DirecTV Stops Selling WildBlue

Why would anyone buy broadband from a satellite company?

Because they live in the sticks; get TV from the satellite company; and can get no landline connections faster than POTS dial-up data.

I will stay with dialup before I ever touch satellite!

My retired parents fit into this category. They can't get DSL on a land line. There is no cable. There is no TV reception. So it's satellite TV and WildBlue internet for them. WildBlue is both expensive and slow, I might add, but it is better than nothing.

I assume there are better solutions than DirecTV. Even cell phone internet would likely have less latency.

Many who cannot get DSL often cannot get cell phone coverage either. I do not know why, but small town cell tower footprints are not very big, even when they are 3G. Satellite or dial up is the only choice.

EDGE and evdo tend to have larger coverage than 3g umts overall. Even 200-300kps on edge is better than dial-up.

These same places that can't get DSL or cable internet are the same places that T-Mobile and Sprint (except for maybe Nextel... is that still around?) have no coverage. There are entire counties here in Florida where there is no T-Mobile coverage and AT&T is EDGE-only. I used to carry a Sprint PCS and a Nextel phone for that reason.

I assume there are better solutions than DirecTV. Even cell phone internet would likely have less latency.

Why does AT&T bundle DirectTV in their offers????? Same difference. They just resell it.

HughesNet is a laughingstock of an ISP. Customer service is horrible not to mention the service, if you can even begin to call it a service. My wife and I had it installed about five years ago and learned just what a disaster it was to use. Most of you here know about their FAP or Fair Access Policy so I won't go into that. I lost count of how many times they have been sued and reported to the BBB.

The bottom line must be hurting for DirecTv to even be considering this. It makes MUCH more sense to me for folks out in the rural areas, like myself to just go out and sign up for one of the wireless ISP like a Verizon, Sprint or what we have here in Millencom. It may be a little more expensive but its worth not having to deal with the headache and nightmare that is HughesNet.

Actually 5 years ago put you before the spacewaty 3 service I believe and while I agree with you the customer service sucked, the service from that satellite didn't, I am on the Elite plan and am suppose to get 2 Mb/s down and 300 Kb/s up, I get 3 to5 Mb/s down and 250 Kb/s up pretty much 24/7. I started with a 500 MB cap and now have a 625 MB cap with rollover now that allows me to carry over my unused MB till I reach a max of double that 625 MB for a total of 1250 MB, My free tokens each month now roll over till I get 3 and I can download all I want for 5 hours each night which makes it entirely possible to get 150 MB or more a month.

Now you take those upgrades that we have already gotten and throw in the fact that Hughesnet is launching it satellite name Jupiter which will allow for much higher speeds and even better caps and I would say they are pretty smart for working out a deal. HN has already said they intend on making the caps higher and they are hinting at packages offering speeds of 20 Mb/s and will probably for sure at least match Wildblues viasat -1 at speeds of 12 Mb/s. So how does that stack up against that dial-up?

I imagine you won't see a whole lot offered from DTV till Jupiter is in orbit and online and then you will likely see them offer packages including broadband and satellite TV and I wouldn't be to surprised if they don't make a deal with verizon so they can offer cell service in the packages as well. This is what Dish is doing right now and will probably roll it all out in the next few weeks.

Still wouldn't touch 'em with the proverbial 10" pole but I'm glad you are having better service. I'm quite pleased with the service we get from Millenicom (20GB's month), with NO contract and NO overusage fees. Was on Verizon with 5GB cap and the overusage fees were a killer. On HN in the end, EVERYDAY we were throttled the moment we woke up and no matter that we were no where near the cap, we were told we had violated the FAP policy. Couldn't deal with such idiocy so switched over to Vz and now with Millenicom.

We're in north MS, very much in a rural area. AT&T is out there but their Edge is just incredibly slow that last time I used it. Mellinicom which resells verizon has been great to work with and we are between two cell towers about equidistance from each other. Plus we are only a few miles from the highway where the towers are located.

To give you an example of what we USED to put up with, when I moved here, my wife was getting 9 Kbps with dial up. She runs a small business as was I as the time and there was no way anything could get done using that. That was back in 2003.

Why is it that everybody who can get fast cellular thnks that everybody in the country can? Are they really unaware that there are places in this country where you couldn't get one bar of cellular with a 100-foot antenna?

As far as people saying that they would stay with dialup rather than use satellite, I suspect most of them are not currently using dialup.

Direct Partnering with hughesnet????????????? BAD MOVE!

Actually with the launch of Viasat-1 and EXEDE 12mpbs service, not sure why they ended their resell agreement with wildblue.

Strange.

Why didn't DirecTV continue with rolling out the fixed residential LTE option w/Verizon, out of the limited testing near Erie, PA?

(I am guessing that Verizon liked the results, but wanted to cut DirecTV out of the deal.)

Going from WildBlue to Hughes is like going from cow patties to horse dung...

I lived in a rural area where there were no options. Cell service was spotty at best, no cable or DSL either. Someone decided they wanted to make money and setup a high power wireless network and carried that signal nearly six miles from town to distribution points. Could get around 2mb which is way better than anything satellite has to offer.

All you need is one point to get the signal to and distribute it beyond that. Not sure why some rural telco's or even investors haven't even attempted this in many areas. One antenna on a tower can service a pretty good area without lines being run.

As lame as satellite internet is maybe some of you have not been into rural parts of nebraska for instance. There isnt anyone or anything around for miles and nothing but corn. I seriously doubt people in areas like that have access to DSL. I know there is wireless phone service but data is about as slow as dialup in those areas with wireless.

I guess if I lived in a place like that satellite internet would be great. Not like you have any other options.