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Review by (hidden by request)
(review was emailed from domain att.net)
lodged 84 days ago
 Moselle,Jones,MS
 Contract price not specified.  "Much better that Hughes Net in the rural part my mom lives in. So glad Wild Blue/Exede got to this area of Mississippi."
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My Mom had HN because nothing else was available in this rural part of south Mississippi. After months of over charging and slow internet, she finally had enough and got rid of internet all together. Now, she has Excede/Wild Blue and I have to say, it is about as fast and reliable as my own att.net. We are very happy with this service. Thanks Excede.
Comments:
 mbslk32
join:2013-02-13
San Andreas, CA | This is a Freaking LIE about WILDBLUE/EXEDE Wildblue/ EXEDE is one of the worst company that should not exist. If we only have a way to get another internet in our rural area, I will get rid of this service. Either will sell my property to get rid of this service or will get rid of Wildblue itself. USELESS product and very deceiving internet service. | |
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 Review by jsme304 
member for 3.4 years, 497 visits, last login: 33 days ago
updated 201 days ago
- Lampasas,Lampasas,TX
- Contract price not specified.
- "Exede Recovery Plan very stable"
 "no problem w/ 3GB Down program" "a lot more usable than Sprint 3G wireless"
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Been on Exede Commercial Recovery Plan @ 69.95 for 27GB a month since mid May '12... only issues we had was getting setup w/ the plan.. after a month of issues with Exede customer assistance, On getting the correct plan. everything from installation to operation has been smooth since. Exede Customer Assistance has matured in the last couple of months into a good working relationship for us. the system is a whole lot more stable than when we were on 3G. Have no issues with using Exede with gaming. World of Warcraft play very good on Exede at 3GB down.
Every one had said in the past, DONOT go to Satellite... last resort. I am Glad that
we got Exede, more dependable than 3g wireless.
Recommend Exede, Recovery Plan Speeds.
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Review by bobmepp
member for 280 days, 2 visits, last login: 210 days ago
updated 210 days ago
- Hastings,Barry,MI
- Contract price not specified.
- "Speeds so far are very fast"
- "The pings are there but not as slow as I expected"
- "Great service for my rural area where there are no alternatives"
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I had been suffering for two years with deteriorating mobile "broadband" hotspot service via a Sprint smart phone. Speeds were dropping, often to no better than dialup, and the straw that broke the camel's back was a newly imposed hot spot data limit of 5 gigs per month, when we had been averaging 8 gigs per month. Overages were to cost $50 per gig. Not workable, do I dumped it.
About the same time, I received a mailer for the new exede satellite being offered by Wild Blue. I guess the new name of the company is exede, although my dish has "Wild Blue" on it. I ordered the 25 gig per month service at $130 because I need some capacity overhead for my photo editing and web design businesses. I called a Wild Blue dealer in Battle Creek, Michigan, and arranged installation through them. This whole process went very smoothly, with the installer arriving on schedule and spending about a half hour with me discussing alternatives for the dish location, and doing a good job of explaining maximum wire runs allowable, etc. He really knew his stuff, and did an excellent install, with a proper ground connection and careful wire routing in the house. I absolutely cannot fault the install process in any way. It was a nice clear day, so he got full signal strength promptly, he demonstrated the connection speed with some HD video, and he was on his way.
Over the past three weeks I have been averaging 6 to 8 mbps down and 1.5 to 3 mbps up. Very little speed differences during prime time hours. Peak speeds have measured over 12 mbps. I did a download of a 150 meg video card driver in less than 5 minutes. Have done a download of a full album from Itunes and just a few minutes. Pings, as expected, have been about 850ms. These hurt script laden page loads where there are multiple calls back to the server during the load. Still, most web pages are there in 5 seconds or less. There have been two brief outages. I called the support line during one, and the person who answered spent 20 minutes with me, providing very useful information when I told him I was a new customer. The second outage was weather related, and was over in about 1/2 hour. I really can't fault anything about this service. If they don't overload the beam with too many users, this promises to be a great solution for me.
Update 9-9-2012: Things are continuing to go very well. I haven't calculated precisely, but my uptime has been excellent. Total outage time so far due to weather: about 6 hours in 60 days. No single outage has been more than 2 hours. Speeds are continuing to average 6 to 8 mbps down and 1 to 2 mbps up. I've measured a peak download speed of 13 mbps. I'm having the heaviest month of usage so far, but still have not used half of my 25 gigs, and this after downloading most of the large adobe apps. I am not foolish enough to think that streaming movies is a viable plan with satellite internet. Overall, I would give the same scores as my initial review.
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Review by Sherri
member for 1.7 years, 2 visits, last login: 215 days ago
updated 215 days ago
- Kremmling,Grand,CO
- Contract price not specified.
- "Way better than dial-up!"
- "Customer service is horrible"
- "It's wonderful compared to dial-up!"
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The communication between the parent company and local installation crews really needs improving. My husband took a morning off to meet the installer. He called 30 minutes before the installation window ended only to be told that the equipment the installer received for us was damaged, and the installation had to be postponed for two days. Funny WE had to call THEM to find this out! Not happy about customer service communication!
Technician arrived within the window specified, and tech was not that friendly (didn't smile much) but was very knowledgable. He spent with us what time was necessary to get the service installed correctly. First modem didn't work, second one did and we were good to go.
Installation occurred today and I'm extremely happy! Our previous dial-up connection was 24K which was actually 18K according to some internet connection measurement sites (tinyurl-dot-com).
I have read all of the negative reviews for WB and have to say at this point YOU NEED TO GIVE THEM A CHANCE. It is NOT the same as DSL, and I suspect that the negative reviews WB is getting is because people are expecting DSL quality service with WB, but you won't get that! Keep in mind that satellite internet is a quality of service that lies between dial-up and DSL. Not close to DSL but WAY BETTER than dial up! Give them a chance!!!
I do agree that it's way more expensive than DSL, but we were lucky to get the service for $40 a month under ARRA (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) for 1MPS service (the middle plan regularly $69.95) but for what we are paying, it is darn well worth it! I will update my review after we've had it for a while.........
UPDATE 9/4/12: We've had the service for a little over a year. We've been very happy with our connection, works very well for my on-line retail business an the connection is great even during blizzards. We've never come close to the data cap, but we don't stream movies because of the latency issue.
I am VERY unhappy right now. Their customer service STINKS! We've been without service for 15 days now - our modem went out. Someone was supposed to call us with an appointment within 24 hours of our initial call, and no one did. When I called back the next day, I was told that it could be 2 weeks before our service was restored. WHAT?! That second customer service rep scheduled an appointment for today, between 12p-5p. I took a day off from work to meet the technician. Guess what......no one came! I called them again, and got an apology from a rep and a new appointment for next Monday. By that time, we will have been without service for 3 weeks. They better pro-rate our next bill or I will be steaming! What kind of company operates this way?! All I can say is we are at their mercy because of where we live. We have no choice. Why they can't just mail us a new modem is beyond me. All we have to do is disconnect the old one and connect the new one. We asked, but they don't want to do it that way.
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| | WB/HughesNet Satellite is a good deal under the RAF deal. You cannot beat a free install and 1MB but not under RAF..WB and HughesNet are expensive and not worth it. I used to work for a Hughsnet dealer and for the life of me could not figure out why someone on dialup would not sign up for the HughesNet RAF if it was avail. Half of these people did not even have $40 on their credit card to get started. Still only about 1 in 10 callers qualified for it and it still is not as good as DSL or cable but yes, better than dial up. People are really DUMB not to take advantage of this. | |
| | | | Re: WB/HughesNet Ha!
HN gives you 200MB per day on the lowest package. With Dual Dial up 102Kbps I can download 864MB in a 24 hour time frame. Not only that, I also get ping times in the 200ms range rather than 800-2000+.
Even with regular single line dial up (50k) I could download 432MB in a 24 hour period. And if I had the sucky dialup like yall (28k) it's still a good 210MB in a 24 hour period.
So...HN is better than dialup?! HOW?! You can download more data per day, much better response times with dialup - and it's cheaper. Free in many cases nowadays. HN is for fools!
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I have had Direcway/Hughes for years. I've had trouble with them some until the latest system DW7000. It is blazing fast 1 to 1.5 kbps down most of the time - Kath159 | |
| | | | I am in a area with no cable, no dsl (28K phone lines) but yet we dont qualify for the FAF? so who is it actually meant to help? Currently I am using Verizon MiFi and nothing can be worse than that! | |
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Review by (hidden by request)
(review was emailed from domain yahoo.com)
lodged 248 days ago
- Mechanicsville,Hanover,VA
- Contract price not specified.
- "Thank you for internet service I could afford in an area where NOTHING else worked."
- "Service becoming unreliable and slowing. Now I have this junk to get"
- "Verizon has come to the woods!"
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I didn't want to pay for the new dish ( ugly looking in front of house anyway) ,wait for the installer, etc. They may give you a break on the service,
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Review by shortround
member for 1.4 years, 0 visits, last login: 1.4 years ago
updated 1.4 years ago
- Beloit,Rock,WI
- $80 per month
- (24 month contract)
- "Much faster then my dial up, good service if there is a problem"
- "Much slower then cable would be but cable is not available"
- "Best deal I can get at the moment for the money"
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I have had Wildblue now for almost four years. For the most part I am happy
with it. There have been times of slow downs and occasionally no service
but that doesn't happen very often and usually doesn't last long either.
I have internet by satellite because there is NO cable out where I live.
The companies don't want to run cables to where there might only be two or
three homes hooked up. So for me it is either wildblue or hughsenet.
My dial up never runs faster then 24Kb/sec. Wildblue runs at about 1-1.5 MB/sec.
I checked out hughesnet about six months ago to make sure I was getting the best deal for my money and it was going to cost me the same monthly fee WITH a new 2 year contract so why switch?
Hughes rates the download bandwidth differently so it was a bit confusing,
bare with me. IF I have it correctly, @ 350 MB per 24 hour period as your
limit, that adds up to a 30 day limit of 10500 MB per month. For the same
$80 per month Wildblue allows me 17000 MB with no 24 hour limit. That seems
like a better deal to me.
For $110 per month hughes will allow you 2.0 MB per second and 13500 MB per month. That is a bit faster then wildblue download speed but still short of the maximum bandwidth with wildblue and at $30 per month more money.
At least until some company runs truly high speed cable out here I must
stay with Wildblue. When my grandkids come to visit I see my monthly
allowance approach the bandwidth limit occasionally. If I was with
Hughesnet it would be turned off on many occasions when Wildblue is still
running.
If my grandkids want to download videos, I tell them to take their netbooks
to McDonalds and do it there on somebody else' penny.
I do a lot of research via the net and I usually have 40-50% of my
bandwidth allowance available.
Watching youtube videos will sometimes put me up to 80% of my allowance but
with one day of inactivity it will drop to 65% so it is not a major
inconvenience.
For the time being, wildblue is the best solution for me. But with speed of
of only 1.5M and 17000MB of limit per month cable would be a major improvement.
Sigh, maybe someday high speed cable will make out here to the boondocks. At least for now I have peace and quiet to go with my slow internet.
Comments:
mogamer
join:2011-04-20
Royal Oak, MI | Free fap time Hughesnet does have a fap-free period where you have unlimited downloads. If your willing to stay up or schedule downloads during this time, you can easily double or triple your download allowance. If I had the mis-fortune to only have satellite as my internet option, I would most likely choose Hughesnet. Of course the new Viasat satellite may change the rules of the game. | |
| | | | Re: Free fap time VIASAT-1 doesn't service the whole country. Leaked info suggests 12 Meg down, 3 up, but keeping the same FAP allowance. Non Viasat-1 areas will probably be half the speed at most, but the same price. Leaked info so take it with a grain of salt, but it's consistent in a couple credible places. | |
| | | mogamer
join:2011-04-20
Royal Oak, MI | Re: Free fap time said by anonymity :VIASAT-1 doesn't service the whole country. Leaked info suggests 12 Meg down, 3 up, but keeping the same FAP allowance. Non Viasat-1 areas will probably be half the speed at most, but the same price. Leaked info so take it with a grain of salt, but it's consistent in a couple credible places.
So, you don't think that Wild Blue will be selling roughly the same ViaSat-1 packages that xplornet has been advertising on their site? Some of those caps (business accounts) are extremely high for sat service. Even the residential service offers much higher caps than what's currently being offered. | |
| | | | | | Re: Free fap time A WB installer on the official WB forum claiming to have gone to a WB meeting gave that info, and the posts were shortly deleted.
Grain of salt, like I said, I just wouldn't hold my breath for more until some real numbers come out. | |
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Review by whysoslow
member for 2.2 years, 23 visits, last login: 330 days ago
lodged 2.2 years ago
- Lapeer,Lapeer,MI
- Contract price not specified.
- "Much Better Than Dialup"
- "Speeds during Peek Times"
- "If you have nothing else other than Dial Up"
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In a rual area with only dial up, No DSL, Cable or good cell tower around. Had service over 5 years now and all in all happy, Looking forward to the new satellite launch this summer. Hope to see improvement. (Much better than the 24.4kbps dial up i had)
But make sure to get a good installer and watch him or her.....
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Review by crktcrkt
member for 3 years, 29 visits, last login: 2.6 years ago
updated 2.8 years ago
- Guthrie,Logan,OK
- Contract price not specified.
- "Ordering was a snap and the price was right."
- "It is what it is."
- "I've wasted a lot of money trying alternatives, but this is the best we can get."
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I switched from dial up to Cricket. I had absolutely no problems with Cricket other than our area is their 1x data, which runs in the neighborhood of isdn. For the same amount of money I was spending, I decided to go back to satellite. I'll admit I was gun shy after having Hughes, but decided to give WildBlue a try. Ordering was a snap. I haven't gotten my first bill yet so I may scream a little there, but the installation coordination and ordering process went flawlessly. Of course, I had to try it out being as it's new too. Speeds are decent on the select plan. I downloaded all of the software I've been needing for some time without incident. I'm also still getting accustomed to how the web portal works, which seems similar, but a little different than Hughes. I did have to call tech support to help me with my computer configuration. That wasn't their fault, but was something that needed to be done. I was surprised when they answered the phone and I didn't have to get my three foreign language dictionary out to try to talk to them. They were right here in the states.
So far, I'm satisfied. Ask me again in a month or two and we'll see if I made the right choice once the new wears off the modem.
UPDATE: A little over two weeks into the service
We received our first bill. I dreaded the experience after reading how many people had mistakes in theirs. Ours was correct to the penny. The service has also done well. We haven't had any phantom data loss or speed issues. We do check our bandwidth usage daily to see how we're faring on the 17 gig allotment and it seems that we're doing fine and haven't had to change many of our surfing habits. In fact, we should have a bit of a buffer between us and our FAP limit by the months end, which should allow us to use our service as we need without any further issues.
I'm happy with the service. Satellite is what satellite is. We can't change that fact. We also can't change the fact that the telco has written us off for broadband and anything else that would benefit us so we're happy to have WildBlue.
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Review by larry1934
(review was emailed in)
lodged 2.9 years ago
- Augusta,Butler,KS
- Contract price not specified.
- "Usually redily available and reliable"
- "I'm keeping WildBlue"
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I also had very slow connectivity May 6 PM and was finally able to connect to WildBlue forum. I found out there I was not alone. I learned of the service to test my download speed via testmy.net which told me what I already knew. This AM (May 7) connectivity again was very slow. I rebooted my satellite modem and now all is back to normal. The last testmy.net check showed I now had over 4 X the speed I had yesterday.
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Review by W5JGV
member for 12.1 years, 4230 visits, last login: 1 days ago
updated 3.3 years ago
- Natchitoches,Natchitoches,LA
- Contract price not specified.
- "Fast downloads, fair upload, 95+% uptime. (Not bad for satellite.)"
- "Poor latency, uneven email server (I don't use it, so no problem.)"
- "It works for me and the way I use the internet. Satisfied customer."
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We're enjoying backwoods living a few miles from Natchitoches, Lousiana, with no cable or DSL available, and only 21k dialup at best. Our requirements are multiple computer internet usage, email, web browsing, FTP for maintaining a half-dozen web sites, uploading my own copyrighted video, photos and data files.
I researched the various satellite internet offerings, and WildBlue appeared to be about the best for me. My wife and I opted for the PRO Pack. I read the TOS and fine print, and talked at length with the installation company. They informed me of all the changes WildBlue was making, so I was aware of what and what not to expect from the service. My local dealer is Totally Unwired of Natchitoches (DSI).
The installation was accomplished on the appointed date, in less than two hours, by a competent technician. I helped him with the install (I have worked with satellite systems for more than 30 years) but he really did know what to do and why it should be done that way. The system was low roof mounted, as that was in a well-protected area, well below the height of anything else around to reduce the possibility of a direct lightning strike. The cable run would be short to the modem, but I had him install about 50 extra feet of cable so I could move the modem as needed. He properly grounded the TRIA, coax cable ground block, and the dish. I made sure the roof mounting was secure and weather sealed, and later double-checked all mounting and disk hardware. It was all properly tightened. The RF connectors were weatherproof, and correctly installed and crimped on to the cables and properly tightened.
The commissioning and system configuration was fast, and soon I was on the web. I run a Netgear FVS-338 firewall router between the modem and my computers. I also have a dialup modem attached to the router for fallback when the satellite WAN is unavailable.
How does it work? OK, for the most part. If you have never used a two-way satellite link, you must realize that it requires time for the signal to travel up and down the path to the satellite. This happens for both the requests that your computer makes for data, and for the data itself to get back to you. This increases the latency of the system.
I was aware of the traffic shaping that WildBlue was implementing before I signed up, so I was not surprised when the latency increased considerably not too long after my system was installed. The long latency (over 2 seconds, in some cases) makes game playing, VPN and VOIP virtually unusable. It also causes long lags in loading https web pages. The latency is probably the biggest gripe most folks seem to have about WildBlue.
FAP - The Fair Access policy is reasonable for satellite systems, IMO. I haven't come close to hitting it, because I watch my usage carefully.
Downloads and uploads are as fast as advertised. MY FTP programs work fine, as well as email and web browsing. WildBlue's email server seems to have problems, and often seems to have problems. However, I learned a long time ago not to depend on your ISP's email service. I maintain all my email addresses on my own web server; that way I never have to change them when I get a new ISP.
The reliability of the service has been fairly good so far. Heavy storms will block the signal, but this usually does not last for a long time. This in unavoidable with a KU-band system, even with a bigger dish than WildBlue uses.
Some folks have had TRIA equipment failures for various reasons. So did I, after almost 9 month of service. The replacement of the TRIA required about two weeks, due to a shortage of new units.
During that time, I used the fallback mode of my router and the dialup service from Wildblue that is part of the PRO Pack. About two days into the failure, I realized that I was going to burn through the free dialup available to me with my package in about another day, then it was going to cost money! To avoid this, I signed up with another dialup access provider, 550access.com. The small cost of their service gives me more than enough dialup backup in the event of another service failure. If the WildBlue system gets bogged down - as happens some evenings - the router switches to dialup automatically for me.
Tech support was good the few times I had to use it. I didn't yell at the CSR, and they were polite and helpful.
Connection reliability is pretty good, except for the long latency and occasional slowdowns in the high usage periods in the evenings.
The monthly bill has been correct every month, exactly what the contract said it would be, and not a penny more.
In summary, I'll say that for us, it works out OK.
---UPDATE - 13 DEC 2009---
Well, the system is still running about as it did when it was installed. Only two problems have happened since the installation. The TRIA on the disk died and had to be replaced, and yes, it did cost me about $125 for a replacement. It took only about four days after my service call for the installer to show up and replace it. The whole process took about 30 minutes, and he rechecked the dish alignment in the process.
About 8 months after that, signals started to become very poor and erratic, with my connection dropping out for long periods of time. I determined that somehow the dish had gone out of alignment, and that the flexible plastic elevation alignment screw was bent out of shape. Strangely enough, all the mounting clamp nuts were firmly tightened, and I could not move the dish by hand.
I loosened the clamp screws and let the plastic screw spring back into position, then retightened the clamp screws, and all was good once again. I have no idea how things got out of position in the first place...
Speeds have been as advertised, with some occasional "prime time" slowdowns, and occasional system resets - apparently from the uplink end. Billing has been accurate, and the FAP monitor seems to be reasonably accurate.
So, then upshot is that I am happy with the service for what it is and what I use it for. Of course, If I had the option for a better quality and speed of service, I would take it, since that would allow me to do much more in the internet.
On a other note, lately I have been reading quite a few really nasty reviews from folks who seem to have some real problems with Wildblue. Perhaps they do, but it seems to me that most of these are cases where the reviewer either did not realize what they were going to get for their money, or they has unrealistic expectations about satellite internet service.
Now that's not to say that they may have been misinformed or flat-out lied to by the sales people or others when they signed up, but a quick read-through of reports on the forums here would have given them a pretty good idea of what to expect. I sometimes wonder if these reviewers even took the time to look into what they were buying. I wonder if these folks purchase a new car with the same amount of thought.
Yes it's expensive, yes it's slow, yes the traffic shaping is a pain in the rear, and yes the FAP is a constant worry. BUT - if you are like me, and have only poor dialup to fall back on, then Wildblue is workable. Of course I would like cable, DSL, or FIOS, but I'll be long dead and gone before that happens out where I live. And I like it enough out here so that I'll gladly suffer satellite internet before I'd move elsewhere just to get faster speeds.
Ralph W5JGV
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