February 20, 2010

Still no joy with WildBlue

When I spoke with them on Wednesday, they said that if I curtailed my usage for two days, my account would be reset to nominal performance and the performance would improve over the next 30 days as long as I stayed below the minimum download amount. They also said that their system was more fussy about use during prime time (6PM to 10PM) Fair enough -- I shut down my complete satellite dish setup during evenings and kept it on overnight to download email (a business requirement). At late nights, I would be able to open one sluggish browser window but nothing more. Today, I log in to their account maintenance webpage and see the following:
wildblue_arrrgghhhh.jpg
Arrrgghhhh... How long do I have to wait until my bandwidth is restored to a usable level? I can go with a business plan and get the same horrible packet loss and latency issues but a bigger download capacity but that is almost $200/month and I can get a full T-1 for under $500 and have fifty times the performance and no packet loss or latency. There is no financial incentive for WildBlue to improve the quality of their service as they are one of three Satellite ISPs and they are all uniformly horrid to deal with. Posted by DaveH at February 20, 2010 4:20 PM