still.unsure

hello,

does anyone have any experience with using a portable satellite broadband transceiver? i'm trying to sort out my options to maintain some development work & servers from within Saudi and understand that the local connections are pretty restricted. (may not allow SSH tunnelling, etc.?)

can anyone confirm this? i've also read that personal satellite sets can cause problems with customs? any ideas on this one?

any help greatly appreciated

still.unsure (but going anyway!)

typical

Not tried specifically SSH tunnelling but VPNs in general seem to work fine over the ADSL connections...

My impressions of satellite broadband are that it's a) very slow and b) very expensive.

We have both ADSL and HSDPA broadband routers in our villa, both give ok speeds. In better coverage areas HSDPA flies though.

shiva

ooh didnt think you could get hsdpa here. where'd you find out the coverage?

typical

Trial and error...

There's coverage throughout Riyadh but for some reason our villa is a bit of a blackspot for 3(.5)G coverage. Best way to test it is to find someone with a 3.5G phone and get them to wander around your house telling you what the signal is like!

To read more about it, go to http://www.mobily.com.sa and under Products & Services choose 3.5G.

shiva

damn thought you meant UAE.
this is one of the areas that the UAE is falling behind in...3g barely works here let alone 3.5

typical

Aah sorry!

Agreed though... I find Mobily's service far in advance of Etisalat, even though Etisalat part-owns Mobily

still.unsure

brilliant! many thanks for the help!

any ideas on portable satellite broadband along the lines of RBGAN? (those little satellite-dishes-in-a-suitcase-things?) i've read conflicting ideas that they're banned in KSA and would like to know if they are.

thanks again for your help,

still.unsure

typical

No idea... I can tell you that all imported equipment has to be licenced by CITC and only licenced service providers are allowed though.

ICCSAT might be worth checking out.

still.unsure

cheers!

at a cursory glance, iccsat may be a bit of overkill, but i'll have a look at the citc stuff and see what can be sorted. i have a sneaking suspicion that i'd have to damn near smuggle sat equipment in to use a european isp so am not going to bother.

thanks for the help!

still.unsure