how-to block ads
|
next review in page
Review by mauser 
member for 16 days, 4 visits, last login: 6 days ago
updated 7 days ago
 Hastings,Barry,MI
 Contract price not specified.  "Fast speeds, decent ping times (for satellite)" "Data caps stink" "Best option for my location"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Mail,DNS,News:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
After being bamboozled by AT&T who lied about DSL service at my address (we bought the house under that assumption 2 years ago) we went with HughesNet. We tried everything else - every cable company around, ordering a T1, business cable, local WiMax provider (we are in a low area and cannot get a signal through the dense trees). We looked at 3g and 4g hotspots, not enough signal. We suffered with HughesNet (they will receive my full wrath in a separate review) for 2 years, when a co-worker mentioned he had just gotten Exede installed.
I waited for a month or so to see how his experience was, and he was pleased. He has the good luck of an error on their part where his metering seems to be broken - no matter how much internet he uses, it shows as his full 10gb. Wish we had been that lucky, but really can't complain.
Based on his experience, I ordered the service, making sure I had the same installer he had used - install is INCREDIBLY important with satellite. Our installer was great, he pointed the dish, set up the modem, then re-pointed the dish for greater precision. Most installers are in a hurry, as many of them get paid by the job, not the hour, and skip the second step. Without that second calibration, customers will often experience frequent outages due to wind, rain, etc.
We have almost 20mb down and 3mb up, consistently. The problem, which we already knew about, is the data cap. 10gb goes away fast at those speeds. The free zone is less convenient than HughesNet, which lasts 2-7am (now 8am) - with Exede, it only goes midnight to 5am. I'm not usually up at midnight, and get up at 5:00, so I miss the free window. We are less than 2 weeks in, and have used 75% of our allowance. To be fair, we have watched a few Netflix shows which, even at the lowest resolution, are data hogs.
Right now, we are waiting to run out of full-speed internet to see how bearable the throttled speed are. If it is consistent with what I was told, I can probably live with it until we get refilled. Worst case, we fork over more money for a beefier plan.
I don't like the broadband industry - they soak us for more and more money and meter our data mercilessly. That said, Exede is our best option... for now. I look forward to when something better comes along and all of these companies who have strangled their customers with limited data get what's coming to them.
UPDATE, 5/15/13 - the company that installed my Exede service misrepresented what Exede will do once data runs out - I was told speeds would be around 1mbps AFTER throttling, which would be completely useable, if not speedy. The actual speeds are more like 20kbps (slower than dial-up). I called Exede, and they apologized for their agent's misinformation, and reset my internet (one time only) to get us through the month. Although the service is certainly fast enough for streaming video, there is not enough data allotment to watch any appreciable amount of video even at standard definition, hi-def would run out the plan in a few shows. I will need to meter my own usage, much as I did with HughesNet.
Overall, I am still pleased with the service, the speed and reliability are good, just wish there was a bigger allotment of data so I could do more with it. The one customer service rep I spoke with was cordial and helpful, and was based in the United States, so she could actually understand what I was telling her. Imagine that.
Comments:
 | next review in page (previous review)
Review by jrobin.au
(review was emailed from domain gmail.com)
lodged 7 days ago
- Hawthorne,Alachua,FL
- Contract price not specified.
- "Far better (so far) than wireless at a competitive price"
- "Goof-ball installers who try to scam you out of extra cash"
- "WHY THE HELL DON'T WE HAVE DECENT INTERNET OPTIONS IN THE USA"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Mail,DNS,News:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
I'm a new customer at the $49.99/mo level. Make that $60+ because they conveniently forget to count the equipment rental charges and taxes. The data rates seem to be as advertized and I haven't had reception problems. The installation, however, was horrid. The installers were supposed to arrive before noon. They came at 2:30. They drilled straight through my wall and through the downpipe on the roof plumbing. They insisted that roof mounts were not ok and that they wouldn't recommend anything other than a ground based installation, for an extra fee, of course. They tried to charge me $10/foot for burying the cable, in addition to $50 for the pole mount. I refused and they backed down. However, they wouldn't listen when I told them I needed it deeper than 6 inches. I complained back to the company. They promised to send someone back to fix the downpipe before last Friday. It's Monday. Still no show. As for the free email accounts, etc.: the installers were in a hurry to get out and not interested in that part of the deal.
I'd complain more, but I have no alternatives to satellite here. I get only 3 bars on wireless, and the data charges are absurd.
Comments:
| next review in page (previous review)
Review by zeddlar
member for 6.1 years, 1142 visits, last login: a few hours ago
lodged 9 days ago
- Jay,Delaware,OK
- Contract price not specified.
- "Speeds well above advertised speeds, late night unlimited data and American tech support"
- "Latency, price and low caps."
- "It works like it is suppose and the one time I had to call for an improper instalation it was fixed in 2 days so it is great for"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Mail,DNS,News:
Value for money:
(ratings above consensus)
|
To begin with the installer that showed up had to install my system in a pouring rain in temperatures just above freezing and understandably he was in a hurry and got the dish out of alignment by a hair and thus we had speed problems for the first week. I don't believe this was intentional as the guy also offered to crawl under our house and fix a water line that blew into while he was here. at any rate after a week of low speeds I called tech support and unlike any of the times I called HN tech support in the ten years I was with then, I got a person that spoke English and they immediately sent out a tech two days later to tweak my dish and since that time I get well above my advertised speeds of 12/3. I see 16 to 20 Mb/s down and between 2 and 3 Mb/s up at all times of the day. The latency stays in the 600 to 800ms range and my cap is low at 15GB per month but I knew that coming into this service. Web pages of course load just a bit slower than my old DSL but that is just the natural latency of satellite. All in all we are quite happy with this service for what it is and we would and have recommended it to other people we know that have no other alternative.
Comments:
| next review in page (previous review)
Review by marshallman
Fair warning: reviewer joined this month
lodged 10 days ago
- Marshall,Fauquier,VA
- Contract price not specified.
- "So far, flawless"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Value for money:
(ratings above consensus)
|
We recently moved to a more rural area - we're just outside Verizon - with very few options for Internet. We had Exede installed a few days ago. Installation was fine. I have a very tall house and steep roof. The installer worked extra hard to make this work for us. I plugged the router into the modem and within a minute I'm in the Internet. I'm very happy so far. Speeds are great. It's not FIOS but this is perfectly fine for my needs Much faster than I'd expected. I'm going to tether off my iPhone for some of my web use to keep usage under the cap. People complain about the price but hey everyone, if you had FIOS as an option you'd be paying twice what Exede charges.
Comments:
| next review in page (previous review)
Review by e3jr88
member for 34 days, 0 visits, last login: 34 days ago
lodged 34 days ago
- Fulton,Callaway,MO
- Contract price not specified.
- "Very fast downloads"
- "Data cap"
- "The best I can get where I live and it hasn't disappointed"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Mail,DNS,News:
Value for money:
(ratings above consensus)
|
So I had HughesNet for about 5 years and while it was decent, I was never impressed with it and paid nearly $100 a month for the service. A guy I work with told me had Exede and that he was really happy with it so I decided to give it a try. I've had the service for about 2 weeks now and I couldn't be happier with it. The downloads are extremely fast and $60 a month is a big improvement over the $90+ that I way paying. I just downloaded the DirectX SDK which is over 500MB and it took about 4 minutes and to me that is just ridiculously fast. My previous HughesNet connection would have taken at least twice that long and probably more like 20 minutes. I am very happy with this service and recommend it highly.
Comments:
| next review in page (previous review)
Review by VictorJ
member for 81 days, 12 visits, last login: 52 days ago
updated 64 days ago
- Lexa,Phillips,AR
- Contract price not specified.
- "I'm getting High Speed Net, which is better than what I previously Had...Nothing for 3 Years, and Dial-Up for about 20"
- "The Monthly Price Sucks, But Not Bad All Things Considered"
- "Exede Is Great For What It's Worth, Speeds Are Consistent, But Haven't Quite Reached Advertised Speeds Yet."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Mail,DNS,News:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
I officially ordered Exede on 2/21/13, and the installer came around 9ish AM 2/26/13. I didn't think it would take very long to install the dish considering my past experiences dealing with satellite installers (I live in a rural area. which means no cable, and almost satellite everything), but it ended up taking about an hour or two, because the installer left around 11. was hoping for an afternoon appointment, but whatever decided on skipping class to wait on the guy just in case he came in the morning, which he did.
Installation: The installation went great, and I was connected in less than 30 minutes after the satellite was completely installed (installer said it would most likely be an hour before I could connect, guess it depends on your area and how it takes for the beam to hit your dish, weather, etc, and it was actually sprinkling that day as well), there was some issue where he wasn't given my temp user name, but that's ok it took a mere phone call to set it up (which was more of a pain than not having temp user name already).
Installer: He was a really cool guy, he told me the ins and outs of the service (though I had already did my own research), he talked a bit about the wifi set up though I didn't have a router at the time or now for that matter, but I did mention ordering one. He took notice of my Xbox 360 and PS3 and stated that it may not be so great for online gaming. He was really kind and courteous.
Service: So far so good, on the first day or so I got as high as 8.5 mps, but I've been averaging around 2-3.8 mps down and 1.73 up since then according to speedtest,net, but there's a strange glitch that occurs in the late night hours on speedtest that states I'm getting 19-25 mps with 14-17 ping, which I know is just not true for satellite, mind you this glitch only occurs at night sometimes, so I'm not sure how to go about it.
Account Management: Log in is great, but it's a bit ironic that every website but the Exede one loads seamlessly, there's been a weird glitch with the usage meter page, but it may be on their end than mine, it sometimes states that it can't be read or something along those lines, and when it does, it's acted like I haven't used any gigs, it still states I have the full 10, but it's done this since my first month bill became available, I don't know if the two are related considering I paid about 95% of the bill already. Weird glitch, but not a problem. There's also an issue (or was one anyways) with logging in to the wildblue.com site for account management, for awhile it stated that my user name was not found, so far it's letting me log in, but it may occur again. Still, another weird glitch, but again not an issue.
Video Buffering: As expected streamed videos load like a charm, I've yet to have an issue with this, so I don't think I need to go into much details here.
File Download: This is the part that had my jaw dropping. I downloaded a 2 gig file, at a speed in between my average (2.5 mps), it took a mere 15 minutes to complete. I had never seen this before (which leads me to believe that Firefox wasn't able to detect the actually speed), because my dad has Suddenlink, and he gets about 3 mps full down speed, while on PSN 2 gigs takes about an hour and a half at his house.
Online Gaming: The general consensus is that satellite is pretty much useless for online gaming, but it's quite possible, I've seen a video of someone playing Midnight Club LA on Xbox Live with Exede, it may depend on the speed and your router to get things going, but it's very, it may also depend on the game as well. I;m almost certain that most should at least get on PSN considering I ran PSN at fairly decent speed with almost no lag on dial up (again it depends on the game in most cases). When my wifi is eventually set up by next week I'll report back on my attempt(s).
Overall Thoughts: Exede has it's ups and downs like every satellite ISP, but I'm pretty damn happy (so far), I'm paying a monthly bill of $68.87, and only had to pay $50 up front due to their current special which runs through the end of March. I'll finally have some home wifi instead of going 15 minutes to my dad's everyday or so.
UPDATE 3/7/13: Online Gaming: I finally got things to where i could get on PSN & XBL, decided on doing this during LNFZ. I downloaded Spec Ops and the remainder of RE 5 Gold Edition. According to PSN during connection test, I was getting 6.6 down and 356k up. PS store loaded slowly as did XBL, but only by a minute or two. Downloading apps on XBL worked well, but there was some lag issues causing whatever I downloaded to stop at 80% for a few minutes. I haven't played a game online yet, but when I do I'll update again.
UPDATE: 3/18/13: I've had Exede for nearly a month now, and I'm still not having any issues, or at least none that didn't work themselves out. Online gaming works flawlessly, I've been playing Dust 514, WoW, Star Wars The Old Republic, and DC Universe Online (PS3 version). Only had a problem with Dust 514, experienced lag during the first round of a match, afterwards it worked great. will update again when I renew my XBL Gold, and try it out on Dark Souls.
Comments:
 | | Exede Service Victor, I am happy to hear that you are enjoying your service. If there is ever anything that we can do to assist you, please let us know. A quick email to exedelistens@viasat.com is enough, and we will follow up with any concerns you might have. Thank you for the review and have a great day! | |
| | | | Re: Exede Service I would like more specifics on who this reviewer is. The last sentence reads like a commercial for Exede, and *everyone* who has this service knows that it is unreliable (to put it mildly). Nearly unserviceable is closer to the truth. In fact, even as I type this my internet has slowed to a crawl.
Class action time, Exede, unless you get your act together and start delivering what you promised.
Never thought I'd be nostalgic for Time Warner. | |
| | | | | Re: Exede Service OH MY!!! This is the most transparent review I've ever seen.. for many reasons. Duh. There aren't many people who just review anything unless it's really really bad or really really good. Not just 'eh, it was ok'. This is just sick really. The admins for this site log users, right? You need to log that one and track it because I'm sure the FCC wouldn't like to fine over this kind of fake crap. I would like to make it known that I have experienced the exact opposite of everything this dude said.
Well, I mean, I'd love to say that i could stream anything to complain or rave about. I can't. I can't even fathom a dang movie. That's just funny. Music? Forget it. Youtube? Nope.
I'm happy that you mentioned the website. That's important. They suck. I've never had to log in like 3-4 times back to back on different looking pages just to check my usage balance. That's just ridiculous. AND, the first time it happened, I actually began to think that I was being redirected to a malicious site. The website looks and feels like my 10 year old designed it. No joke. You can launch a satellite, but you can't afford decent IT people? FAIL on too many levels to mention here. Service is a joke. Data just vanishes. I've never used 10 gigs a month ever but do it in 2 weeks here.
DO NOT CHOOSE THIS COMPANY. | |
| | | | Reviews:
 ·exede by ViaSat
| Re: Exede Service I'm being pretty honest with my review. Like i said i dealt with dial-up for most of my life, and nothing for the past 3 years. I'm averaging about 2-3.5 down, so I wouldn't say it's perfect, nor would I begin to act like it is. My wifi router comes today, so I'll update my PSN experience later tonight. But it's been pretty good while playing WoW and Star Wars: The Old Republic. Completely agree about the website design though, i hate sites that use the google web design thing. | |
|
| | | | I might be getting good speeds due to lack of people using Exede in my area, most people my my road can get regular broadband, which is crap considering the people just up the road from me can get it. I can't even get cable service on my street. | |
| | | | | said by xrs2 :I would like more specifics on who this reviewer is. The last sentence reads like a commercial for Exede, and *everyone* who has this service knows that it is unreliable (to put it mildly). Nearly unserviceable is closer to the truth. In fact, even as I type this my internet has slowed to a crawl. I have no ties to Exede or WB other than having been a customer since June of '12. I can say unequivocally that it is the best internet service I have experienced ever. Perfect, no. But better than any that have tried to provide to rural Hawaii to date. Due to inherent latency, satellite is always a last resort for the under-served rural areas but most of the time, my service is better than cable providers in my area.
To say that "everyone" has had bad experience with WB/Exede is simply untrue. Some of you have and that is unfortunate but it seems that all Exede providers/spot beams/gateways/?? are not created equal. I sit smack in the middle of the HI beam and the service is fast and dependable. My bandwidth usage charts have been spot on with my router stats. Clearly, your experience may vary.
I would suggest that new users check the WB/Exede forum for info on their location, or better yet, talk to other users in your area. I got my info from a near neighbor before I jumped. That said, tech support is about what you expect...scripted and unresponsive to problems that go beyond the script. Fortunately, I haven't needed them much for some time. It was no different with my prior satellite provider and they lied about bandwidth usage problems like crazy.
xrs2, you are being intemperate and hyperbolic to try to paint all Exede customers as unhappy. How about toning down the rhetoric...we already know you are p***ed off. | |
|
| | | Hi Nick...I'm also going to send you my complaints regarding Viasat, EXCEDE, WILDBLUE...whatever you're called now. Thanks,
Someone who wants their money back. | |
|
| | This is a joke I ordered this service in Jan 2013. We were moving to a rural area and this was all that was available. It was strange even from the beginning because as I spoke to the rep who sold me the service (transferred from DTV as part of a bundle), she couldn't answer my questions about speed or issues with data usage. She said "You'll have to call WildBlue for that." I laughed and was like "What? Why WildBlue?" She told me that she was with Viasat, and that Wildblue was the actual provider. Interesting. I said that I didn't even know that WildBlue was the provider and IF anyone had told me that, I would have just passed on it all together. I've heard nightmares from friends. She said "ohh, well, don't worry. A lot has changed since the new satellite." I didn't even know, or care, about a new satellite. I just wanted to be sure that I would be able to continue with the classes I was taking online and that our family of 4 would still be able to use the internet. We had been using the Verizon MiFi for about 6 months and had the 5GB/month plan. We never went over the 5 gigs and usually ran about 3.
Because of our low usage needs, we signed up for the 10GB/month plan and even the clueless "viasat" salesperson said that we probably wouldn't even notice a difference except that the Viasat internet was "wayyyyy faster than any DSL, Oh MY GOD!!!". So, I was happy with that. Cool.
What a JOKE! Within our first week of setup, we had maxed out our 10GB. 6 DAYS. We thought that maybe someone left "something" connected and that was our excuse. So, I bought an additional gig for 9.99. That was gone in less than 3 hours. I bought a total of 4 additional gigs in the first 3 weeks of service. The ONLY reason that I did was because I thought that maybe my oldest daughter was using the internet to stream videos or music. And, honestly...we SHOULD be able to do that! Most people only use their internet capable devices for that, but we've had hit or miss success. At 3 weeks, I took my child's tablet and laptop away just to make sure. Even when we used the internet during their "free zone" from 1200-0500 AM, it was ridiculously slow. Sometimes slower than during the day. I suspected that this was somehow counting against our data because the only significant usage was during this period. Like, my repeated attempts to connect to my online classes.
The second month started and from that day (the 7th), I made sure to monitor our usage. I had, by now, had to drop 3 online classes due to the inability to log in. I couldn't even get the page to load because it would time out repeatedly. I applied MAC filtering at the wireless router level to deny access by my child's devices. I only allowed 2 laptops. My husband works all day, so he's not using his. I am barely indoors and usage is minimal now that I don't need it for classes. YET, on day 6!!! I logged into the account to look at the bill and it showed that we had used 9.9 GB. I hit the roof and called WildBlue that exact minute.
After a half hour wait, I was connected. I was eventually transferred to a tech person who was supposed to help troubleshoot my issues. I KNEW we hadn't possibly used that much data and had even started unplugging the modem at night in the first month.
This guy began to lecture me on what all the kids do these days... lol...he first tried to make it out to be my teenager downloading music. I told him that I took her access away. He then told me that he's heard "horror" stories from parents who just had no idea that their kids were downloading, uploading, chatting, whatever all day and all night. I laughed and told him that #1, she's in school all day. #2, I run a tight ship. Her butt does nothing without my knowledge. Call me overbearing, but I was a drill instructor as well as an 18 yr old single parent...I've got my reasons. I KNOW she can't access the internet because I've taken her devices away and then just completely disconnected the modem.
He then sort of flustered around until he offered me 2 gigs of data to "test" our modem. This was over an hour long conversation. He had been trying to "one up" me on parenting, my lack of internet usage statistics, data theft, hacking, etc... I'm not an idiot. It was as if he were trying to just throw all possibilities at me and see which one I would buy. Irritating. He only offered me the 2 gigs of data because there has supposedly been some 1 in 25K modems that were defective.
I saw the 2 gigs of data added to the account and our speeds picked up. For like 2 hours. Cool. That's all it lasted with literally checking my bank account and logging into Facebook for 20 minutes. He told me to annotate the usage at night before I unplugged the modem, so that they could be sure of the usage lost. BS. They also claim that usage is 24 hours behind. Pointless. Especially since I couldn't even go 2 hours without wasting it.
I called the next day. On hold for over one hour and I had to go pick up my kid. I called another 4 times but had no luck. Their ass isn't paying me to have the phone attached to my head while my kids are painting the cat with toothpaste or burning the house down, do they?
Tonight, the 6th, I haven't been able to get any pages to load. I've done everything you're supposed to do. I needed to be able to access my email, so purchased an additional gig. I know that's stupid considering my cycle starts tomorrow, but I HAVE to be able to respond to this tonight. Thankfully, I was able to get in and reply.
So, I decided to watch a video of my sister's wedding. I'm in the military and missed my baby sister's big day. I just got a link to a video tonight. Very excited to watch it. It has now been 3 hours and the first 3:20 Youtube clip won't get past the first 5 secs. PISSED. 3 HOURS!!!!!!!! RIP OFF. As I was complaining to my husband, he said he hasn't been able to ever get on Youtube since we had Wildblue. My daughter chimed in and said that she's also had problems.. Her exact words were "it's so slow that I don't even try anymore".
There is NO WAY I used a gig to click on and reply to an email. This is insane and I'm furious. I paid 10 bucks for this data and now I've literally got 2 minutes left and have spent the entire time just trying to freaking get a page to load. Even the wildblue page won't load. Ironic. Irritating. WASTE OF MONEY. Sadly, we don't have any other option here. It's not worth paying for it, having to struggle to use it, the stress of getting angry, paying more money and then trying to wrangle some customer service.
Total waste of money and time. | |
| | Reviews:
·exede by ViaSat
| Re: This is a joke lol @ the viasat person saying call wildblue. Don't know why she said that, but that was pretty retarded. I called the number on the Exede website and they referred to themselves as "Viasat provider of Wildblue and the "super fast" all new Excede", or something along those lines. Streaming a video is the same as downloading a file, it takes down speed, not many people know that, so that's prob what killed your gig limit so quickly, I've managed to limit myself to videos no longer than 3 mins throughout the day, and longer stuff on the LNFZ, while just doing light browsing during the day, which is something you should consider. I did my research on both Hughes and Exede months before actually signing up. | |
| | | | | Re: This is a joke I have Exede not Wildblue btw, If a mod could move this to the proper forum that'd be helpful. | |
|
| |
| next review in page (previous review)
Review by Luminaris
member for 7.4 years, 687 visits, last login: 62 days ago
lodged 67 days ago
- Waterford,Loudoun,VA
- Contract price not specified.
- "It is faster than, the old system"
- "It's still satellite"
- "With no other choices here, it's the only thing"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Mail,DNS,News:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
I've had excede now for almost three months. The pre-sales were good, friendly customer service and, the installation went well. All the installer had to do was, remove the old hughesnet dish and, replace it with the new one. The service itself is ok at best. I do have a wireless router connected and, it's just myself and, my Brother here. He uses the wifi through his cell phone while, I use a single laptop. For the most part, it is better than the old system. It streams videos much better and, the lag is much less. They have me on their lowest plan which gives me 10gigs a month plus up to, 12megs down. The fastest speeds I have been able to obtain are, 3.5megs down with about a half up. When my Brother is streaming a video through his phone and, I'm on the computer, I notice a considerable amount of lag and, pages load much slower. The reliability of the connection is sub-par. It usually goes down during the early morning quite a bit here and, it was out all day two days ago. I haven't called them as, I'm not home a lot and, my Brother lets me know so, I haven't had the opportunity to deal with their tech support, yet. Overall I would say that, if you have any type of land based internet, keep it. It's still satellite and, it still does not compare to even my, 3meg DSL connection I had with Verizon.
Comments:
| next review in page (previous review)
 Review by hdman
member for 9.4 years, 3031 visits, last login: 1 days ago
updated 96 days ago
- New London,Waupaca,WI
- Contract price not specified.
- "Forget what you knew about WildBlue. This is a game changer. FAST!!!!"
- "OK, for $50 you get 10GB per month...that still blows, but for us its OK"
- "If you can get by with 10GB/Month, and can't have cable, this is a GREAT choice."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Mail,DNS,News:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
I had WildBlue when they first came into being. Was with them for 2 years and had no real issues. I left for cellular 3G and was there for 4 years. Now, the new Exede comes out and it literally BLOWS 3G away. My pings are high, but hey, thats what happens with sat. based ISP's. We are not gamers, so who cares. What you will notice is that when you type in a website, your browser will stall for about 2 seconds. Then.....sit back and watch the data flow. The stall is because your request goes to outer space, back down to earth, then the data has to to outer space, then back down to you. No big deal, unless you are a gamer.
But...when the data flows....watch out! My speed tests are near 20MB down, and 3MB up. It is advertised much lower, and it will get slower and slower as more people join on. But even if it settles at 5MB down and 1MB up, I'm fine with that.
I signed up via an NRTC reseller which is the only way to go if you can. They offer the 10GB package that you can't get from other resellers. The NRTC is an investor in ViaSat so they get a little better package to offer. Plus, they are LOCAL which means if I have issues, I have a LOCAL person to deal with.
If sat is your only option, go with Exede and skip the rest.
HDMan
Update 2-4-13: Still working like a charm for us! We had 2 months of DAP issues due to a new DirectV Genie install, but even when dapped, the service was usable (unless you needed to download something good sized). Over all, we are very happy that we came BACK to Wildblue after having been gone for a while. This Exede product, IF you understand what it is and what it isn't, is a pretty good product!!
Again, I can't stress enough, USE AN NRTC installer if they are available.
Comments:
| | website problems Do you have any problems getting on certain websites? We had Excede installed on 02/09/2013. The first week we were able to access Runescape. com on all three computers.(my kids FAVORITE game) As of 02/17/2013, they can't get on, (cannot display page...but when we diagnose problems it says...windows did not find any problems with network connections). We have called Exede and Belkin, our router, and nothing helps. How can it work on all 3 computers for one full week, and now it won't work on any of the three! | |
| | | | Re: website problems the issue is, that exede is NOT compatbale with certain router belkin being one of them. the problem is, when you call in they will tell you to get a linksys or netgear. | |
| | | | | Re: website problems belkin routers are in fact compatible with exede satillite internet. i have had my belkin router working with exede for about two months. | |
|
| |
| next review in page (previous review)
Review by stmissel
(review was emailed from domain gmail.com)
lodged 122 days ago
- Stockbridge,Ingham,MI
- Contract price not specified.
- "It's speed is decent for Satellite"
- "Reliability, support, connectivity"
- "Try some other company, any other company"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Mail,DNS,News:
Value for money:
(ratings below consensus)
|
We've had the via sat service for about 8 months. Starting in March.
Download speeds are ok, usually about 4-8 mbs,
Our biggest beef has been reliability. The service would go out for hours
at a time. Phoned support, Did you reboot everything? In June it quit
working.
Several days later we finally got someone out to check it out. He spent a
lot of time re-aiming the dish, which didn't help. Then he tried cutting
the cable and splicing in a new wire.
When that didn't help, he finally replaced the piece of equipment on the
satellite dish that converts the the information. Then he spent a lot more
time re-aiming the dish.
Reliability was much better, then but somehow we went over our data limit
that month, when we were gone one week and the next week we couldn't
connect to the internet for several days.
Now we get numerous Firefox can't find the server messages. I researched
this and it's a common problem, with Firefox. So I went back to internet
explorer. Similar messages.
I've checked all settings suggested, tried googles Chrome. Same problem,
and it's getting worse. This is happening on two different computers, using
three different browsers.
When my wife takes her laptop to our daughters, the internet works the way
it's supposed to (she has Comcast) no error messages, no can't display the
page or can't find the server.
Viasat asked me to fill out a survey on their service, and they were
supposed to contact me about any problems I was having. That was in
September. So far no contact on the issues I gave them.
I sent them another email yesterday. I don't hold out much hope on the
service getting any better based on the "knowledge" of the contract
installers. My installer attempted to check voltages and connectivity, but he couldn't get his meter to work!!!!
The other problem that I've had with their service has been using
Ancestry.com
Prior to switching to Via sat, we had Hughesnet and I was able to use
Ancestry.com, without having to login. Since we switched I have to login
numerous times each hour, sometimes every few minutes and it's difficult to get anything done.
I went through all of ancestry's suggestions on correcting this problem,
but nothing helped. Finally after talking to ancestry the third time, they
suggested that the problem has something to do with Via sat's service and
the way they handle the data. Ancestry's tech support said they had come across problems with Wild Blue in the past, but not with Hughesnet.
They suggested I contact Viasat and made suggestions on what to look for.
So I contacted Viasat and they said they would take a look at it.
I called back a a couple of weeks later and nothing had been done, and the
problem still exists after 8 months.
Viasat is far and away the worst ISP I have ever used. Sure it's faster
than Hughesnet basic service, when it works, but I wouldn't recommend it to
anyone.
Comments:
| next page (previous review)
Review by Turbulentred
member for 287 days, 2 visits, last login: 127 days ago
updated 127 days ago
- Lake City,Missaukee,MI
- Contract price not specified.
- "The people who sell it, and install it are friendly"
- "Page timeouts due to latency, Sproadic Resychs causing five minute outages."
- "80% of the time pretty much unuseable, went back to our Dial Up line until we can get some help."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Mail,DNS,News:
Value for money:
(ratings below consensus)
|
It's so unuseable because of resychs, latency timeouts, it's all sporadic not weather based. I don't know if it was a bad set up, or we're in a bad area to recieve signal. Some say it's that too many people are using the service (FCC violation). Dial up is better I swear by this, there is also always 3g for those who have the cash.
Comments:
|
|
·
·
Re: viasat
·