Q. How long does it take to have the system installed?
A. As soon as we have received your order and payment, most installations are carried out within 10 working days.

Q. Do I need to do a site survey?
A. If the equipment is for a house, which will have a standard install, where you can see a perfect line of sight to 152° South (same direction as digital Satellite TV), and the dish is to be mounted on a side wall and a short cable run - no. If it is going to be more complicated than that, or the installation is for commercial purposes (ie a business location) a survey form will need to be completed. There is a copy of this form attached to the order form PDF.

Q. Do I need a separate dish if I already have Satellite TV?
A. Most of the time - yes. We suggest replacing your current dish with one of ours with a Quad LNB. This will enable you to have your Broadband feed and your TV feed simultaneously from one dish. Your current dish may not be suitable for receiving both services, depending on your location - check with us. Also note, some councils will not allow you to have 2 dishes on your household.

Q. Is it Mac Compatible?
A. As it stands at the moment - No. You can however, use your PC as a gateway, attach to a network or crossover ethernet cable, and use your Mac/s that way. We are working with manufacturers to provide a Mac-ready plug-and-play system.

Q. Are there any download limits?
A. Yes. A fair access policy is in place. Please see the page about this.

Q. What is the minimum contract term?
A. Take your pick - 3 months or 12 months. You can have a 3 month contract by paying 3 months service costs up-front when you place your order. If you wish to continue after that, you enter a 9 month contract - totaling 12 months, paying for the service on a monthly basis by standing order. If you dont wish to continue after 3 months, you may discontinue to use the service, and all of the equipment is yours. If you enter a 12 month contract, you pay monthly for the service from day 1. Your service will continue indefinitely after your contract term, and you have the option to discontinue the service on 30 days written notice.

Q. What direction does the dish point?
A. 28.5° East, or in layman's terms 152° south.

Q. How big is the dish?
A. Depending on location and usage. Most of the UK can now use 60cm Mesh dishes. We recommend for business who are networking with a high number of users, an 80cm dish with a 0.3 dB LNB for better signal and bandwidth.

Q. What is the minimum spec my PC needs to be?
A. The faster the better. We have found Win98 128MB, 40GB 600MHz OK, but best results have been on P3 & P4 systems.

Q. Is the system compatible with Firewalls?
A. Yes. You just need to allow port 9299 incoming/outgoing access.

Q. Can I receive me email with SmileSat?
A. Yes. Its best to talk to one of our Technical Team. You need to make a small modification to a settings file if you have an earlier version of our software CD. Its only a 2 minute job.

Q. Do I have to use your dial-up?
A. No. You can use any dial-up apart from AOL. We would like it if you would use ours, but its not necessary.

Q. How does it compare to other forms of Broadband?
A. Other forms of Broadband give you a pretty much constant speed all of the time. Satellite Broadband uses bursting technology. What that means, if more bandwidth is available at the time you are download/requesting data than your purchased package, you will get more. ie 512k connection - you could get 1000k +.

Q. Can I use my ADSL for the uplink?
A. Yes. Certain parts of the UK can only get 512k ADSL. You can use the 256k uplink from this and use a 2048k satellite downlink.

Q. How do I migrate from another provider?
A. Simple, make sure your contract with the other provider has expired, and download one of our service application forms, fill it in and send to us, and if all of your equipment is compatible, and the dish is pointing in the right direction, we can activate you the same day.

Q. I used another provider, is my existing hardware compatible?
A. Best to check with us, unless you fall into the next question category!

Q. What hardware do you supply, recommend and Support?
A. We supply and recommend TechniSat modems (PCI and USB). Our technical team are very conversant with this brand. There are so many others out there and we have found TechniSat to be the best - so we stick with them.

Q. Can I move my eMail & web hosting to you?
A.Yes. We have been providing mail and web services for 5 years and offer full support and advice for all customers.

Q. Can I network the Satellite connection?
A. Yes. We recommend using WinXP and ICS. This has proven to be very stable. We have customers with upto 68 users sharing a 2Mb service and using one of our 128k ISDN packages. We can either help you set this up over the phone (may take a while) or we can visit your location and do it for you ... for a fee.

Q. Can I receive TV & Radio through SmileSat?
A. Yes. With the TechniSat software we supply, you can receive all of the Free-to-air channels.

Q. Can I order with my Credit Card?
A. Yes.

Q. How do I pay for the monthly services?
A. If you are a home user - by standing order. If you are a business, preferably by standing order, or invoice for second option. Business customers will be sent an invoice each month.

Q. Are there any more costs?
A. Other than the monthly fee, just your dial-up account, or if you use 0845 dialup - the call cost that will be added to your phone bill, and your phone line rental.

Q. Do you offer a 2-way services?
A. Yes - see our two-way Broadband section.

Q. What does your install cost include?
A. The modem (PCI or USB), the dish and cable, and an engineer to install the dish to the location of your computer. We will ship the modem to you with instructions how to install or fit the PCI card, and instructions how to install and use the software.