul and it would be suicide if we provided a service that folk disliked and wanted to leave.

10. Does Satdrive do a trial period, in other words, people willing to pay for installation, but unwilling to commit to a years contract without concrete knowledge of how well it will do in their area?

No, we don't. We do, however, have two showrooms where people can come in and view and try out the system to see how it handles etc. We enjoy showing our system and believe that it is a good one.

11. In my area, I had no problem getting Sky ( not the digital system) with a 60cm dish, does this mean that the same size dish would be suitable for Satdrive

The same size dish would be ideal, we recommend and supply a 60cm dish.

12. In fact, could an old Sky dish be used for Satdrive?

No, it isn't analogue. A new Sky dish would do, though.

13. Sticking with the Sky example, I used to lose the signal occasionally in winter when it snowed. Would the same happen with Satdrive

Weather can cause a fade in the signal, but it would have to be really severe to lose the signal completely. This system has been used in Germany for a couple of years and has had no major problems with this ......and their winters are worse than ours. Besides, this system is different from a television signal. If a packet gets missed, it is retransmitted, you can't really do the same with a television picture.

14. £14.99 for one month at up to 4mb/s download speed seems a bit of a miracle when you compare it to other offerings ( such as Netsystems), is this price subsidised by the Government ( since I see a Government link on your website) ?

There are no subsidies of any kind involved with this package. Our business plan is such that we will manage well with our current prices. Again, I must stress, we are in this for the long haul. We haven't priced this ( as some Telco's are reputed to have done) as a loss leader to get punters in. This wouldn't be how we envision the business going forward. We intend to move towards a content portal service, where the likes of independent content polishers can offer SatDrive users the ability to have their content multicast  on a pay per view or store basis. For instance a conference would take place in City Tokyo and we could distribute the video presentations to people who either couldn't afford or manage to get there or just wanted to see and hear what was been presented. Other content will be for instance E-Learning courses, music and archive material.

15. With the gearstick for priority downloads, will users who use the basic package still manage to download at fast speeds?

To be blunt...... yes! It is our intention to provide a good service to all our customers. We have taken up an entire transponder and if, in the future, bandwidth has been used up, we have ensured that more transponders are available. We specifically went to EutelSat because of this. There are more spare transponders available and another satellite has been launched last year to provide for large increases situated on the same space location .

The gearstick is for users who really need a large file delivered quickly. Another point to note is that you would only pay extra for this file, not move to another tariff. Bandwidth management is at the heart of our system. With a satellite system, we can do this, whereas the likes of ADSL can't. We can prioritise all downloads in this way.

16. Is Satdrive primarily a service for businesses?

Not businesses as such, although we welcome businesses as well. Our target market is for home office types, serious surfers where large downloads and speed of information is important. The fact that email is available regardless of whether you are using the telephone and files can be sent to you. A request for a file results in the file being on your hardrive when you get home, if you have left the computer on.

Our product is only for a single computer at present, but we are working to launch a LAN version as well. This should happen in the near future.

17. And :) ......... what sort of speeds would people expect to get ?

We had a party in looking at our system yesterday and we invited them to actually download things instead of just asking questions. They downloaded a 130mb update file in approx.. 15 minutes. The speed varied, naturally, between around 70 - 300 kb/s.

This was at 4p.m. in the afternoon, I should add, so it wasn't a quiet period. It all depends on whether you are downloading from a fast server. We deliver the files as fast as we can, dependent on how fast we can get them from the server.

18. ISP's tend to throw you offline if you aren't using their connection, and pinging the server periodically is generally frowned upon, how do users avoid getting thrown offline with monotonous regularity?

You won't get flung offline, I wouldn't think. Your ISP will see you dial in but that's as far as they go. Since you aren't downloading or causing any heavy traffic, they will probably be quite pleased with you.

19. On the website it states that you won't support any equipment that you don't supply. Since Satdrive uses EutelSat I presume anything that EutelSat supports would be sufficient to use Satdrive as well?

Please remember, our prices are based on a total package. It may seem a lot cheaper if , say you were getting your equipment from another supplier.However, we only promise that our equipment will work. We make our own cards, so we know exactly how they perform, all others are up to yourselves.

We don't stop anyone from using them, though, and we do publish details on our website on how to configure them to use our system.

20. It is also stated that the fee includes standard installation of the dish except where the installation is outwith 35 miles from the installers.

Where are your installers based........I'd hate to order the system , then find that the installers are based in London.

No worries there either. We outsource the installations to a firm which controls all our installations , which in turn vets local installers. Our aim is to have a system installed within 7 days of ordering, so as soon as the dish and card have been received, you will probably get a call from our approved installer to find an acceptable time and date to have it fitted.

21. Do you have users from all of Britain, or is your customer base from certain regions?

We have users, (currently around the 4000 mark split between Germany and the UK), from all areas of Britain and Ireland. These range from the likes of Truro, so you can see our system reaches all of Britain

22. BT is going to cap users on dialup from November and there are rumours that their ADSL users will be capped as well, have Satdrive any plans to curtail downloads or time used?

NO! We don't believe that this is a valid way forward. Our plan is to provide a service, not curtail users who pay for the service. As I stated before, if bandwidth becomes an issue, we have made provisions for plenty more capacity.

23. How do you see the Broadband market advancing in Britain in the near future?

I believe there is a vast as yet untapped market for broadband. It is our intention to enter this market fully.

I believe our service has noticeable benefits to ADSL and the likes. For instance, we can multicast dedicated content to closed user groups.

24. Since you are in the Satellite business, I presume that you do not believe that the alternatives such as wireless based LAN's, ADSL and its variants will ever cover the whole of Britain.

True, I don't see the whole country ever getting all these. My personal belief is that ADSL is old technology and won't actually be up to the standard required for Broadband Britain. We should be looking for new technology. Wireless may be a good prospect, but not in its present form. The technology coming out in a couple of years time will be far superior.

25. How would you best describe the appeal of satellite to anyone using dialup ?

Simply for the speed increase, essential. For the ease of use, the fact that you can request files and have them downloaded while you are off doing something else. I could go on and on.........

26. Do you foresee the cost of installation for satellite dropping or rising?

The cost of installation is down to the installers, I'm afraid. I expect to come down in price in say, six months. The USB card probably as well.

27. Is planning consent required for a Satdrive installation ?

That would depend on your personal circumstances. In most cases, I doubt it.

28. I see that streaming radio and television stations from the satellite are on their way on your system, any timescale for these?

We are in discussions with various broadcasting companies wishing to stream their MP4 content to new customer bases. It is a chicken and egg situation, we need a good sized customer base to make it economic for these companies to stream content over our satellite. The proposal is to run some pilot schemes in the near future based on news type content. We are not interested in delivering entertainment based content as this market is well catered for.

29. Any details on the television stations or the radio stations expected to be on the system?

It is the same situation as for TV. We are looking to segment dedicated bandwidth on a second transponder which will provide the radio and MP4 channels thus not eating into the bandwidth used for the normal download services. We will keep everyone posted as to our progress on the website.

30. What exactly is a multi transponder?

A transponder is a physical segment of a satellite and there can be as many as 20 plus transponders on any one satellite. SatDrive can be delivered over multiple transponders hence our ability to ever increase our bandwidth to our growing number of customers.

31. Can people use their own equipment to access Satdrive?

Yes. People are free to use their own equipment. We won't support their equipment , as I said before. We only support our own hardware.

32. Is support free, or is it a premium rate number?

Support is free, you pay the normal rate for the phone call. We aim to provide a quality service and we want people to telephone for help if they do, by some quirk, have problems.

We want happy customers.

33. Would the average user manage to install the software provided? In other words, how proficient are you required to be to install the Satdrive software?

Well, nothing is idiot proof. But its as near as we can make it. The whole install process should take around five minutes once the dish has been installed and is locked onto the correct satellite. It tells you what it is doing every step of the way and driver installation is automatic.