ViaSat Buys Wild Blue for $568 Million

I have experience with HughesNet and Wild Blue sounds like a much better deal. I know I'd get fapped if I downloaded a 150-200MB chunk of anything on HughesNet, which ticked me off.

At least Wild Blue gives you a decent chunk up front. If I *had* to get Satellite (which would be if I had no other choice at all), I'd go with them.

Hopefully, ViaSat makes the caps better and not worse.

I'm a former WB customer -- they're fine for what they are as long as you don't need to download pages that are real-time sensitive. A lot of flash applications simply won't load because the latency is terrible.

And then there's that 7.5G cap thing. TERRIBLE, terrible, terrible if you have a family.

Well Hughesnet cap is actually worse. 200 MB a day which is 6000 MB a month and that's upload and download combined. the 7.5 GB on WB is for download only. Now Hughesnet does have cap free time from 2 Am-7 Am EST. That's something WB needs to implement before I'd suggest them to friends that live in area where only dial-up is available.

"very low usage caps"? Talk about editorializing. The WB caps are much bigger than the cap on Verizon or Sprint wireless broadband, the only choices besides satellite available in my area, or in most locations where WB has costumers.

Verizon and Sprint are both at 5GB. We're not big bandwidth hogs at my house, but even we exceed that.

Please stop applying criteria appropriate to DSL/cable/fiber to satellite. They're two very different services, serving different customers bases.

I tryed wildblue on couple of my neighbors and I'm glad that I have Hughesnet

375MB a day

If I get fap. I can call in tech and release me from fap once a month.

If I wanna download 2650.0 MB file. I can do it 2am to 7am

Megaupload download manager has configuration that will allow it to download during those times. which is great for me

Last I checked WB's 512k service was $50ish except in very special cases, so the $50 number should probably be quoted.

From personal experience (lots of folks back home use WB) the latency is killer but speeds are as advertised. Also, you'd be surprised how many people don't come close to the cap, though I'd be through it within a week more likely than not.

WB prices are a joke for the bandwidth you get like 80 bucks a month for a 1.5 service what a rip off I would learn to live with out the internet if i had to pay those prices for that kind of speed I am sorry.

Well, it depends on how desperate you are for any kind of broadband and how much money you make. Before WB I was paying $50/mo for 512k/512k from a local WISP. Getting even that speed was problematic. I had the 1.5 Mb plan and never had to worry about the FAP.

Satellite--with its prices and limitations-- is like ISDNs inbred cousin.

Some people laughed but one of my things I looked for when buying my house was could I get DSL or cable modem. I did happen to notice on several real estate documents that was one of the questions about the property.

But on another ironic flip side, is I had to have a view of the southern sky so I could have satellite TV as I hate the cable company's DVR, prices, and lineup.

I have a friend with Wildblue and I can't stand having to use his internet.

I tryed to tell that to my dad if they can get DSL or cable but he didnt listen. sounds like I need to move in a camper with free wi-fi

Choosing manure. No matter what the quality is, it's still manure.

Satellite is for those who have no option at all. We are a national government construction contractor. We get jobs in the middle of nowhere. We have had to use satellite for the following reasons: 1. No other options available. 2. $20,000+ cost to run DSL to where we need it for a 2 year job. 3. On a military base with only military service, they won't allow a contractor to tap into a military systems.

We have two current sites that use satellite 24/7. Both sites run a FTP program/client which synchronizes files between the site and the home office every hour 24/7. We have been doing this since the dial up days the same way. We work around the limitations that are presented. Satellite is a last resort option for us and should be for anyone else.

Ever looked into making a long-distance WiFi Connection?

I do admit, in those situations, Satellite is a decent option. Plus, what most people are not looking at, is that they throttle you down when you go over the cap. They don't charge you more if you go over it unlike most cell companies (except a few).

I wonder what would happen if the cell companies would throttle you down instead of charging by the kilobyte?

LD Wifi is not an available. Cellular internet service will not work in most areas we are, they do not offer enough bandwidth, and is to costly. We use to host 5+ computers through 1 dial up connection, talk about painful.

I wonder what this means for the rest of us who have wildblue I'm hoping it will be better, @ least a better fap, or something better speeds something. I'm hopeful thats all I can be is hopeful.

This acquisition makes sense. ViaSat is promising to ease the capacity crunch associated with satellite broadband with their new ViaSat 1 satellite. Its boasts technology that should help if it works as planned. I guess they wanted to control everything directly from consumer interface to hardware.

»www.viasat.com/broadband ··· viasat-1

My body aches every time I hear satellite and caps. It is just so damn pointless. Rather use dialup with those limitations seriously.

makes my body ache too