HughesNet has named the new service Gen4 and the satellite utilizes EchoStar-Hughes’ new Jupiter high-throughput technology, which expands the total capacity of the satellite to 100 Gbps. That has allowed Hughes to distribute that capacity more liberally to its customers, bumping up download speeds from 1-2 Mbps to 10-15 Mbps and upload speeds above a megabit. ViaSat launched a similarly brawny satellite last year, and began offering a $50/month 12 Mbps service in January.

Hughes service plans are comparably priced with cable broadband, ranging from $50 to $100 a month, but the satellite’s finite capacity does give the service some stiff limitations. Unlike its previous plans, these newer, faster tiers come with caps. At the low end customers are limited to 20 GB, while the upper tier taps out at 40 GB. By comparison cable operator Comcast recently raised its monthly cap from 250 GB to 300 GB a month.

What’s more, customers are restricted when they can consume that data -– on all plans, half of the monthly data bucket can only be tapped between 2 AM and 8 AM. But Hughes also seems to have done away with the old daily throttling policies that irked so many of its customers.

Before Gen4, customers technically didn’t have to deal with caps, but they were limited to daily download allotment from 250 MBs to 450 MBs. If they exceeded those caps in a 24-hour period, their connections were throttled back to dial-up speeds, returning to normal after another 24 hours. It’s not clear if Hughes is eliminating those fair-use policies completely, but it looks like customers are getting much more flexibility in how they consume their admittedly limited monthly data allocations.

Though it’s still not on par with its wireline counterparts, satellite broadband has made leaps in last year as a new generation of equipment has gone into orbit. That’s led to several new services that have bumped up the speeds available to a large swathe of the American hinterland and other underserved areas where DSL and cable aren’t options. In addition to ViaSat’s Exede and HughesNet’s Gen4, Dish Network has bought capacity from both companies, allowing it to sell a broadband service called DishNet in areas ViaSat and Hughes’ respective birds don’t cover.

Improved satellite technologies have also expanded broadband access beyond rural homes and business. ViaSat’s satellite will power JetBlue’s forthcoming in-flight Wi-Fi service, significantly boosting the speeds available to passengers while drastically lowering the cost of delivering that data. In three years, Iridium will begin launching a new constellation of 66 satellites into low-Earth orbit, which will be able to supply 8 Mbps connections not just to homes in the Midwest farmlands but to any point on the globe.

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Darrell’s post “Coworking à Deux” was particularly relevant because, as of this posting, I’ve only identified one other web worker in my community, and she only does it part-time. While her day job is teaching at the local school, she blogs for half-a-dozen education blogs after hours. As far as I can tell, the two of us are the only two Twitterers in Tok. I know many residents are on MySpace and some on Facebook, but web working isn’t part of their day job.

My Definition of Coworking

My understanding of coworking is to create a space — rent, build, borrow, co-op — where people who work remotely and solo can work in close proximity with others, usually people in similar industries but not always. The purposes for doing this vary, but it helps diminish the isolation, provides networking opportunities, allows cross-pollination of services, and generally builds community where there otherwise was not one because of the inherent separation of working remotely.

Finding Coworkers in Remote Places

Coworking clearly doesn’t have to happen solely amongst tech workers, however, in rural places there are often few ways to find non-tech workers to cowork with. In my location, we are so scattered and remote that there is really no general gathering place to meet new people unless you hang out at the grocery store or one of the two restaurants, or attend community events. The only notices we receive about anything and anyone in town are either through our twice-monthly local paper or one of three bulletin boards, so finding potential coworkers who aren’t at least on social networks is very difficult.

How to Cowork in Tok, Alaska

I’ve come up with a handful of potential coworking opportunities for me and the other blogger in town:

1. My house – I have Wi-Fi, a home office setup, a comfy living room and a spacious dining room table. So that makes three options within my own abode that could accommodate another web worker.

2. Her house – I’d have to check with her about her setup. This might not be an option.

3. Fast Eddy’s – This is one of two local restaurants and the only one with free Wi-Fi, although I have trouble accessing it most times I’m there.

4. The Grumpy Griz – The other restaurant down the road. It doesn’t have free Wi-Fi. We could tap into the local telecom company’s wireless service, but we’d have to pay about $25 per month to use it.

5. Another location – If we decided to pay for wireless cards, we could work from another location  in town, although our choices are few. The library? It is only opened when a volunteer is working, and the schedule isn’t steady. The park? Not in the winter, but it’s a possibility for the three months of summer. Until the summertime, there really aren’t any other places to go. No bookstore, no coffeeshop. But in the summer months, our options would expand to a few more seasonal restaurants.

6. Skype or Google Video – We could suck up our limited monthly bandwidth allowance and hang out virtually yet together on Skype or Google Video. But is that really coworking? Or would it be…cheating?

Can Video Chat Really Be Coworking?

When your options — or even suitable coworkers  — are so limited, video conferencing seems a viable option for creating a pseudo coworking “space.” Just the other day, my Denver-based business partner and I wound down our video chat but didn’t hang up. We both just started doing our work while still connected on Skype.

When I realized, I laughed and pointed out to her what we were doing. But do you know what? Before I had paused to mention the fact that we had both started working while our video chat windows were still open, I actually had felt for those few minutes that we were working in the same room. We were independent, yet together. That feeling is what coworking offers, so why not do it via video when you can’t actually be there?

Of course, if you are really rural, you’ll encounter two obstacles to video coworking:

1. Lack of bandwidth could make it untenable; and

2. Bandwidth can be very costly.

Why Not Rent an Office?

For me, I’d say a major reason for working from home is not to ever work in an office again. Even as successful as my business is becoming, I can’t imagine spending a dime on renting a space for coworking because I get major cost savings and profitability for my business from not renting physical space. Many people in rural areas like Tok can’t always afford fast Internet connections, much less an office space. In very rural places, real estate can be quite limited even if renting an office were an option.

Are you coworking in very rural places? How many of you are coworking and how/where are you doing it?

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So how have these connectivity challenges and unexpected expenses affected my web work? And how am I compensating for these…developments?

1. Images

There is no way around uploading and downloading images. With all of the blogging I do, images are key to my work, and although I could link to images using a URL instead of embedding them, it is less reliable so I’ll stick with uploading. Luckily, for the most part, the image sizes aren’t over a MB each, however, when they are, I find that it is too much effort to size them so upload them anyway.

When it comes to images, they are the lowest on the totem pole of bandwidth chompers, so I’m not changing much in this area. If I’m down to my last MBs of bandwidth allowance before the end of any month, I may suck it up and start sizing images although the benefits will be minimal.

Verdict? Not giving up the pics.

2. Audio

I’ve been podcasting professionally and have to upload or email an MP3 regularly to my producer. I also need to upload my own podcasts to LibSyn although I’ve been a bit remiss with that lately since it is usually about Second Life (see “Second Life” header below). The pro-podcasting show MP3 is between 5-6 MB per segment.

Was able to email the files the other day which is a plus. Must do this 1-2 times weekly. So that is 4-8 files or up to 48 MB per month.

Verdict? Got to do audio.

3. Video

The first week I arrived here, a DVD also arrived for me. It contained a 330 MB television commercial for a client. My charge was to use mDialog’s mLoader to compress it and upload it onto mDialog, then convert the compressed file using QuickTime into a .mov file and upload to YouTube.

mDialog’s uploading app is slick, and it was doing a great job compressing the video, but alas, the file was still too large for my connection. Maybe I could have waited a few hours, however, I was also worried about frittering away so much of my bandwidth allowance on a single file.

When it comes to my own blogs, video is something I don’t want to give up. I may have to suck it up and pay an extra $30 for a Gig overage just to keep my personal videos on my blogs. Yet I must be careful to limit myself to just a Gig over per month or my monthly Internet expenses will get out of control.

Verdict? Farm out heavy video uploads to my contractors in more bandwidth-rich places. Suck up any extra expense for uploading my own videos.

4. Video and Audio Skype

Besides video chatting with my folks who are in Florida, I am video chatting and audio Skype-ing with colleagues. And recently, I attended a Tweetup in Anchorage via video Skype.

At first, I wasn’t even sure if I would be able to get clear audio, much less video. But other than the very occasional buggy sound or picture, my overall Skype experience from rural places has been pretty impressive.

Verdict? Skype rules for rural connectivity!

5. Second Life

Ever since I heard I was moving to Tok, I began researching to see what Internet access solutions would be available to me, I’ve panicked about my Second Life activities. Would I have to give them up? I shuddered to think, especially when my Second Life Web-based machinima TV show – REAL BIZ in SL – was starting to take off. In fact, we had the entire month of January booked in advance with guests from around the world (companies and nonprofits using Second Life).

I finally had my show manager push back all the guests until February when I knew (or hoped) I’d be in Anchorage rather than risk getting to Tok and finding out my avatar wouldn’t budge.

The other day, I finally tried to log into Second Life, expecting it to be a futile effort. I got in. I was also able to get onto Skype audio at the same time.

I made a note before logging in of my bandwidth usage to see what I was in for. Turns out a little over half an hour on Second Life with Skype is almost comparable to several hours on video Skype. Each ate up about half a Gig. If I limit my video Skyping or Second Lifing to 2x a month, that means 1-2 Gigs of my 10 Gig allottment gone.

Verdict? Be strategic and frugal, definitely not bandwidth happy, but don’t totally give up Second Life.

6. Bandwidth Paranoia

Every time I get a particularly large file attached to an email now, I look at it with a sinking feeling. “How much is that going to cost me?” is the first thing that runs through my head. And “Do I really need that file?” follows shortly after. I have to admit I’ve stopped downloading funny photos and videos from friends already.

For business, I respond to anyone sending me something that seems large and ask them to send it my my assistant or a colleague for viewing, vetting, optimizing, sizing or distributing in any way. I’m preparing everyone on my team with their new role as “Large File Handler” as needed.

Verdict? Paranoia will save me money.

Once I get my next bill, I’ll know if I have to be even more stringent with my big file policies and processes. When I saw my first DSL bill at $258, I almost choked. That was the last month of December along with the entire month of January paid in advance.

I’m just a high-speed gal in a slow-speed world. You just do what you gotta do.

What are you paying for connectivity? And could you still do your job without it?

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