Anyone subscribe to "wildblue"?

[Helene]

Our wireless internet provider informed us this week that he will quit his business as of end of December. I had my doubts when we signed up about 8 months ago. It was a small start-up company and we thought it had great potential if it worked. We paid an equipment fee (antenna, router, etc), an installation fee, and a monthly charge. The service was intermittent, but when it worked it was way better than out "snail speed" dial up service.
We have very few choices. Go back to slow dial up or satellite service. "Wildblue" just moved into this area. "Hughes" would be the other choice. I've heard some negative things about "Hughes", what about "Wildblue"?

[pnalley]

Helene,
Although, I have never had to deal with satellite. One of the forums I attend has had a huge discussion over the past year about the different providers.

They (the appraisers group) feel Wild Blue is the best one. I do have two friends that wound up with Hughes due to a buy out, they are not happy with Hughes.

Don't know if that helps or muddies the waters. Good luck!

[lisa l aka marci]

Helene - we got Wildblue a few months ago......so far it has bee pretty reliable, although if a lot of people are using the service pages can load a bit slow - but usualy faster than dial-up anyway. Uploading video and pictures is MUCH faster.......our dish is at ground level on a pole - pretty easy to get to when it snows, ices etc- in fact right now it is icy out but no problems with the connection - we have had more problems with out satellite TV than the internet! (2 different providers and dishes)

Of course, about 3 months after signing contracts etc we saw a sign down the road saying that DSL was now available in our area!!! Don't know if our road is included though, we were about 1/4 mile from the end of the service.....

[JennLM]

We were going to get Wildblue but they wanted a lot of money up front. Instead we got AT&T Satellite and could not be happier. We had it sent to us ina box and in less then 3 minutes were up and running.

[lisa l aka marci]

We were going to get Wildblue but they wanted a lot of money up front. Instead we got AT&T Satellite and could not be happier. We had it sent to us ina box and in less then 3 minutes were up and running.

Guess what Jenn? AT&T satellite is powered by WildBlue according to a press release I just found!

I wanted to look it up to see if it was available in our area.

[Carol Nelson]

Sigh...don't even get me started on Hughes.Net. I have been fighting them for several months now. My opinion is they are going to go belly up here shortly so don't hook up with them now. Their service is abominable. I am still limping along at slower than dial-up speeds...get this, my upload speed is sometimes 4, 7 or 8!!! When it should be over 350 and prime being 730 to 800!
You never get to talk to anyone who speaks English, even when you ask for Advanced Support, and when you do get A.S., they just continually try to sell you something.
My problem here is that we are in a nice little pocket where all that is available in high speed is satellite. I am signed up on Wildblue's waiting list, but they are careful to not overload their system so you wait to get their service. Everyone here raves about them.
Broadband is just around the corner...my next door neighbor and I tried to get Cobalt a few weeks ago, just to find out that we are not line-of-sight to the tower in Lockhart. We would have to install a pole to push our receiver higher than the trees. We are on their waiting list to get the new through-the-trees wireless system.
However now my neighbor found another broadband company out of Seguin which has a higher antena and they are coming out this next week to check us out and see if we are able to reach their tower. There should be no trees in the line-of-sight of their antena.
But forget Hughes.Net. They're awful...and more expensive than Wildblue, at least here.

[JennLM]

Now it's even funnier Wild Blue cost more, not only to start up, but per month and how fast we chose. There was a good 1/3 the price difference per month here. Amazing....

Kind of like my folks have Nextel phones, to get Bluetooth it was a ton more to go through Nextel but they got their Sprint Bluetooth for 1/2 the price of Nextel. Go figure.

[Helene]

Carol, I feel with you. We, too, are in a "pocket". I was so happy to get wireless....We had to put an antenna on top of a pole on top of our roof of our two story house. It had to reach over a ridge with trees to be in sight with an antenna put up on a neighbor's indoor arena's roof. Sometimes it worked surprisingly well even in high winds. Didn't look too pretty, though. Aside from satellite this was the only answer. It cost us about $300 for equipment and installation and then about $40 per month. We thought it quite reasonable...even though we had times where it didn't work for days and the service or any communication were non-existent. We never knew when it worked and for how long. Just had to see.
NOW.... our neighbor had some satellite service installed that cost him close to $2,000. I couldn't see spending that much since I don't use the computer that much.
Wildblue expanded into our region just about 6 months ago. I contacted them a couple of days ago. It will take a couple of weeks to get it. The installation is much cheaper than Hughes....$200 versus $600. The monthly charge is supposed to be around $50 versus ???? more???. It's much more than a dial-up would be, but I hope it will work. The dish will probably have to be placed next to our direct tv dish. By the way, direct tv has been wonderful, hardly ever any outages and good service.
I was just wondering which service was better...hughes or wildblue. Thank you all, this makes my decision so much easier. I was thinking I'd get "taken again" (since I know nobody here who has wildblue) and then still would have to go with Hughes.

[hast]

I'm on Hughes and are very happy with it. I have no slow time, and so far have never dropped even during heavy rain storms. It couldn't have worked better.
I too keep waiting for DSL since the phone system in our area are upgraded for it... but BellSouth says it might take time. :roll: (Since VPN's doesn't work on sattelite hubby can only use dial-up for work. Oooops. :lol: so when DSL becomes availabel that's what we'll do.)

[JennLM]

It cost us $199 to get started with AT&T. And $40 in equipment.

[motorgypsy]

We're on Hughes, have been on it for several years and really have had only one problem and with tec support I managed to fix it myself so no service fee. It's not smoking fast but it's one heck of a lot faster than dialup. The older dishes do cause problems but there is a great website online with all kinds of ways to tweak them to get more speed.

[GregM]

Thanks for the info on Wildblue, I had not seen much from them and all we can get here is dialup. Zzzzzzzz...