Review by firefly 
UPDATED: 4 days ago
member for 325 days, 30 visits, last login: 1 days ago
 Grantsburg,Johnson,IL
 Contract price not specified.
 "Update: None. Get EVDO if you can."
 "Update: Skyway USA kills Midnight Madness!"
 "Update: Sucks now that they've killed Midnight Madness and throttle you down."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Mail,DNS,News:
Value for money:
|
Update:
Well I have not been here in awhile, but I just received some bad news. I noticed that as of August 15, my Skyway speeds have dropped to about half of what I normally get of the Gold plan. After about a week, I decided to call Skyway and find out what's going on. The Skyway rep. told me that I was near my monthly limit and they had lowered my speed. "What?" I said. I try to always limit my large downloads to Midnight Madness I told her. She said "Midnight Madness?", "oh we don't have Midnight Madness anymore." I was stunned. I told her that no one called or sent me a letter telling me about this change. She said nothing. So I asked when did this new policy change take affect. She said that it started a couple of weeks ago. I then asked "So my 1 year contract ends next month, right?" She said "Yes". I was like huh, ok and hung up.
So for anyone thinking about getting Skyway, you can forget about the free download hours of Midnight Madness 12am-6am zone. They killed it! No free downloading time at all now!
So seeing how Skyway screwed me out of my free download times and didn't even bother to inform me via letter, phone call, I decided to go to the 3gstore.com and order Verizon EVDO service with a wireless router. I can get EVDO in my area now, and even though verizon does not have a free download time either, at least it should be faster, and I don't have to have a dish or use the land line to use EVDO. Plus I could do limited Xbox Live, something that you can't do with Skyway. Since I'll have to watch my usage with either Skyway or Verizon, I would rather have Verizon, since I could eliminate the dish, and free up the land line and should get faster speeds plus faster uploading and no throttling going towards your 5GB limit (Skyway throttles your speed down as you approach 5GB). Just have to make sure not to cross the 5GB limit per month. Bye bye Skyway, you destroyed the only real benefit "Midnight Madness" you had and it will cost you.
Ignore my old review below!
I'm on my 4th week of Skyway service, but the first 3 weeks were a little rough. I won't bore you will all the little details, so here's a quick summary of my first 3 weeks....During this time, my download speeds would randomly go crazy. The download speeds would vary wildly up and down, anywhere from 58Kbps to 750Kbps( I was on the 768Kbps $59.95 Gold plan). So I would call and bitch to tech support and they would try to help, resetting my account, checking everything on their end, etc. After numerous calls, etc. to make a long story short it turned out that, in my opinion, the new SW11 modem's firmware is flaky. I believe that if this modem has power but is not connected to the Skyway service at the moment, then after awhile and randomly, it will develop a satellite sync problem. But if you unplug the power to the sat. modem for 2 minutes or just plug and unplug after each use, then it causes the modem to reboot and re-sync properly to the satellite and seems to eliminate the crazy speed issues I was having. Has anyone else with the new SW11 satellite modem experienced this issue? Anyway, now that it seems like I've been able to eliminate the speed issue, using the sat. modem reboot/re-sync method above, all seems to be good now. Maybe a future firmware update will fix the modem weirdness.
The people at Skyway are friendly and helpful. They were patient with me about the speed issues I was having as well. You usually get to talk to customer service in just a few minutes, and they're American, so no language barrier. I've got the 768Kbps Gold service $59.95 and I think it's great. You have no usage bucket to refill like Hughesnet and WildBlue have. You're monthly limit is around 2.5GB+, but don't let that fool you. As you use the system during the month, your speed will slowly be reduced, but the minimum speed on the Gold account is 128Kbps even after the 2.5GB usage. After 2.5GB you can still use the system as normal, and continue downloading, it's just that your download speed will be the maximum of 128Kbps. On your next billing date, your speed will be returned to your normal max speed for your account. But don't forget about the Midnight Madness zone. What's Midnight Madness, you ask. Well, between 12:00am to 6:00am your local time, you can download as much as you want without it applying to your monthly limit. That's 3 more hours of free time than Hughesnet gives you, and WildBlue doesn't give you any free time. So you could download gigabytes of data all month. Just use the hours before Midnight Madness for your usual browsing and save all your major downloads for the free 6 hour time zone at night. Awesome! No such thing as the silly Hughesnet 24hr. FAP penalty either. Some other reviewer said that Skyway is only for small downloads, but that just isn't true at all. The modem is a stand-alone model, with no software that needs to be installed on the PC. Windows, Linux, Mac, and even PS3 and the Wii seem to work with it, if you're using a wireless router with it. I haven't been able to get the Xbox360 to work with it yet, because it keeps failing the connection tests.
This is a one-way satellite internet system, so if you don't upload a lot, and really want a faster download pipe, then Skyway works great. Just beware of possible modem weirdness, and follow my technique above until they issue a new firmware release. Also, if for some reason the satellite connection is down, simply set to use the dial-up only feature, and use the dial-up service until the satellite is back up. This is a very nice backup feature that two-way satellite systems don't have.
You can self-install this system too. Which is great, since I was in-charge of installing it, instead of a stranger (with questionable experience) crawling all over the house. If you can install a Dish Network or Directv dish, you can install this thing. Hardware costs $149.95 with a $50.00 rebate handed out over 5 months in $10 credits on your monthly bills. So hardware ends up costing $99.95, a lot cheaper than the $300 bucks from Hughesnet or WildBlue. The install kit has everything you need except for a nice coaxial wall plate and then a coaxial cable to go from the wall plate to the modem. I would recommend buying a 3Ghz coaxial wall plate and a 3Ghz, solid copper center conductor, coaxial cable for the rest of the run from the wall plate to the sat. modem. The install kit comes with 2 coaxial cables, one 25ft., and one 75ft. The cables are 2.5Ghz rated, with compression connectors on the ends, with sold copper center conductors. Real nice cables for a self-install kit. I was surprised. Kit also has a electronic satellite finder with green led and earphone, silicon sealant, wire tamers, 2.5Ghz grounding block, etc. Everything you need, except I purchased a wall plate and addition cable just to dress out the installation. Didn't want a bare coaxial cable just hanging out of the wall. Anyway, took a few hours to install, so you might want to set aside a full day, just in case. Use your web browser, like Firefox, to go the the sat. modem's home screen, input your username, password, set dial-up numbers, save the info. to the modem. Hit connect button, modem dials out (wait for the dial-up connection to complete) and then you're golden for browsing, downloading, etc. The modem connection is the upload feed and the satellite is the download feed. Works great. Browsing is surprising very snappy as well.
It blows my old dial-up only connection out of the water. Just to recap, I live in the rural US, no DSL, no Cable, no EVDO, no WISP's, just dial-up or satellite. After reading enough horror stories about Hughesnet and WildBlue, I decided to go for a one-way satellite service. I'm very glad I went with Skyway USA despite having to work out the initial modem weirdness. If the service continues to be this good then I can highly recommend Skyway to anyone looking for an alternative to dial-up. Oh, also, if you have a Skyway account and a friend of yours decides to get the service. Have your friend tell Skyway your username and that you recommended the Skyway service to them, then Skyway will give you a month of free internet access. You can do this with as many of your friends as you would like, so you would have the potential to earn several months of free access by being a referrer.
I hope this update review helps anyone looking for a satellite internet service.
Followup comments:  
Wishing for FiOS
@aol.com | Considering SkyWay I'm considering this service too because of the low low price and it's good to know that they've got they're act together (check out the old reviews) Thanks for the heads up on Midnight Madness btw. | |
| Bcdee
join:2007-10-14
Palm Springs, CA
| "The download speeds would vary wildly up and down" I just read your post, very informative. I just got up and connected yesterday. Install was a breeze for me. However, today I have experienced d/load times from 20 seconds for a heavy graphics website, to TWENTY-ONE MINUTES to access a mostly text forum like this one.
First thing this morning, when I first logged on, almost nothing would load. then about an hour later, everything loaded fast. I'm new to b'band, so I didn't know if this is normal, but if it is, think I'll take my old reliable $4.95/mo. unlimited usage dial-up back thank you. In fact, there were times today when I just had to unplug the lan and go back to dial-up. I'm on the basic 29.95 plan, and when it's working, toast.com reports throughput from
235 to over 300. (that is AFTER the 2-5 minutes it can take for Toast.com to come up in the first place) FRUSTRATING!!! | |
|  | firefly
join:2007-10-09
Grantsburg, IL
 ·SkyWay
| Re: "The download speeds would vary wildly up and down" I believe your plan is the 256Kbps plan. I have found that IMHO the toast.net speed test is unreliable. I use testmy.net and choose the 1496kB download test for measuring speed. Anyway, I have the 768Kbps plan and I always run 3 speed tests in a row to determine my speed range. I noticed that my first speed test will usually be around 250-400Kbps, second test will be 500-650Kbps and third test will be 650-750Kbps depending on network conditions. So my usual browsing is around the 250-400Kbps range because browsing doesn't require your full speed potential. But if I decide to download say a 200MB video file, my speed will start off at around 400Kbps and reach almost 750-768Kbps in about 5-10 seconds after starting the download and depending on how fast the download site will furnish the file to me. I believe this is how Skyway traffic shapes their network, depending on what your doing. So I don't browse at my full speed of 768Kbps since I don't need all of that for browsing, but if I'm downloading a large file then the network will sense this and open up my full connection speed of 768Kbps. You're really paying for a connection "up to 768Kps" or in your case "up to 256Kbps".
I would guess that on your "up to 256Kbps" connection, your browsing speed will be around regular dial-up speed, but if you try to download a large file, then it will ramp-up your speed to around 256Kbps. If I'm not mistaken, 256Kbps, is considered barely broadband. Personally, if I were you, I would upgrade your plan to the 768Kbps service, and then you would see a real difference.
The wild up and down download speeds I experienced seems to be caused by flaky modem firmware. Unplugging the sat. modem for 2 minutes usually fixes it right away, and reboots, and resyncs the modem to the satellite. Ever since I started unplugging and plugging back in the electrical cord after I use the service, the wild up and down speeds have been corrected. Maybe a future firmware update will fix this, but taking a couple of minutes to unplug/plug modem is a easy fix, so I'm happy.
I would recommend not getting anything less than the 768Kbps plan if you want a good Skyway experience IMHO.
--
Ron Paul 2008 For President
www.ronpaul2008.com | |
| | | firefly
join:2007-10-09
Grantsburg, IL
·SkyWay
| Re: "The download speeds would vary wildly up and down" Oh and one more thing, just to give an example of that wild up and down download thing I used to have....
On the third day of Skyway service, I noticed very slow browsing speed, so I ran 3 speed tests, first was 58Kbps, second was 62Kbps and third was 90Kbps and that was on the 768Kbps I was paying for. Another example would be first test 92Kbps, second 650Kbps, third 300Kbps. This is what I would refer to as my wild up and down speeds.
Now I use the unplug/plug in power cord trick and I now have the speeds I mentioned in my above post, which are normal speeds for my 768Kbps plan. So what I do is, when I go to use the Skyway service, I plug in the Skyway modem power cord, bootup the PC, connect and surf for hours, download stuff, etc. When I'm done, I shutdown PC, and unplug the Skyway power cord until next use. I use a Linksys wireless router so I can unplug and plug the Skyway power cord without having to reboot the PC as well. Doing this procedure has fixed the wild up and down speed problem. Just a few bugs in that modem firmware. 
Oh, and FYI, I have WPA encryption etc., on the wireless router so nobody is leeching off my connection, so that was not what was causing the weird speeds before.
--
Ron Paul 2008 For President
www.ronpaul2008.com | |
| | Bcdee
join:2007-10-14
Palm Springs, CA
| Well Firefly, I'm going to try your "fix" if/when it happens again. So far this morning (unlike yesterday morning) everything is loading just fine.
I think my problem is a bit different than what you described, in that the extraordinary time it can take to access a page is that it will just kind of hang for what seems like an eternity just trying to access the page. Once it locks onto a page, the loading is quite good to super fast. This is why I can get good throughput rates on a speed test even after it took 10 minutes for it to start that page. Does this make sense?
As for upgrading to a faster plan, hey! If I could afford that I would have had Wild Blue or Hughes Net years ago.
As it is, this plan is good for "po' folk" like me who can only cost justify an additional 16 bucks/mo. to have a much faster connection. $16./mo because I can dump the $5/mo. dial up isp and dump the $9/mo Callwave. (I have a 2nd land line for catching calls) Bottom line is if I can eliminate the long wait that happens sometimes, I'm very happy with 250-350kbps vs 45-50kbps on dial-up.
| |
| | | firefly
join:2007-10-09
Grantsburg, IL
·SkyWay
| Re: "The download speeds would vary wildly up and down" I understand Bcdee. When I did have the weird up and down speed problem, sites would take forever to load up too. After doing the unplug/plug trick, it would usually fix it. Only 2 times so far, the initial unplug/plug trick didn't work, so I would do it a second time and then it corrected the problem. I think the sat. modem just loses it sync with the satellite randomly so you would experience slow page loads and wild speeds. That's what happened to me. But since I now know that unplug/plugging the modem, reboots and resyncs the connection, this seems to fix the problem. That's why I now have got into the habit of unplug/plug the modem after every use and it works great.
Let me know how it goes.
--
Ron Paul 2008 For President
www.ronpaul2008.com | |
| | | | Bcdee
join:2007-10-14
Palm Springs, CA
| Re: "The download speeds would vary wildly up and down" So far so good today. No hanging pages. I'm thinking about a continuous speed monitor. I like BBMonitor, but it's kind of pricy for me at 30 bucks.
The only thing I did different today from yesterday is I changed the dial-up phone number to one I felt was maybe not as busy. Don't know if that has had anything to do with it or not, since I'm not very "techie"
Jo | |
| | | | | patrick1853
join:2007-04-18
Flintville, TN | Re: "The download speeds would vary wildly up and down" I would be interested in hearing if you are happy with Skyway's service. I am contemplating signing up with them and wouldn't mind hearing your thoughts. | |
| | | | | | Bcdee
join:2007-10-14
Palm Springs, CA
| Re: "The download speeds would vary wildly up and down" Hi Patrick,
It's a good deal if you're only interested in writing a few emails/day and visiting a couple of websites. After that you have reached your daily allotment before they cut you back to dial-up speeds. I can do that in less than half hour a day, so the rest of the day I might as well have dial-up.
I was told yesterday that the bronze pack gives you 200mb/mo.
and the other two more expensive, your allotment for the month is 500mb. Math it out, either one is so stingy as to not be realistic. Thats what I think so far. | |
| | | | | | | patrick1853
join:2007-04-18
Flintville, TN | Re: "The download speeds would vary wildly up and down" Wow, 200mb/month makes that pretty much useless to me. Are those numbers correct? What would be the point of even having the service with low of a cap? | |
| | Bcdee
join:2007-10-14
Palm Springs, CA
| Well, that is what I was told. If you find out something different, let me know.
This was my first "broadband" experience, and I had no idea that there was any difference between getting it from Verizon, Cable, or Satellite. I just thought broadband is broadband is broadband, and you pay a different price for various d/l speeds. What a rude awakening when after my 2nd day day I became aquainted with those three little letters FUP that ruin everything. If you are new like me, before you order satellite service, you might want to familiarize yourself with the company's FUP "Fair" Use Policy. and make sure you can live with it before signing on the dotted line.
Like you said, What's the point? You can d/load 5-15mb/day with dial-up in no time at all. Just put a meter on your activity like I've done and then visit a few web sites and see. And FORGET video clips, the mere mention of that word video sends them in a tailspin, suggesting that you stay up all night to take advantage of their "midnight madness" where you can d/l to your hearts content. Sorry, but I work real hard to stay ASLEEP after midnight.
| |
| | | patrick1853
join:2007-04-18
Flintville, TN
| Re: "The download speeds would vary wildly up and down" I gave Skyway a call today to ask about their download threshholds.
According to the person I spoke with, the monthly limit is actually 1Gb. The woman originally told me 200mb, but was corrected by someone in the background. The catch to that is, once you have used 200mb, you drop to 75% of your speed. The speed incrementally drops off by 25% from there.
I'm pretty sure I could run through the 1Gb pretty quick, so I guess I will stick to my $4.95 dial-up for now. | |
| | | | firefly
join:2007-10-09
Grantsburg, IL
·SkyWay
| Re: "The download speeds would vary wildly up and down" Patrick, the person you talked to did not explain all of the service plans to you correctly. The 1GB limit only applies to the very basic Bronze service of 256Kbps for $29.95. So yeah if you buy the lowest service plan they offer, you won't get that much, but even with the Bronze plan you still get the Midnight Madness free time which doesn't apply to your monthly limit. So with Midnight Madness you could easily pass the 1GB barrier.
Here is a copy of part the RUP (reasonable user policy) that Skyway emailed me:
Bronze - 29.95 approx. 256kbps
Silver - 49.95 approx. 512kbps
Gold - 59.95 approx 756kbps
Platinum - 79.95 approx 1.5 Meg
All Speeds are approximate due to age of computer, memory amount (Control/Alt/Delete, then Performance Tab), condition of phone lines and other factors.
You can also go to support.skywayusa.com to view Skyway's Reasonable Use Policy, which is actually used by all satellite internet providers.
Bronze RUP Policy
100% 200MB 256K
75% 400MB 192K
50% 600MB 128K
25% 800MB 64K
MINIMUM 1000MB+ 64K
Silver RUP Policy
100% 500MB 512K
75% 1000MB 384K
50% 1500MB 256K
25% 2500MB 128K
MINIMUM 3000MB+ 128K
Gold RUP Policy
100% 500MB 768K
75% 1000MB 576K
50% 1500MB 384K
25% 2500MB 192K
MINIMUM 3000MB+ 128K
Platinum RUP Policy
100% 1000MB 1.5M
75% 2000MB 1.12M
50% 3000MB 768K
25% 4000MB 384K
MINIMUM 5000MB+ 256K
We also have a new program called "Midnight Madness"; this offers customers free bandwidth time, in their allotted time zone, meaning, anything downloaded during those hours, are not counted against your usage.
So on the Bronze plan you will have access to your full speed of 256Kbps down until you've downloaded 200MB then your speed will be reduced to 192Kbps until you've downloaded 400MB then your speed will be reduced to 128Kbps, etc. But this is for the usage being counted without applying the Midnight Madness free time. So if you saved all of your big downloads for Midnight Madness free time then that usage doesn't apply to your monthly service plan limit. Also that 1GB limit only applies to the lowest service plan of the Bronze package.
I have the Gold plan of 768Kbps for $59.95 so I get 2.5GB per-month before my speed is reduced to 128Kbps. But don't forget about the Midnight Madness free time, so actually I could download many gigabytes a month without it affecting my 2.5GB monthly limit. Last night I downloaded a 700MB Ubuntu 7.10 Linux install cd image during Midnight Madness free time and that download did not go against my monthly limit, nor did it reduce my speed either. The download went fast and great. You just have to work the system according the your service plan. I personally recommend getting at least the Gold plan of 768Kbps if you can swing the payment, but that's just my opinion.
Hope this helps clear up any confusion about the several different service plans Skyway offers.
--
Ron Paul 2008 For President
www.ronpaul2008.com | |
| | | | | firefly
join:2007-10-09
Grantsburg, IL
·SkyWay
| Re: "The download speeds would vary wildly up and down" Also, if you don't want to stay up all night downloading stuff just install a download manager software to schedule downloads while you sleep. Or stay up and do your downloads at night on the weekends if you don't have to work.
I use Linux most of the time, so I use "Downloader for X" on it. But I've used LeechGet on my Windows XP machine and liked it. I've also heard Flashget is good on Windows as well. Just go to softpedia.com or download.com and find yourself a good download manager to schedule downloads.
--
Ron Paul 2008 For President
www.ronpaul2008.com | |
|
u2builder
@1dial.com
| Skyway Hi Firefly,
Is Skyway still working well for you? Do you still have to unplug the modem after each use? Is that something they can fix. I ordered Skyway last week. I think that Wild Blue gives you more RUP but I just couldn't face the idea of a $200 service call to fix an LNB. Also, a lot of people expressed what seem like incredible anger toward these two companies.
Any hints about Skyway appreciated> Thanks, Joe | |
| | firefly
join:2007-10-09
Grantsburg, IL
·SkyWay
|  Re: Skyway
Yes, everything seems to be going great. I've had it since mid-September, and I've noticed that sometimes I will get burst rates near 1Mbps for several minutes. I'm still on the Gold plan of 768Kbps and I really like it alot. Just save all your major downloads for Midnight Madness and you should be fine. Watching YouTube videos is easy too. Skyway is much, much better than my old dial-up connection. Yes, I still do the unplug/plug in, just the power cord on the sat. modem since I'm in the routine of doing it without thinking about it. It takes just a few seconds before and after each internet session. I haven't tried just leaving it plugged in to the power all the time but I guess I could just to see if the modem weirdness is still there. Using my method above has eliminated the speed issues I had when I started out. I just thought it was a modem firmware issue and resetting the modem by unplugging/plugging the power cord fixed it, so I just stuck to doing that all the time.
I get my Gold plans speed as advertised and personally, I very happy especially coming from living in the sticks with no other broadband type of service available.
Hope you like your Skyway as well. What plan are you going to get?
I believe Skyway's RUP is better than Wild Blue's because Wild Blue doesn't have a free download time like Skyway's Midnight Madness. And Wild Blue's RUP requires you to really slow down your data requests in order to refill a data bucket. Skyway has no bucket to refill, if over the month your download speed is reduced based on your useage, then on your next billing date your speed will be returned to full speed. Wild Blue does not do this.
I chose Skyway because of all the horror stories I read about Wild Blue and Hughesnet. Plus I wanted a backup connection, like that of the dial-up part of Skyway's service just in case something happened with the satellite link.
--
Ron Paul 2008 For President
www.ronpaul2008.com | |
|
u2builder
@1dial.com
| Hi Firefly,
Glad you are still happy with the service. I have ordered the Silver plan, at least for now. I also was scared by all the Hughes and Wild Blue stories; some sounded like nightmares that reminded me or hours I spent on the phone trying to talk to people at Dell many years ago, just so frustrating. Plus, I could not deal with the thought of a $250 service call to replace an LNB after warrantee, apparently a real possibility. Real people actually answer the phone at Skyway what has been nice so far. My only hope is that they have sufficient resources to stay in business and contine to provide good service since they are obviously a small start up company. Thanks for your comments. | |
| Rob2647
join:2008-08-12
Rochester, MI
 ·Comcast
 ·Vonage
| My father had Hughes Net, he was hitting the FAP at least once a week. He hated calling their scripted, outsourced indian customer service and tech support. He dumped it for Sprint Mobile Broadband before Sprint implemented the 5GB cap. I told him about Millenicom and that they have not cap. But wireless is a much better choice over Sat. any day. | |
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