Starband -- premium price, deteriorating service in Other Satellite http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r20405399 en Sat, 11 Oct 2008 23:53:53 EDT Sat, 11 Oct 2008 23:53:53 EDT Re: Starband -- premium price, deteriorating service http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20412841 pilot_in_fla : I do appreciate your responses. My recollection is that I had been told about the other Starband service options about 1 1/2 years ago. I had to replace my 360 modem (at a cost of $99) at that time so I would have been receptive to an upgrade if that had not come at a higher monthly cost. Perhaps I was only told about higher cost options, I really don't know. I do know that the service had already been deteriorating but it was still at least minimally acceptable.

While the deliberate degradation of my service (you call FAP) was the last straw as far as I was concerned, the service had been deteriorating for some time. The technical support folks were unable to explain why my usage (mostly basic web browsing and email with no large file transfers) would trigger the service degradation and they were unwilling to provide any suggestions as to how I might monitor my usage in real time. I did read a report elsewhere on this site by a Starband user who discovered that the usage data attributed to him was not correct -- I suspect that was also happening to me but no one at Starband seemed to care.

Up until the beginning of this year, I was able to run my desktop machine and a laptop linked through a wireless router on the Starband connection with at least minimally acceptable performance. Since then, the performance of the laptop became so bad that running it on a dialup became the only acceptable option. Over the last couple of months, the performance on the desktop deteriorated quite a bit as well. At the end, Starband was so bad that alternating use of the dial-up between the two computers became the only option. Perhaps whatever "node" I was assigned to was severely overloaded -- I really have no way of knowing.

Perhaps an option of one day on the satellite and one day on the dialup might work but paying $70 a month for that kind of service makes no sense.

My account was paid up through today but I pulled the equipment yesterday. When I tried to check my account today, I found it had already been disabled -- a bit of adding insult to injury.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20412841 Wed, 30 Apr 2008 19:42:25 EDT Re: Starband -- premium price, deteriorating service http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20410100 anon : As I mentioned earlier, anyone with a DSL or cable, aircard or wifi alternative would be crazy to consider sat except under very unusual circumstances.

The 360 is supremely ancient technology.

Not sure who told you $89 1.5 years ago you could have the latest nova modem and pay $69.99 with 2GB FAP.

it is true any user of legacy equipment who is pointed to G-27 can upgrade to the latest modem for $149 with msrc as low as $69.99 for 120 X 1024 w/2GB FAP or $99.99 for 256 X 1.5 Mbps w/5GB FAP and no clunky ancient 360 software running on your PC.

Anyone in FAP that simply moderates their usage for 2-3 days will exit the FAP. If you continue to try and use the connection full bore you will never come out of it. Same with HN.

a simple tiny program like DU meter running in the background can show you your usage and keep track of it.

Glad you found an alternative]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20410100 Wed, 30 Apr 2008 10:30:43 EDT Re: Starband -- premium price, deteriorating service http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20409560 pilot_in_fla : I was using the 360 modem and the $69.99 per month price point -- I think I was orignally on a one year deal for 512 down, 128 up, but have been month-to-month for some time. (I never got more than about 1/2 the promised performance but that seems to be typical for the industry). They tried to sell me a different modem about a year and a half ago but you had to have a higher cost plan -- minimum of $89.99 which was a bit salty for my taste for home usage.

Interestingly enough, when I went to cancel my service, the woman that I spoke with told me I could get a different modem for $149 and would have a 2gb limit (instead of 1) for the same price I was paying for with a 2 year deal. I said I would consider it if they would agree to restore my service to something acceptable until the new modem would arrive but they were unwilling to do so.

I have been running the same configuration for at least two years and have had the same relative level of use. The first "excessive bandwidth" notice I received was March 5 of this year.

When I measured performance yesterday, I was getting 92 kb download and 21 upload. You could get better performance at much lower cost with two bonded modems.

I don't know about HughesNet or Wild Blue. As of yesterday afternoon, I have DSL and it is like going from walking to riding a rocket sled plus the cost is much lower.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20409560 Wed, 30 Apr 2008 08:03:35 EDT Re: Starband -- premium price, deteriorating service http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20408517 anon :
said by pilot_in_fla See Profile :

If Starband wasn't able to make a nice profit on serving me, they aren't going to be in business much longer. If they were making a nice profit on me and those like me and yet are willing to alienate us so much that we feel it necessary to warn others on a public forum, they aren't going to be in business much longer.
Yeah that's what folks that complain about HN and WB keep saying also.

BTW what modem and service plan were you on?]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20408517 Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:03:54 EDT Re: Starband -- premium price, deteriorating service http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20408227 pilot_in_fla : I did not have any problems with any usage limitation policy until recently although I have observed the Starband service to be in slow decline for some period.

My usage is relatively modest -- no music or video downloads, no streaming video with an occasional audio clip. The service is too slow to make viewing even short video clips tolerable.

If Starband wasn't able to make a nice profit on serving me, they aren't going to be in business much longer. If they were making a nice profit on me and those like me and yet are willing to alienate us so much that we feel it necessary to warn others on a public forum, they aren't going to be in business much longer.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20408227 Tue, 29 Apr 2008 21:57:46 EDT Re: Starband -- premium price, deteriorating service http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20406475 anon : Starband, Like all Satellite ISP's imposes a bandwidth restriction policy. They and all the others have been doing it openly for years. I am surprised you are just finding this out now?

They have a bandwidth monitoring page that a user can access but admittedly it is 24 hours behind and not always accurate. You however as the end user of the service can accept responsibility to stay within the terms of your contract by pro actively monitoring your own usage with any number of free bandwidth monitoring software applications.

Hughesnet users do it all the time.

Starband will always give you one get out of FAP free card the first time you call to complain, warning you that you need to comply with the limits for your service plan. After that it's up to you to live with it or upgrade to higer level service plans that can realistically deal with the bandwidth you want to move over the sat link.

Starband is also the only company that gives you a bandwidth happy hour between Midnight and 6AM EST during which you can download and up load all you want without it counting toward your total.

The number of simultaneous TCP/IP sessions permitted has always been 64 and does not change when you are fapped.

In short, the policy is clear and stated publicly, they give you one warning, You have a free period every night for heavy use and finally YOU are responsible for living within the terms of the contract that you agreed to. Having been with them for 6 years you probably renewed that contract on several occasions....did you not read the fine print?

I agree,FAP sucks big time but it is not by any means a thing unique to Starband.

I also agree that if anyone has any other choice besides dial up then satellite is always the system of last resort. If you have no other options then it's better than sliced bread. If you have other options, then take them

Max in Raligh NC
Admitted Starband / Spacenet Dealer
»orbitalenterprises.net]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20406475 Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:11:44 EDT Starband -- premium price, deteriorating service http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20405399 pilot_in_fla : Starband should be avoided. I have just had to terminate my account with them after almost 6 years. Over time, the service has gotten slower and slower. In the last few months, it has been only slightly better than dialup.

Recently, Starband has introduced limitations on downloads that affected me and will be likely to affect any user doing more than once a day email. If you use more than a certain amount of bandwidth (and you have no way of monitoring your usage in real time or verifying their numbers) your service is "throttled". Starband claims that they throttle you to twice the dial up rate (remember you are paying a much higher than dialin price) but in reality the throttled service is much slower than any dialin. After repeated calls, Starband support admitted that they also limit the number of TCP connections as well for "throttled" accounts but they didn't specify what that number is. The result is that a webpage like www.yahoo.com might take 5 minutes or more to load.

Don't expect anyone at Starband to sympathize with your plight. After being continuously throttled for more than two weeks (and having to use a dialin account for most of that time (like now), they were unwilling to grant me any relief.

AVOID STARBAND.

Ed]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20405399 Tue, 29 Apr 2008 13:03:57 EDT