Right now I have Wild Blue Sat internet service at my home.  Does anyone know the rules for taking your dish from your house and buying a heavy duty tripod and taking that dish on the road with you?

Wild Blue is spot beamed so you can't move it more than about 100 miles and stay online. Sorry, it won't work.
Hughes.net 9000 series has the same problem since it also spot beamed. Starband and Hughes.net 7000 series are not spot beamed and are usable mobile. If you want to use a satellite internet tripod I would go with Starband. A good RV dealer is Barb and Joe at http://www.mobileinternetsatellite.com/. They are in Yuma, AZ right now.

Thanks for the info Bill.  you stated that we could move the dish up to 100 miles.  My boat rental office is 20 miles from my home and I thought of moving it out there in the summer months and I can tether my blackberry at home.  How do I find out how to point the Wild Blue Dish.  I have been packing my dish network dish around with me , so I am familiar with pointing the dish. I can't tether my blackbery at the office because the cell service there is very weak.  I use a wilson amp combined with a Yagi and barely get service.

Sorry, I haven't a clue how to point a Wild Blue dish. Only the installers know how. I have a Hughes.net tripod dish so that is all I know how to point and have been told that each system is completely different. If you can get help from a Wild Blue installer you can probably learn how to move and point the dish for your office. I used 100 miles because the spot beams are supposedly about 100 miles in radius.

Bill, Is this a good alternative to using a Verizon card? Are the speeds comperable?

My view is if you want satellite internet to spend the money for a Datastorm automatic roof mount which will cost you more like $5000. We started with a tripod in 2003 and know its ins and outs, but if we started now we would spend the big bucks. Many who use tripods find them frustrating to set up and give up after a while, there are only a portion of us who don't mind the hassle and enjoy the flexibility. With a Datastorm you have a much easier time changing satellites if you want to go to Alaska in the summer and Mexico in the winter since one satellite will not handle both. Your account is locked to a satellite so to change satellites you need help. Hughes.net is on 11 satellites last time I counted. You also have American tech support with a Datastorm while Hughes.net uses India. Starband is an alternative for tripods and is who I would go with today, but they do not have Alaska coverage. 

Speed: Download speeds are very comparable and consistent, while Verizon speeds depend much more on your location. Upload speeds are normally slower than Verizon, but if you get in an extended network then Verizon is slower. The big change is latency, Verizon often feels faster since there is not the satellite delay (latency).

I have both a Verizon aircard and Hughes.net satellite modem using a tripod. Our aircard is plugged into a Cradlepoint router so we use it via wifi, which is also how we use satellite through a wireless router.  I am on the $70/month Pro plan for Hughes.net which gives me 375MB per day usage (the same as Datastorm), while the $60/month Home plan limits me to 200MB. With Hughes.net you can download all you want from 2AM to 7AM Eastern Time, which I use with an automatic download manager. I downloaded two Linux DVDs in the last week during the "free" time, one was 1.2GB and the other 3.2GB.

Verizon limits us to 5GB per month, which is too little for our usage. Many RVers have no problem with the 5GB limit. We also camp in a few places where Verizon has lousy to no service, including by two sets of important relatives. We also do go into Canada where Verizon is roaming and will charge you big bucks (people have had bills over $500). Satellite works in Canada and Mexico. When Verizon service is good, it is much better than Hughes.net, but it is not always that good.

-- Edited by bjoyce on Sunday 28th of February 2010 08:13:32 AM