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Step 1
Find out which satellite Internet services are available in your area. This can be done by browsing through the local yellow pages or by visiting the websites of the major satellite providers and entering some location information (see Resources below).
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Step 2
Determine what pricing plans each service offers. The majority of companies will offer several tiers of service. The plans with the lowest monthly costs offer the least amount of bandwidth, or Internet speed. The higher you pay, the faster the connection is. Those who tend to only browse the Internet or check email would likely be happy with one of the lower-priced plans. Those who tend to download large files, play multi-player online games or do other bandwidth-intensive tasks may wish to select one of the higher-priced plans.
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Step 3
Find out what the usage cap is for each level of service. Due to the shared nature of satellite Internet and the difficulty of adding more network capacity, nearly every provider sets the maximum amount of information that can be downloaded in a month. Lower-priced plans have lower usage caps, and the cap increases with the higher-priced plans.
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Step 4
Read the user agreement for each of the satellite Internet services. In addition to a monthly usage cap, most services limit how much you may download in a given period of time, and they will temporarily decrease the performance of your service if this limit is exceeded. This is called the “Fair Access Policy,” and each provider calculates your usage differently. If you are downloading one particularly large file, as an example, and the service calculates the average of your usage based on a short time period, you may easily exceed the download limit. If the file is averaged in over a longer time period, however, that one large file, and the bandwidth it required, would appear smaller and it would not exceed the download limits.
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Step 5
Ensure that all of your software and hardware will work with the service you select. Satellite Internet service has a greater latency than other broadband services, due to the fact that the information you send and receive must travel to and from the satellite via radio waves. This makes it very difficult to use such items as multi-player online games or VOIP-based phone services.
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Step 6
Find out how much the equipment for each of the satellite Internet services costs, and how it is paid for. Some companies require the equipment to be paid for before the service installation, at the cost of several hundred dollars. Others allow the equipment to be paid for in monthly installments that are added to the service bill.
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Step 7
Determine the length of the contract for the service, and what happens if you cancel early or otherwise breach the contract. Nearly all services require a 1- or 2-year contract.
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Step 8
Contact the company and ask about the installation details before placing an order for the service. The waiting period for an installation can vary from a few days to a few weeks, depending on the provider. Ask about any special requirements that will be needed for the installation. Many services use sub-contractors to do the actual installation, and some contractors will require extra fees for non-typical installations, such as mounting the satellite to a pole in the ground.
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Step 9
Find any customer reviews that are available on the Internet. While they may not be the most reliable source of information, the reviews may give you an overview of what service problems have occurred in the past, and how the provider handled such issues.
