WildBlue Satellite Internet Service Review
The WildBlue service requires the installation of a satellite dish in order to connect to the Internet. This dish measures 26" so it is a little smaller than most satellite television dishes. The dish needs to have a clear view of the southern sky as that is where WildBlue's satellites are located at 22,500 miles above the Earth's equator in geostationary orbit.
The Internet connection comes into your house from the satellite dish via coaxial cable. The cable is connected to a WildBlue modem inside your house. You can then connect the modem directly to your computer or to a router for multiple computers or wireless access.
With this simple set up, you will be able to connect to the Internet with a broadband connection. Contrary to a commonly held misconception, this type of satellite Internet service is a two way connection with information transmitted both to and from your computer via the satellite dish. No phone line is required for WildBlue Internet. So unlike dial up, you will have a free phone line while using WildBlue. The connection is always on so there is no wait to connect to the Internet. There is no technical knowledge that is needed to use this service once it is set up. It is easy as turning your computer on and opening your browser.
The price of WildBlue service varies depending on which plan you choose. The Value Pak plan offers download speeds of 512 kbps and upload speeds of 128 kbps for $49.95 per month. The Select Pak plan offers download speeds of 1.0 Mbps and upload speeds of 200 kbps for $69.95 per month. The Pro Pak plan offers download speeds of 1.5 Mbps and upload speeds of 256 kbps for $79.95 per month. Installation plans are the same for all of the packages and usually run around $200 depending on the specials that are available.
When I tested the download and upload speeds for WildBlue, I found them to be fairly consistent with the advertised speeds. These speeds are not necessarily at the levels offered by other broadband options but they are a huge improvement over the dial up option. If you are using a dial up connection of 28 kbps or 56 kbps, you will be amazed by the speed.
While this is a great option, it is not without a few problems. One problem that I ran into was that the service would go down during periods of heavy rain and snow. This was not a common occurrence but it did lead to me losing my connection for a few hours every so often.
Another issue is the problem of what they refer to as latency. Basically in the process of transmitting the Internet signal between your house, to a satellite 22,000 miles away, down to WildBlue's facility and back, there is a delay of a couple of seconds in information. This is barely noticeable when viewing pages or normal Internet usage but it leads to problems with some applications. This problem makes it extremely difficult to play any real time Internet games like World of Warcraft as you will be running a couple of seconds behind the action. This also makes VOIP (telephone service delivered over the Internet) impossible.
The biggest issue that I personally ran into was what WildBlue describes as the "Fair Access Policy". Since the amount of bandwidth going to and from the satellite is limited, this policy places a limit on the amount of information that a user can download and upload in a 30 day period. The limits are set at 7,500 megabytes upload and 2,300 megabytes download for the Value Pak, 12,000 megabytes upload and 3,000 megabytes download for the Select Pak, and 17,000 megabytes upload and 5,000 megabytes download for the Pro Pak. If you exceed your limit in a thirty day period, your usage speeds will be limited until your thirty day usage falls to 70% below the thirty day usage limit. WildBlue states that typical users that are restricted due to Fair Access Policy will typically be limited to 128 kbps download speeds. When I ran afoul of the Fair Access Policy, I found that my connection became very unreliable with a max connection speed of 96 kbps. This policy will limit the ability of users to take advantage of bandwidth intensive activities like streaming video and large downloads.
I found WildBlue Internet to be an invaluable service when the only alternative that I had in my rural area was dial up Internet service. As soon as canopy broadband service became available in my area, I canceled my WildBlue account and signed up with Premium Choice Broadband. WildBlue can provide an enjoyable Internet experience to those in are
Published by Kirk Leavitt
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3 Comments
Post a Commentmy connection at Hughes was shut off the very FIRST HOUR I had the dish, they claimed I had gone over my bandwidth usuage, this was IMPOSSIBLE! I argued it couldn't be possible since the installer hadn't even been gone for an hour, I had this problem continuously with Hughes, finally I dumped them, but not after paying a heafty fee for shutting off the service before my contract was up, AND they left the dish in my yard, they only took the modem back. I since have began service with wild blue, it's not a perfect service but it's been a breeze compared to Hughes! OH and just FYI, it doesnt matter who your satellite provider is. television or internet satellite, weather will affect reception and transmission of signals, the providers can't control the weather.
I would not recommend wildblue internet service- on cloudy days or stormy days the connect speed is very slow to non existant. customer service is very poor- each person you speak with at their customer service gives you a different story. We have not been able to connect to the internet since feb- they finally came out on two or three visits still could not solve the problem and so we disconnected service in April. I had automatic withdrawls - charges from wildblue for may and june $98 each and they refuse to refund- now saying that was for the service calls in april despite the fact that their data shows we had no internet service because they could not fix the problem.
Wildblue is great when it works. However, we recently bought out our contract with Wildblue because of their terrible customer support.
We had issues with our FAP reading early on in our contract. It said we used twice our monthly allowance. I couldn't imagine that we had used that much. We weren't watching movies and filesharing or anything that would run up our use. I called and they said there records showed we had. I called three times and each time they would not let me speak to a manager, would not provide me with specific numbers or dates, and the buyout cost was the same as our monthly charge. There was nothing we could do but wait for 30 days for it to come off. Fine. My wife and I work from home and it was difficult, but we got through it. I installed a meter on each of our computer and our router to make sure if it happened again I would be able to argue with more conviction.
And for a while everything was normal. We were using a few gigs a month. Then suddenly they