First, a general thought.  I love this site; hats off to whoever runs it--it's great.  One thing I notice is that it seems that satellite providers are all small time operations; it reminds me of dial-up modem services in the USA 10-15 years ago before consolidation by AOL/Earthlink/etc.  Is this true?  The hypothesis is that satellite ISPs are renting time from whoever owns the satellite, then subleasing it to end-users/customers.  I doubt the satellite providers make more than 10-50M$/yr in revenue and have more than a few thousand customers, no?

Second, my real concern is that I would like to set up a satellite dish to do light-internet surfing, email, and Skype VoIP for one person in some remote mountains in southern Greece (elevation 1000m).  I am not that experienced with this technology though I have an engineering background and have build many a PC from scratch (I am running ADSL on a Pentium IV right now).

Who is the "best" for Greece?  Or top three?  (GR has one of the lowest DSL /high-speed internet usage rates in Europe, something like <5% of the population, so cable/DSL is out of the question for this remote site).  I do have a static telephone line at this location (if that matters) but it's old fashioned (supports dial-up modem at best).

I doubt I will have more than 1 Gb/month data downloaded, but 512k or 1024kbps is a 'must' (for the Skype VoIP).

Also I'm frugal--I am willing (sans hardware) to spend a maximum of maybe 400 Euro/month in fees (hopefully less) but not more.  This is not for an internet cafe.

Please post here if possible--this is a long term project (I'll have a decision by early next year) right now I'm just collecting information.

Thanks!

Sincerely,

FA
<francoisappert_at_yahoo.com>

I would think for 400 Eur per month you could have a good service for VoIP and internet service on a business level, not retail in your area, but I'm not famliar with vsat in that area and its expenses etc.

can anyone help them out?

Tom@CountrySidenet.com

400 euro per month should buy you a monthly average of 60kbit/s down and 20kbit/s up, which is a rather generous allowance for use for a single PC, particularly if you want only 1 GB download per month.

Have a look at page https://www.satsig.net/ivsat-europe.htm for some suggested service providers.  

Ask if their services are suitable for Skype and VoIP.  This is important as shared systems may work fine for web browsing which involves occasional mouse clicks and file downloads which may be delayed a few seconds, but may not provide continuous speech sound quality for quasi-continuous transmissions like Skype and VoIP unless the packets are given priority.

The iDirect shared system has been commended for giving good voice service, provided the hub is set up correctly. 
Best regards, Eric
wxw

Hi FA,

Get in touch with servicesat.net, they cover europe africa and middle east and the have offices in Greece and Cyprus.

Regards
TTT