Satellite DSL Internet

Internet access is widely available in Belize – but is very expensive. The telephone company has enjoyed a strangle-hold on being the only one allowed to offer Internet services. This worsened in 2011 when the government expropriated privately held Belize Telemedia Limited.

But along came satellite Internet. Direct TV, Hughes and Starband now offer satellite Internet access. And hundreds of Belizeans, residents and expats have jumped on the band wagon.

Satellite Internet is ideal for those who want to live on the beach or in the countryside where cables and telephone connectivity are not yet available. You can surf the Internet, trade stocks, conduct ecommerce, sell or buy on EBAY – all from a tropical paradise.

Satellite Internet, like satellite TV, requires a slightly larger dish than that used in the USA and Canada – a 2 foot dish gives excellent results. Some fanatics go larger, using a 4 or 6 foot dish to get the strongest signal that will withstand any except the heaviest thunderstorms. Setting up your satellite internet dish is not as easy as setting up your satellite TV dish. The dish alignment is critical and because a signal is not only being received, but also transmitted up to the satellite, a technician is usually required to set this up for you. Again, there are several satellite internet installers located throughout Belize.

Satellite Internet is cheap – for Belize – about US$120. a month for unlimited use. The speed is about 128 KBPS up and 600 KBPS down. Starband is now offering its SOHO satellite Internet service with 100 KBPS up and 1 MBPS down. This costs about US$150. a month.

DSL service from the local telephone company is now available in major population centers – but it is horribly expensive compared to most other countries. The maximum speed available is 1 Megabytes up by 2 Megabytes down and this costs a whopping US$250. a month. Compare this to the same service for about US $9.95 a month in most developed countries for a quick reality check. Living in paradise does have some hidden gotchas. Reason enough to consider satellite Internet and TV access. Technical savvy users can get around the exorbitant government Internet access fees by various means such as sharing a high-speed link via a cache server but this is a strategy that you would need to discuss with a qualified IT professional.

The cheapest DSL is 128 up by 512 down at US$95. a month. What is worse is that non-Belizeans need to make a security deposit of upwards of US $500. in addition to installation and connection fees.

The government controlled monopoly BTL telephone company has recently come forth and offered wireless Internet which is a reasonable alternative starting at US$125. a month. The disadvantage is that it operates much like cable, shared service. When the neighborhood is swarming the Internet, everyone’s service slows down to a crawl.

Satellite Internet Access is available from various Belize and expat installers, most of who do not advertise so as to not to invite harassment from the predatory Public Utilities Commission. It is best to ask friends or neighbors for a contact or referral.

A Visitor’s Experience With WIFI Access in Belize

In Belize, the authorities block Skype, and though my T-Mobile phone connected just fine, voice calls cost $3 a minute and texts were a whopping 35 cents each. On top of that, the local telephone service doesn’t do data, so our phones could use email only when we could connect to Wi-Fi. Fortunately, the hotel and airports had free Wi-Fi; unfortunately, it wasn’t particularly reliable.

But when it came to talking long distance, Apple’s FaceTime filled the gap because my wife’s sisters and our neighbor who was watching our house all have iPads, which kept our phone bill out of the stratosphere.

However, when we tried to do work for the house, like look at examples of flooring, countertops or electrical devices, we found that most sites use Flash. That meant that we were constantly running back to the room for the Ultrabook to actually see what our architect was talking about and respond with critical suggestions or decisions.

We also noticed that the iPad often had trouble connecting to the network. In fact, there were people running around the resort complaining that their iPads weren’t working while the Ultrabook, phones and Kindles seemed to have few issues. This has turned into a common problem when we travel with the iPad: Wi-Fi connectivity seems iffy.

I had lunch with a Cisco engineer a few weeks back and he said that this is a known problem with Apple products and most wireless routers. The fix is to use Apple routers, which apparently provide the best connectivity of any home-class router in the market. Enterprise-class routers from Cisco and others evidently don’t have these problems, but hotels and small foreign airports often use home or small-business products which is why, according to the Cisco engineer, we were seeing this problem.

- Rob Enderle is building a home in Belize.