Replacing SkyDSL with Tooway?

'Morning, all.  First post, so bear with me, as it's a bit waffly.

We live in the wilds of central southern France, without the benefit of Broadband.  When we arrived last year, we settled for dial-up in the absence of anything else.

After a month or two, we started looking for alternatives, including satellite.  At the time, bi-directional was prohibitively expensive, so we opted for the SkyDSL hybrid service.  The service obviously is an improvement on dial-up, but otherwise not great, and also expensive.  In additon we have needed a dial-up ISP for the uplink, and a separate land line.  All of which combined works out at around just under 100 Euros a month.

The Sky DSL service, obviously has a FUP, but isn't exactly itemised anywhere.  We find the download speeds erratic, varying from about just over 1 Mbs, down to less than 1 Kbs, in an erratic roller coaster pattern - often the best we can get is hours at a few Kbs.  On our package, they allege that 24 Mbs is available, but we've never even achieved 2 Mbs!  They charge extra per Mbs for their "Gear 2" service, but again, we've never got above 2 Mbs.  All a bit of a con it seems.

Whilst not expecting anything wonderful from any alternative satellite system, I sincerely hope we can do better than this elsewhere.

We have investigated the Tooway system via Numeo, who are obviously Franchisees around here.  They don't have a very good reputation for customer service (particularly with the Wimax system they are currently running in France), and it is very difficult to get them to respond to enquiries.

Anyway, they have introduced this Tooway package, but I am confused by their pricing structure.  Last month they offered two alternatives - the Ka package with 348 Kbs upload & 2.4 Mbs download, for 34.99 Euros, and a Ku package with 128 Kbs/2.4 Mbs download for 29.99 Euros.

This month, it seems, there is only one system available, which seems to be the Ka (higher upload)system, but now reduced to 29.99 Euros.  And no fixed 12 month contract, either.

This seems to fly in the teeth of other suppliers, who are charging around 70 Euros, including a 12 month contract.

Now, I could do with a little advice, here.  Does anyone have any experience of Numeo, and are they being realistic, or should I steer well clear?  If so, what are the sensible alternatives, and can I expect to fare better with bi-directional, than with my existing set up?

Ideally I need a system which can realisticly cope with average downloads of up to 15 Gb a month (aren't these FUPs stupidly restrictive?), but I suppose that's way over the top for satellite...

So, basically, is Tooway worth investigating, and are there alternative franchise holders in this neck of the woods?

Your patience is much appreciated.

Chris

Thanks for your reply, Eric.  I have contacted both of the links you suggested, and await a response from each.

My comment about "stupid" FUP restrictions is subjective - in the UK, obviously, we had the benefit of proper ADSL, and it is a source of great frustration here to have ones downloads limited in this way. A few gigabytes of download availability is soon used up!

Also I am intrigued with your hourly use breakdown - I was under the impression that you could download your monthly quota all at once, if necessary, and only be throttled once the limit had been reached.  So it seems that an hourly rate is calculated, and the throttling occurs thereafter.  Didn't realise that.  I've obviously got a lot to learn.

Chris

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