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 Review by Googled 
Posted: 1.6 years ago
member for 7 years, 1701 visits, last login: 1 days ago
 Angola,Erie,NY
 Contract price not specified.
 "Decent speeds"
 "High ping times, some services blocked"
 "Much better than dial-up, but not nearly as good as DSL or Cable"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Mail,DNS,News:
Value for money:
(ratings above consensus)
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I had WildBlue select pak installed on 11/16/2005 by DFT Communications a NRTC member. I've been using the service for over a year now. I pay $69.95 per month for 1.0 Mbps down, 200 Kbps up with a 30 day FAP limit of 12 GB down and 3 GB up.
The installation was painless. The only thing they did "wrong" was not use the correct WildBlue pole mount adapter when installing. The installer used two C-Clamps to hold the satellite dish onto the metal pole that had been used previously for DirecWay. To the installers credit though the dish has been installed this way for over a year and has never needed to be realigned.
The WildBlue modem can be connected directly to a computer or through a router to share the connection to multiple computers. I have a dynamic IP address, but I think it only changes if the WildBlue modem is rebooted.
I'll keep my opinions of pros and cons to bullet points.
Positive Points:
* Web browsing is snappy and responsive.
* EMail - works great I can send and receive high res photos.
* VPN - It works, but not well due to the high latency of satellite
* Reliable - I have only had one outage for about 3 or 4 hours since signing up a year ago.
* Speed - The WildBlue system appears to be keeping their speeds up near the speed I ordered. They made a 'promise' not to oversubscribe the satellite and it appears that they have kept it so far on the download.
Negative Points:
* Speed - The upload speed has never been near the ordered speed. I get about half of the ordered speed.
* EMail - I do not use the WildBlue email service. It has low 25MB mailbox limit.
* FAP - There is a FAP. This limits how much you can download. I knew this when signing up and it hasn't been a problem for me. WildBlue did change their FAP policy after I signed up from a monthly limit to a rolling 30 day limit.
* Some services are don't work or are blocked. A couple that I have tried are Skype and Bittorrent
* Gaming - I haven't tried realtime gaming, but know that due to the high ping times associated with all satellite connections they won't be playable.
Having had DirecWay previously I would say that WildBlue has provided a far better experience from usablility and quality of service. Even so, if DSL, Cable or Wireless are available they are a far better choice than satellite.
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