I have the new StarBand Nova Ultimate system and Vonage for a phone service. The phone is lousy in transmitting even with an upload of 140 or better. Is there a better phone system more compatible with StarBand? I’m in a remote area in the Baja and would like to have a somewhat decent phone. Previously I had the 484 modem with RocketVoip and it worked pretty good until StarBand changed something and it no longer worked.
— Ken Kinnamon
It would appear that in using StarBand you were initially either on either the AMC4 or AMC6 satellites. In moving to the Ultimate StarBand package, you were probably sent a new modem and might still be using the AMC4 satellite but may have been moved over to the Telstar 7 satellite.
I am surprised that you had as good as performance as you did initially with StarBand due to the significant latency that I have seen in satellite-based Internet systems I have used in recent years. It is possible that if there are enough users trying to get on the system at the same time, there might be bandwidth availability issues leading to some of the problem you are seeing with the poor performance you are seeing with your VoIP provider. See if there is any re-aiming of the dish/LNB that can be done to get a more direct “shot” at the satellite, especially if there are any obstructions between you and the satellite.
Ask StarBand tech supportwhat the differences are between the modem you used to use and the one that you are now using for the upgraded service. See if there is any tweaking or adjusting that they might be able to do – and if they have any suggestions for changes to your configuration to get better performance with VoIP. Try doing traceroutes to the system(s) that you are accessing at RocketVoip and look at the latency on the different hops on the connection to see where in the path is experiencing delays that could be causing your VoIP issues.
A couple of other things to ask about: Firmware updates for your current modem and whether StarBand can enable any level of QoS on your connection to enhance the VoIP performance.
As a last resort, you could try some of the other Internet VoIP providers, but I would expect similar performance issues.
