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hey all, I was thinking about getting WildBlue satellite service. Being stuck out here in the sticks and have been dealing with dial up for 3 years has gotten the best of me. Please let me know if you have this service and how it has preformed for you or if you know someone who has it. Thank you for any information you may be able to offer.

I have not delt with them, but I feel your pain.

I was in the same fix for a long time and looked into satellite also.

My thoughts at the time were expensive and no good for gaming.

So I held off and a year or two later the phone company finally got dsl out here.

Here is a page that has some users opinions, hope it helps and good luck.

http://www.rateitall.com/t-790-satellite-internet-access-providers.aspx

 

I do not know anyone that has this service. What you can expect is fast speed using satellite (1.5 mbit according to their site). However, you will experience lag when using applications that are lag sensitive (multiplayer games, VOIP). This is due to the time it takes to send the data from your PC up to the satellite, to the internet, and back to you. If this is the only service you can get then I say go for it.

Thanks for the information, the concern I have is this. I have been doing alot of research on the company and looking for reviews from current and past customers. I am able to find alot of negative reviews from them but not many positive reviews. But you know, bad news travels fast and the customers that have good service has nothing to cry about. So here I am stuck between dial up at 21.6 kbps or the possability of something better. I hope someone out there can help me make a desision. As always everyones input is most welcome. Thanks all

If you want to pay for it, ISDN is always an option.  I know someone who was in the same situation.  No broadband but didn't want to deal with satellite.  So he sort of "forced" his local Telco to put in an ISDN line at his house.  He invoked some sort of tariff rule that requires all Telco operators to provide ISDN service when requested.  The Telco wasn't happy but they complied.

Satellite is only worth it if you do occassional web surfing and don't need to worry about running latency sensitive apps.  Satellite has a dark little secret.  Burried in their terms of service is a clause about bandwidth abuse.  If you are deemed to be a bandwidth abuser, they can arbitrarily throttle down your connection to bring you "in line."  Companies like DirecWay/Hughes will not tell you what this upper limit is.  Also, I don't know if they've addressed this problem, but sharing of the satellite connection is a real hassle as the modem isn't compatible with your run of the mill consumer router.  But things may have changed since I last looked at this.

my friend's experience, FYI,

After switching to Wild Blue because of frustration with poor broadband service, he now longs for the good old days of dialup. After clicking on a link count from between 15 to 30 before it even begins to load. The speed is worse than dial up. After weeks of trying to get through to customer support they say, "If you read the contract, it says UP TO 512k." He often can't get email because the connection times out. According to Wild Blue's own server it says his connection is too slow to connect to dishmail.net. US Mail is faster than Wild Blue.

I work at a company that used to offer WildBlue service.  It's slow, it's expensive to install, and to operate.  There's a bandwidth limitation.  You cannot go over so many GB/month or they will throttle your service back to slower than dialup speeds.

We don't offer the service anymore because we hate it.  We hated selling WildBlue to customers when we knew just how unhappy everyone was with the service.  We had about 200 customers on WildBlue.  None of them liked it.  Don't get it.  It's awful. I wouldn't wish WildBlue on my worst enemy.

iowacowboy,

I live out in the sticks also and got Wildblue about 2 1/2 years ago.  For the first few months the service was not very reliable and I was constantly rebooting the modem or waiting for the internet to connect.  They got the bugs worked out and it has been fine ever since.  I have had 24/7 uptime for at least 2 years.   They have DSL service in the area but its constantly up and down so I'm not switching.   I have noticed a difference in speed when surfing on DSL but Wildblue is adequate for me.  I mainly use the internet for product research, ebay, purchasing (since I do live in the sticks), and banking.  I have better things to do than play games on the internet and certainly don't want my kids doing the same.  We got chores to do, animals to feed and horses to ride.

I used to setup installations for Wildblue; here's my advice.  The service is fairly good, they've really boosted their infrastructure in terms of satellite capacity.  They've come along ways to please their customers.

I'm not sure if they still do, but when I worked for them, they had a monthly bandwidth cap.  So if you like to download, you'll be charged for every meg over the cap.  (not sure what it's set at)

Secondly, don't be in a hurry when it comes to the installation.  Wildblue contracts out all their installs.  They take a long time, require you to be home at weird times of the day, and they will charge you for the stupidest things.  HUGE source of customer dissatisfaction right there (and I was at the brunt of it)

My two cents.