FAQ

Tooway is Europe’s first affordable satellite broadband product designed for home users. Using the latest hardware and antenna technology we offer super fast broadband, anywhere in Europe, irrespective of whether there’s any fixed line infrastructure nearby. Depending on the airtime account you chose, hardware and connection are free or from only around £149.99 (or €179.95), and airtime starts at £24.99 a month (or €29.95) inclusive of UK VAT.

Tooway is a bidirectional high speed satellite service for broadband Internet access. Bidirectional means that receive and transmit functions are performed via the satellite; therefore there is no need for telephone line.

ToowayDirect is trading style of Satellite Solutions Worldwide Ltd (SSW) who also own the Tariam Satellite Broadband brand.

SSW is an established global telecommunications company and is one of the largest Tooway Distributors in Northern Europe, and we’ve been delivering Tooway™ satellite broadband services for several years through the Tariam website. Due to the volume of Tooway™ business we now enjoy, we’ve created ToowayDirect.com as a permanent home for our European Tooway™ user business.

Broadband means, very simply, a high-speed connection to the Internet that’s ‘always on’. It’s called broadband because it has a much larger capacity to receive (and send) data. Providing broadband via satellite means that we bounce your data from your remote location up to and down from the satellite to a point on the ground where there’s very fast and reliable internet connectivity.

Tooway satellite broadband is around 184 times faster than a 56k dial-up modem enabling you to view web content and download files more quickly.

ADSL and similar wired broadband services available from BT and their resellers make use of the existing cheap landline telephone infrastructure that has been in place for many years to deliver ADSL to your premises. All BT has to do to deliver broadband to you is insert a fast internet connection into the telephone exchange, and share it over the phone lines. The downside of this is that the infrastructure is old, in poor condition and incomplete in many areas which is why many people still can’t access ADSL even in urban or city locations.

With satellite broadband, the investment in the satellite and related infrastructure runs into tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of pounds and this has to be factored into the price of the Tooway™ services.

You also need to invest in the hardware for you to be able to take advantage of the satellite technology. The hardware you will be buying is very robust and reliable, and will typically run without maintenance for 5 years +. At £150 that works out at around £30 a year, or £2.50 a month (inc VAT) which most people consider better than not being able to have broadband at all. With airtime starting at around £24.99 a month, we are getting very close to the price charged by many ADSL Internet Service Providers.

We would challenge any UK household of more than 2 people, or a family, that they’d save substantially more than that £30 every year by investing in Tooway™ just by then being able to shop online for their insurances, utilities, holidays – even their weekly shopping and clothes.

There are even websites out there now dedicated to showing you ways to save money by buying online. With a bit of work, we’d hope you’d be able to offset the cost of the airtime as well, and even come out slightly better off financially than if you didn’t have broadband at all.

Once you’ve covered the cost you’ve got all the social, educational and entertainment advantages of broadband.

Only you can decide if having broadband is worth this reasonable investment.

The home user version of Tooway offers download speeds of up to 10.2 Mbps and upload speeds at up to 4.1 Mbps. When we say “up to” we mean this is peak speed wherever you live, Tooway doesn’t discriminate by location. Tooway Pro offers up to 40 Mb download, 10 Mb upload for business users still will the same cheap hardware.

The exact ‘speed’ or performance of your Tooway™ connection at any given time will depend on a number of factors many of them outside our control. These include the overall busyness of our network at that precise moment, the overall busyness of the public internet, and the protocol or application you’re using at the time.

Not normally. Any computer (MAC, Windows or Linux OS) with an Ethernet network card can be connected to the satellite modem. No additional hardware or computer software is required. If you connect a suitable wireless router to the satellite modem, you can then use PC’s or smart phones in your home or office wirelessly. We can supply a suitable wireless router with your Tooway system, just tick that option in the order process.

We’ve found that most customers when they come to us already have an email account and email address that they want to keep but if you don’t have an email address, we can help you get one for free.

Tooway fully supports webmail like Hotmail, Gmail, MSN and Yahoo. Toowaydirect used to provide a free email sending server for customers moving from dial-up services (an SMTP service). However, the increased security now employed by most email servers to combat SPAM means that technically we can’t do this anymore. For email not to be treated as SPAM, it has to originate from the server that matches the domain of your email.

If you are using Tooway for the first time, you need to look to the originator of your email address or hosting company for the settings you need to send email using software like MS Outlook or Windows Mail. E.g. if you have an email address like xxxxxx@btinternet.com, you need to talk to BT. If you have a Yahoo email xxxxxx@yahoo.com, you need to contact Yahoo.

ToowayDirect strongly recommends that you install a (software or hardware) firewall to protect you from any unwanted attempts to access the files on your computer. We also suggest you install quality antivirus software. For example, ZoneAlarm is a handy personal firewall application, free for personal use (see http://www.zonelabs.com). For free antivirus software, you could try AVG (see http://free.avg.com/).

The standard dish and mount is designed to withstand 100mph winds. Clouds and showers have little impact on satellite communications. However, torrential rain or snow may cause slight degraded service in extreme conditions as signals are reflected a little by rain. Our systems automatically increase power levels to compensate for these conditions.

Yes, you can use a wired or wireless router to connect your Tooway™ terminal to several PC’s or smart phones in your home. In the near future, you will be able to choose the enhanced Tooway™ set-top-box with integrated router and Wi-Fi interface.

We can supply a wired/wireless router with your Tooway™ at a low additional cost, just select that option in the order process..

Tooway gives access to satellite television by adding a small piece of equipment to the satellite dish, this will need to be done by a competent installer. This allows both free-to-air and paying channels to be received.

Tooway™ can also support telephone through VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) technology like Skype.

In principle yes and games that don’t involve fast real-time interaction should work fine on Tooway, but it is not recommended to play so called “first-person shooter” games. Any kind of combat or game that involves the need for an immediate reaction will not work so well just due to the extra time involved in the trip to the satellite and back that your data has to make.

Yes, Tooway can receive satellite television through a television feed added on to the satellite dish. The advantage of receiving satellite television is that it does not use your internet connection.

Tooway services from ToowayDirect support UK ‘watch again’ portals like BBC iplayer, Channel 4 OD and ITV Player, the only home satellite broadband service in the UK to do so. Other Tooway distributors may claim that you get access to UK content with their services. However, with Toowaydirect you get a proper UK IP address meaning that access to your favourite UK websites is easy and straightforward.

If your home or small business is only able to get dial-up internet access, ISDN or slow fixed line broadband (up to 1 Mbps) Tooway will provide you with an excellent alternative.

If you are still using dial-up, we don’t need to tell you how frustratingly slow and unpredictable it can be. The latest websites are full of images and video rich content which take ages to download on dial-up.

Tooway Home is designed for a maximum of 6 home users (PC’s/smart phones) only. Its designed primarily as a domestic email and browsing tool. (You can connect more then 6 users, PC’s or smart phone to each Tooway connection, but the user experience may suffer). Business users wanting to connect more than 6 users should consider Tooway Pro

If you require a mission critical or business grade connection with support for advanced business applications like IP Sec VPN, Citrix or continual/regular connection to your company’s network at your place of work, corporate resources or databases, Tooway may not be ideal for you and you should consider iconnect, a business satellite broadband solution from our sister company Tariam Satellite Communications.

Our sales team will be happy to advise you further on this.

Tooway Home offers 4 different monthly service options that vary by overall performance (speed) and also by the volume of data the service handles at peak hi-speed.

Try the volume calculator, this will give you a good idea of which of our Tooway services is best suited to you.

When you’ve dialled in your user profile to the volume calculator, just select the most appropriate Tooway package for your profile, but don’t worry, you can always upgrade later.

If you’re a business, take a look at Tooway Pro which offers a more advanced proposition aimed at business users.

Yes. If you want to change tariffs you can do during the first 12 months of the contract, or at any time after. If you downgrade to a lower tariff than the one you’re on, you will be charged 1 month of your old tariff as a downgrade fee. Your downgrade will be processed at the end of the month you’ve requested it in.

If you want to upgrade to a higher tariff, you can do so. Upgrades are normally processed at midnight on the day we receive the instruction. You will be charged for whatever pro-rata part month is applicable between the date you ask us to upgrade you, and your next billing date and then the new tariff you’ve chosen from then on.

You can only upgrade or downgrade once in each billing month. If you want to process an upgrade/downgrade please contact us.

Having a slow or unreliable fixed line broadband connection is a common reason for small businesses to buy Tooway™. You can run a satellite based Tooway™ connection alongside your fixed line (ADSL) connection.

We can supply you with a load balancing router which will automatically switch your internet traffic to the satellite when your wired broadband goes down, or load balance between the two connections to give you extra broadband capacity for peak times.

The equipment is covered by a 2 year full manufacturers “return to base” warranty.

If you have a technical or service issue with your Tooway system, contact us by raising a trouble ticket here

ToowayDirect.com has developed its Tooway™ product working with its partners Eutelsat and Skylogic. We’ve added a few extras to our Tooway solution which mean our Tooway proposition stands out from other companies who may say they can offer you a similar solution.

A key fact is that Tooway™ services from ToowayDirect support UK ‘watch again’ portals like BBC iPlayer, Channel 4 OD and ITV Player, we are the only Tooway distributor and home satellite broadband service in the UK to do so. If you live abroad, and want to watch UK TV online, this means our Tooway service is the one for you.

In summary from Toowaydirect you can expect:-

• Industry leading customer support with secure online ordering, billing, and invoicing
• A proper UK IP address meaning easy acess to UK websites and content portals.
• The option to try-before-you-buy. (We have a network of resellers who can provide a demonstration near to where you live).
• Our “Refer-a-friend” scheme which means you can get your Tooway airtime for free.
• A fair and unambiguous contract
• The best prices in Europe with the ability to order and pay in £ Sterling or € Euros
• Clear, consumer orientated pricing with prices shown including VAT
• Professional installation with Certified Installers and Technical Support that’s the best in the industry, or the option to use a local Dealers and Installers to do the work.

If you are still using dial-up, we don’t need to tell you how frustratingly slow and unpredictable it can be. The latest websites are full of images and video rich content which takes an age to download.

If you opt for Tooway™ you’ll be able to save hours of your time, and you will be able to access the latest feature rich websites in record time.

Compare Tooway™ to your old dial-up

Key features	Tooway	Dial-Up
Available virtually anywhere
Fast Download Speeds (up to 10.2 Mbps)
Fast Upload Speeds (up to 4.1 Mbps)
Always-on connection to the internet
No software to load
Dedicated connection/instant access (no logging in or out)
Professional installation
No phone line needed

If you have a small business with a maximum of 6 PC’s or Macs, you can use Tooway™ as a back-up or failover broadband internet connection for email, browsing and VoIP. If your business has more than 6 PC’s, or you want a back-up or failover connection that supports business grade services or solutions you need to look at our iaccess product through our sister company Tariam.

We can supply you with a load balancing router which will automatically switch your internet traffic to the satellite when your wired broadband goes down, or load balance between the two connections to give you extra broadband capacity for peak times.

Not with toowaydirect.com but there maybe with other satellite companies. We’ve designed our Tooway™ offering to be fair. If you’re a very light user you pay much less per month for your airtime subscription than a heavy user. You can use our ‘volume calculator’ to dial in your likely usage profile and then you can see which monthly subscription suits you best.

If you need to send and receive more data than our Tooway 10+ service talk to our Customer Service team and they’ll tell you how.

If you need to send and receive more data than the Tooway account you’ve chosen allows, you maybe slowed down slightly by the Fair Access Policy (FAP). At this point you can either upgrade to the next service level, or if you’re a Ku band Tooway customer, buy a volume booster token from us just for that month or wait until your usage level falls below the FAP. Volume Booster tokens will be available for Ka band Tooway customers from the end of September 2011.

At no point will you be cut off, and shortly you’ll be able to monitor your monthly data usage on line via our website.

In order for everyone on the Tooway platform to get a good reliable service, we operate a Fair Access Policy (FAP).

We monitor the usage of all the users on the platform to ensure a good quality user experience for all. What this means is that during peak times, extremely heavy users of the service may find their connection throttled slightly to ensure that everyone gets equitable access.

This table shows how your usage will be assessed and the data levels which if exceeded may lead to some throttling. Between the hours of 12 midnight and 6.00 CET these volumes are doubled before any throttling will occur.

Homes and small businesses in some areas of the UK who are outside the reach of traditional fixed line broadband, or who have poor broadband speed, can get a grant from either:-

Rural Connection, a collaboration between Devon and Somerset Councils, Toowaydirect and ethical IT company Cosmic. This grant will pay for the entire hardware and set-up costs of Tooway for residents in certain areas of Devon (particularly areas of North, Mid and East Devon and Wheddon Cross in Exmoor, Somerset). There’s more information on our Devon and Somerset Rural Connection page.

or

The Welsh Assembly Government which pays the set-up costs of Tooway in Wales including the hardware and installation. The subsidy is called The Broadband Support Scheme. Talk to our Customer Service team and they’ll tell you how to apply. There’s more information on our Free Broadband Wales page.

Yes. We operate a referral scheme called ‘Refer-A-Friend’. An increasing number of customers in remote locations are using the Refer-A-Friend scheme to get their ongoing monthly satellite airtime for free. This works well because we often find that if there’s one home in a rural not-spot without broadband, there’s usually several others in the vicinity.

Once you have your new Tooway™ system up and running, if you introduce friends or neighbours to us who subsequently buy Tooway™ as well, for every one you introduce we’ll give you a month’s airtime for free!

12 friends or neighbours signing up a year, and you get your airtime for free!

We always happy to welcome customers to our Operations Centre in Weston on the Green, just off the M40 north of Oxford to come and try Tooway™ before you order.

You can bring a laptop and plug in and try your own applications or feel free to browse using one of ours. Just make sure you let us know when you’re planning on coming so that we can book you a slot and get the kettle on!

If you’re not local to us, we have a network of Certified Dealers and Installers across Europe who can demonstrate, sell and install Tooway for you.

We offer you a fair and unambiguous 12 month contract and clear, consumer orientated pricing with prices shown including VAT.

You can self-install if you’re good with DIY, take a look at our Installation Video to see what’s involved. If you’re benefiting from a grant or subsidy to get online with Tooway, you won’t normally have to consider self-installation. We’ll do the set-up for you.

You can also talk to our Europe wide network of resellers who will be pleased to supply, demonstrate and install your Tooway kit.

Alternatively we can offer installation by one of our Certified Installers or if you wish to use your own local installer, we’re happy for you to do that. If you decide to go ahead with buying Tooway™, there’s more information available during the order process on what information you need to give your installer and what level or experience the installer needs to have to complete the installation to the required standard.

If you’re benefiting from a grant or subsidy to get online with Tooway, you won’t normally have to consider self-installation. We’ll do the set-up for you.

No, Tooway does not require any cable or phone lines and Tooway™ supports free internet phone calls via Skype. However you should be aware that free VoIP services like Skype aren’t suitable for making emergency calls like 999 and so don’t compromise your safety by leaving internet phone calls as your only means of communications if you live in a remote location.

Though conditions may vary slightly, normally planning permission is not required for the antenna you will be supplied with, provided you don’t have other dishes on your building. If your building is a protected historical building official permits may be required. Most issues with planning (or if you have a listed building) can be overcome by installing the antenna on a brick (not-listed) outbuilding or down at ground level.

It is your responsibility to understand and comply with the rules and regulations regarding the placement of equipment on the building you occupy. We will try to guide you where possible.

You may want to read further advice on installation. The dish must be mounted on a solid brick or concrete surface and be absolutely rigid to obtain good signal strength. Unlike with satellite TV antennas which are “receive only” movement of 1 – 2 mm can make a huge difference to the signal on this sophisticated equipment. Mounting on the wooden cladding of barns or fences for instance is not satisfactory, as when the wood expands and contracts with seasonal temperature changes, the dish will move an unacceptable amount and your signal would be degraded.

If you are planning to install the antenna at ground level, you could get a local builder to create a small concrete raft or plinth for the antenna to mount on. Our engineers can do this for you, but it will involve extra costs.

You need to think that the cable run between the dish and the indoor modem is a maximum of 25 metres and so your location will be influenced by this. If you need to use the service more than 25m from the antenna, you can lengthen the cable run by continuing onwards from the modem using CAT5/6 Ethernet cable from the modem to your PC or router.

In the UK, Tooway usually requires line of site to the South South East. We use the new Ka Sat satellite for our Tooway customers. Ka Sat’s official position in the sky is at 9 degrees East. This translates to about 168 degrees magnetic. This tool helps you easily check the line of site.

If you can see a Sky digital dish nearby, this points roughly South East. We have a number of mounting solutions that can deal with sites where line of site to the satellite is awkward. The satellites we use are based over the equator.

If you’re still not sure about the line of site to the satellite, talk to our customer service team and they’ll give you more information on how you can check this.

The standard installation allowed for in the installation fee is as follows: mounting on a standard brick or block wall at a height reachable on a standard double extension ladder (not above 4 metres), and not more than 25m from the proposed location of the modem.

Its useful to mount the antenna above pedestrian and vehicular traffic height (so these won’t interfere with the signal, but not so high that you can’t gently sweep any snow off the dish with a broom in winter!

If you plan to mount the antenna at ground level, or on a flat roof you will need a further bracket called a non-penetrating roof mount and this will involve extra cost.

Installation prices are estimated for UK mainland only. If extra costs apply due to your location, we will notify you at outset. Ferry crossings, accommodation, flights and living expenses may be charged extra if necessary.

Moving the antenna/dish to another location, whether on the same building or otherwise, is obviously possible if you move. You must notify ToowayDirect if you plan to move house or premises as we have to complete licensing checks for the new location with OFCOM. If you don’t do this and the equipment interferes with other licensed equipment at another site you could be liable for a fine. ToowayDirect deals with the obtaining of OFCOM clearance for your initial installation site at outset. This is one of the many things we do in the phase between when you order and you receive your equipment.

Please give consideration to the location of your dish to minimise the likelihood of requiring a move. On subscribing to the service you are required to contract the service for a minimum of 12 months.

All you need is a satellite mini-dish and a Tooway™ set-top-box. No additional software needs to be installed on your computer to get internet access via Tooway™.

ToowayDirect strongly recommends that you install a (software or hardware) firewall to protect you from any unwanted attempts to access the files on your computer. We also suggest you install quality antivirus software. For example, ZoneAlarm is a handy personal firewall application, free for personal use (see http://www.zonelabs.com). For free antivirus software, you could try AVG (see http://free.avg.com/).

The type of data packet that ping uses is not considered ‘priority traffic’ by our Network Management System and therefore if the network is busy, it won’t accelerate or may even drop the pings you send. Therefore you will see a much slower response than for instance HTTP traffic which is considered a priority.

Ping is not a reliable method of analysing the performance of satellite broadband systems.

Our systems use a variety of satellites, but most locations in Europe are covered on Ka band by the new Eutelsat Ka Sat high-speed satellite. We will offer you the best satellite solution we can for your needs. We believe that we are unique in offering this service.

“Speed” is a subjective measure of performance. Typical “speed test” websites on the internet are not designed to check satellite based connections. They tend to add the satellites natural latency into the calculation of data over time and come up with an inaccurate result which will be inevitably poorer than the true performance you are actually receiving.

If you have a 2nd generation Ka Sat Tooway (installed after 1st June 2011) you can make use of our dedicated Tooway speed checker that’s been designed to work accurately with Tooway. (You won’t be able to access this application if you’re not browsing over a Tooway Ka band service. Please do contact us if you think you have a genuine performance issue.)

Overall performance of the service will vary at different times of the day depending on how busy the network and the public internet is and how many users are online at the same time as you. Typically the network will be 40% less busy after 18.30 CET and before 08.30 CET.

Very few, but satellite technology introduces limitations in certain applications. Unlike some of our competitors, our packages accept direct connection to Macintosh, Linux, Unix or Windows based operating systems.

If you have an important application, task or protocol that you wish to run over your Tooway terminal, it’s important that as a minimum you discuss the precise details with our sales team before you order.

We can then indicate to you if there are any performance issues or limiting factors which we’re aware of, and can give you specific product advice to ensure you’re satisfied with the Tooway option you’re considering.

Ideally if you have a particular application, tool or piece of hardware that you want to run over Tooway, our advice is to run a live test before you order by visiting one of our Resellers, or by coming to our HQ near Oxford for a try-before-you-buy demonstration.

Tooway™ Satellite Broadband packages are not suitable for:

• Some remote control software
• Heavy uplink traffic, such as Web or FTP hosting
• Tooway Home for uploading streaming video or professional CCTV monitoring but Tooway Pro works fine
• Tooway Home is not ideal for remote access, but Tooway Pro works fine
• IPSec VPN applications (SSL VPN applications like online banking and secure websites are supported)
• Real time online gaming (never really practical on satellite based connections)

The different data volume amounts for each service level are described elsewhere in the FAQ’s above under the Question “How does the Fair Access Policy Work (FAP)?

If you exceed these amounts per month, you will find that during busy times your connection may be throttled (slowed down) by our Network Management System. The more you exceed your selected data volume, the more the connection will be throttled.

Data limits are calculated on a 28 day sliding window. You can upgrade to the next data level at the next monthly anniversary when you make your payment but you must advise us you wish to upgrade at least 30 days in advance, or buy a 1GB temporary upgrade token.

As our satellite broadband connections are ‘always on’, ToowayDirect strongly recommends that you install a (software or hardware) firewall to protect you from any unwanted attempts to access the files on your computer. We also suggest you install quality antivirus software. For example, ZoneAlarm is a handy personal firewall application, free for personal use (see http://www.zonelabs.com). For free antivirus software, you could try AVG (see http://free.avg.com/).

You will also need software as for any other service such as your Internet Browser and Email Client Software. Commercial and free packages are widely available.

Due to the distance travelled by the signal to/from your computer and the Internet Hub via the satellite, some older satellite technologies exhibited a noticeable lag between communications. Our Satellite Broadband services employ the very latest software and hardware techniques to minimise this lag, including a Performance Enhancing Proxy (PEP) and web acceleration.

In use, when a web page is requested for example, the hardware strips out surplus protocol data and requests, and retrieves the page in fewer larger ‘pieces’, than a typical dialup connection for example, which assembles the page piece by piece. Similarly this technique is ideal for handling large file or email downloads.

You can obviously use email based faxed services like Efax over the service and these work very well. You cannot connect a fax machine to the service.

Located in the SkyPark teleport in Turin (Italy) the platform and hub operations for the Tooway™ network are operated by Eutelsat’s broadband subsidiary Skylogic. Skylogic employs more than 50 people on site and operates 14 hubs using capacity on eight Eutelsat satellites. Dedicated staff will work at the teleport to maintain the highest availability of service.

Although there’s nothing technically to stop you connecting to your companies corporate VPN with Tooway Home there are some things you need to understand.

Check with your IT department at work and find out if your company’s VPN is an IPSec type of VPN. If it is, these often require a static, public IP address to function. Static IP addresses are only provided on our Tooway Pro products.

Unfortunately Tooway doesn’t currently support Vodafone SureSignal™. This is something we hope will change in time and we’re working with Vodafone to facilitate this.