# Broadband without a landline



## Daddy (20 Sep 2013)

Currently with Eircom for landline + broadband.

If I was to ditch the landline what are my options if any just to get broadband and what would the cost be per month.

I think there are so many good mobile prepay packages available for the family I could do without the landline and save a few bob.

Is this Broadband without a landline available !

Thanks


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## Annie51 (20 Sep 2013)

Yes you can have broadband without a land line.  Vodafone have it for approx €30 per month.


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## Boyd (20 Sep 2013)

Depends where you are....UPC offer BB without a landline in Dublin anyway.


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## dub_nerd (21 Sep 2013)

Your options without a landline are:
* Cable
* Satellite
* Fixed wireless
* Mobile / 3G

As the previous poster mentioned, cable effectively means UPC, available in certain urban areas.

Only satellite is guaranteed to be available everywhere (as long as you can see the southern sky and put a dish on your property, like a Sky dish but a bit bigger). However, this option won't save you much if anything over your landline, unless you can live with very restricted download limits. (There are other technical restrictions too).

Fixed wireless depends on you having line of sight to a local operator's mast. You would have to check who operates in your area. Experiences with fixed wireless are very variable. Some people experience very poor performance at certain times of day. If you have this option, make sure there is a cooling off period or that you can get out of the contract if performance is unacceptable. (You'll be lucky to get this option though).

Mobile performance is even more variable, and is heavily affected by the number of people in the local cell. And there are multiple different operators to choose from, all with different signals. If you need to be able to connect multiple computers you will need some sort of cellular WiFi device which several of the mobile operators offer. With these there generally is a cooling off period. With mobile there are also pay-as-you-go options so this might be more suitable for occasional usage. As with satellite, download limits may be very restrictive and watch out for operators who will automatically increase the cost per Mb by up to a factor of 50 when you run out of prepaid bandwidth.


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## Sandals (21 Sep 2013)

3G €21.99 a month. Coverage some what patchy but sufficient for our usage. I need to keep the dongle on the window ledge or internet not connect.


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## ajapale (21 Sep 2013)

dub_nerd said:


> Your options without a landline are:
> * Cable
> * Satellite
> * Fixed wireless
> ...



Thanks Dub_nerd,

There is something about the satellite i just dont get. I can see how data is downloaded from the satellite but how is the data uploaded to the satellite? I just dont under stand the physics of it.

aj


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## dub_nerd (21 Sep 2013)

ajapale said:


> There is something about the satellite i just dont get. I can see how data is downloaded from the satellite but how is the data uploaded to the satellite? I just dont under stand the physics of it.


 
Not sure if you mean the hardware or the physics of the transmission. The satellite broadcasts via multiple spot beams covering different geographical areas. The data intended for a user in a spot is multicast to all users in that spot, with the user's terminal selecting the data intended for it. On the uplink, the user's terminal broadcasts to the satellite. It avoids clashing with other users generally by using time-division multiplexing -- basically part of the handshaking protocol is to assign a slot within a small time window during which the user can broadcast. This is dynamically managed based on the number of users in the spot. It also means the send/receive bandwidths are asymmetric, with the upload speed being a fraction of the download.

(This all assumes two-way satellite ... there was an older grotty version where the "uplink" wasn't over satellite at all, so you needed a phone line _as well_).


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## Leo (23 Sep 2013)

ajapale said:


> There is something about the satellite i just dont get. I can see how data is downloaded from the satellite but how is the data uploaded to the satellite? I just dont under stand the physics of it.



QSat use two-way dishes, so no need for a phone line for the up-link.


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## ajapale (23 Sep 2013)

Thanks for the explainations!


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