Ducati Sporting Club UK > General > Idle Chat > Remote Broadband service - Help please.

[Guido]

Just discovered my sleepy backwater has now come into the iron age and has alowed me to enjoy the benefits of ADSL/Broadband. Been looking att he Dae W thread from earlier this year re. ISP's.

What I want is to be able to get broadband services at home but also remotely.

As you all know, I'm trying to get into the press motorsports photography arena. Ideally, I'd like to be able to transfer images from my camera to a laptop and then send them off via Outlook emails or FTP whilst 'in the field' - by that I mean whilst sat at the side of the track with my camera in one hand and the laptop in the other.

I don't really want to ar$e about having to rent a dial-up phone line at the circuit and trudge back to a media centre every time I want to get my pics o the customer quickly.

Do any of you realy techy's know if this is possible via satellite etc. I know you have these wireless environments in the big smoke but I'll be too far away from any sort of wireless hub/exchange.

Cheers in advance....

Guido

[TP]

GSM or 3G PC Card (PCMCIA)

Plug her in and you're away, it's a mobile phone in a card.

I don't know what's on offer over here for providers etc but technoligically it's feasible and I could hook this up for you easily in Oz ... alas ...

Although to be fair, only 3G could be considered broadband - GSM modem is 14.4 connection or similar. Plenty of consultants get their mail this way but transferring large pics is not going to fly.

I'm just doing some searches on 3G now ...

[Edited on 22-9-2004 by tp-996]

[TP]

Here you go Guido, it seems that most of the mobile providers will offer a service, I suggest you get in contact with your current provider.

Here's an example.

Laptop Shop Vodafone

[JasonBoswell]

Originally posted by tp-996
GSM or 3G PC Card (PCMCIA)

Plug her in and you're away, it's a mobile phone in a card.

I don't know what's on offer over here for providers etc
[Edited on 22-9-2004 by tp-996]

Orange and Voda now offering PCMCIA 3G cards for laptops - the way to go! Best thing you could do Guy is pop into one of their shops and see what deals theyre offering.

As far as I know, all the BB providers (cable and DSL) only connect from a static address - well, thats how DSL works anyhow using your BT exchange. Might be a way of frigging cable connections but thats not going to be a possible in your case anyhow.

So, youre prob looking at having to get both DSL at home and 3G while youre out and about.....

[electricsheep]

I agree with everyone that 3G wireless is the way to go for the 'remote' connectivity.

You should check with the provider that actual '3G' coverage is available where you need it. Sometimes they will fall back to slower speeds in some areas.

Also check on the pricing model as some are priced per MB. Which will add up quickly with big files.

It may also be worth getting regular broadband at home and just use the 3G when you really need it.

[Guido]

Thanks chaps.

That would be my choice (i.e. to use Broadband at home and something else when away form home).

The average pic size is about 2Mb, but if you take this last weekend as an example, I had what I considered to be close to 100 images that I felt warranted submission to a mag.

MCN for example want the pics on a Sunday so they have time to view them and sort the ones they will use for the following Wednesday's publication. The media centres at the circuits after each race are like a scene from mission control!!!! You have upwards of 50 photographers all vying for a dial up connection to send of their pics arounds the globe.

My camera has a option where I can get a wireless transmitter that fits to the bottom so images can be transferred by FTP as soon as they are taken if needs be. Only prob is that it has a 150 metre range. Fine when the laptop is next to me and I have a system such as what you have been talking about or if I'm say at Brands which may tap into or have a wireless network of it's own.

Will do some digging but thanks again for your pointers.

Gc

[Mr_S]

The you want is one of the things I've got, an Inmarsat Regional BGAN Satelitte broadband. It's used by the WRC for their internet comms, and is bl@@dy good.

http://regionalbgan.inmarsat.com/

I got it from Inmarsat for some testing, and they've not asked for it back yet...

[Edited on 23-9-2004 by Mr_S]

[Guido]

Hmmm.

Looks like it may be just the ticket that there device thingyy....Mr_S!!!!!!

Might contact U for a bit more info if the website proves to taxing to read thru.

Cheers. Gc

[TP]

I've just got off the train from a night at the pub and some bloke on there had an Orange 3G connection. I think he had something like a 64k uplink for uploading your photo's.

Broadband at home, 3G mobile ... or the Inmarsat ... I used the Inmarsat when I was in the Oz Army - get it in places where you can't get 3g although back then the bandwidth/latency was worse than 3G - can't speak for now though - maybe Mr_S might know?

[Mr_S]

Latencies pretty good these days (superior to GPRS), although latency is only an issue when you're doing something interactive (like my line of work....) with file transfers in single direction it's not a massive impact on user perception.

3G is the best performing network for this activity, but the pricing structure is horrendous for large file transfers (but great for my line of work )

I'd also be dubious about the quality of 3G coverage in the areas you'll be looking to do the transfers from. Once you get out of the major cities and towns it drops right off, so you'd probably end up falling back to GPRS all the time (which is painfully slow).

The prices from Laptop Shop look quite reasonable though it works out to just 75 photo's / month, and coverage would be an issue.

Not sure what the pricing strategy is for the Inmarsat (probably a similar thing) but coverage would be better for your needs.

Jason