Satellite Inet Users Be Aware

[KE4EST]

All Satellite based Internet services include a FAP(Fair Access Policy). You can check this out by logging into your account and see how much your usage is and how much your are allowed a month.

The reason I say this is I installed a guy with Wildblue last month. He was allowed 16GBs download every thirty days(this is changing in March for you wildblue customers look at your account). Well he did 22 Gigs in 10 days. He went from dial-up only getting 19.2 - 21k connects to HIGH SPEED he was so exited he started downloading movies and Music, which is OK, but he was downloading tons of it everyday all day. Well he went over he allowed usage and they suspended his account. He is pissed. I told him about the FAP but probably should have been more clear. I have him calmed down now and he isn't going to cancel.

So if you have Satellite Inet watch your usage.
If you install them you might want to remind everyone that you install about this, just to keep someone from cancelling and getting charge backs.

 

[charper1]

Undoubtedly he thought he was paying for unlimited service, what was he told or what did he read before he signed up?

EDIT

Well I took 10 minutes to read their agreement and 5.2 & 5.3 clearly states the limitations AND that they send notification at 80% of the limit so you can take precautions. You must e-sign that you READ IT! (sure a written agreement also follows). 1st offense is lowered bandwith; multi-offense can be up to termination of service. On 3/1/06 they are LOWERING the current limits. To hell with them @ $300 for hardware, $80 - $180 for install and $80 more / month this service is a rip-off IMHO.

 

[jmd102354]

Undoubtedly he thought he was paying for unlimited service, what was he told or what did he read before he signed up?

EDIT

Well I took 10 minutes to read their agreement and 5.2 & 5.3 clearly states the limitations AND that they send notification at 80% of the limit so you can take precautions. You must e-sign that you READ IT! (sure a written agreement also follows). 1st offense is lowered bandwith; multi-offense can be up to termination of service. On 3/1/06 they are LOWERING the current limits. To hell with them @ $300 for hardware, $80 - $180 for install and $80 more / month this service is a rip-off IMHO.

I have WB and think it is great compared to dial up. I only pay $49.00/month.

 

[charper1]

Yes but that is the VALUE pack with only 512k/128k we were assuming for the time that the guy had the best service they offered (thus his confussion over the cap) and used that as the comparison. At $49/mo for 512k that must be your ONLY option? All WB services have a cap.

 

[jmd102354]

Yes but that is the VALUE pack with only 512k/128k we were assuming for the time that the guy had the baest service they offered and used that as the comparison. At $49/mo for 512k that must be your ONLY option/

What do you mean by ONLY option ??

Do you have WB ?

 

[charper1]

What do you mean by ONLY option ?? Do you have WB ?

Everything looks great compared to dialup if dial up is you ONLY other option then sure WB is decent. BUT if there were other HIGH SPEED options, WB is a ripoff.

$15 - $19 per month can get faster DSL; $44 - $55 can get faster DSL and cable; $40 even faster FiOS; thats what was meant by other options IF they were available.

I have these other options and would never pay for WB's high per month fee nor their ridiculously high hardware costs. To me they are extorting users they no can't run and choose another provider.

EVEN if they were my only option I would stay with free dialup. NOW if WB can down to say $20/mo for the 512k and gave me the gear or subsidized it, it would be a GREAT option vs dialup.

 

[jmd102354]

Everything looks great compared to dialup if dial up is you ONLY other option then sure WB is decent. BUT if there were other HIGH SPEED options, WB is a ripoff.

$15 - $19 per month can get faster DSL; $44 - $55 can get faster DSL and cable; $40 even faster FiOS; thats what was meant by other options IF they were available.

I have these other options and would never pay for WB's high per month fee nor their ridiculously high hardware costs. EVEN if they were my only option I would stay with free dialup. NOW if WB can down to say $20/mo for the 512k and gave me the gear or subsidized it, it would be a GREAT option vs dialup.

I believe you are missing the POINT. Why would anyone use any satellite internet service be it WB or Direcway if another option (cable) were available ? I did have Road Runner at my other residence and yes it was faster. I did have the Pro plan with WB (79.00 ) but decided to downgrade to value.
WB a rip off ? Maybe in your opinion . In mine,you get what you pay for.
Dialup ? Never ? They could pay ME and I would stay with WB.

 

[HCI]

You had road runner which was faster and you still went to WB?
How much more expensive was your Road Runner?
I am a Dway installer and it is great for rural people but if you are near DSL or cable I would suggest that anyday. For one the price is not much differant I have Comcast I just had installed and I am getting close to 6 meg for 52.99 a month just 3 dollars more than the 512k 49.99 WB.

Also if you are doing gaming or VOIP satellite will not work cause of the lag, Not the speed the lag. You could have the best pack with Dway 2 meg down and 500k up and it would still not work right cause of this.

 

[HCI]

On the FAP if you were to download 16G with dial up "assuming you were getting the best around 50k" it would take you over 800 hours if my calculations are correct.
You cannot even do that in a month.

 

[KE4EST]

Everything looks great compared to dialup if dial up is you ONLY other option then sure WB is decent. BUT if there were other HIGH SPEED options, WB is a ripoff.

Thats who I install WB for, people that have no other option but dial-up, and are willing to pay. Yes DSL,CABLE, FIBER, ETC.... is faster and cheaper....but we are talking about people, who don't have those options......and believe it or not there are a lot of them, at this point in time.

 

[KE4EST]

I believe you are missing the POINT. Why would anyone use any satellite internet service be it WB or Direcway if another option (cable) were available ?

No one would unless they have money and live in some remote part of the world.

 

[jmd102354]

No one would unless they have money and live in some remote part of the world.

Exactly !

 

[kelton325]

I had DSL, then moved to the *sticks*, where I never could acheive 28.8K with dial-up. One day I got super lucky and got 26.4K. After living with DSL for 5 years, I was dying. There are no other options for BroadBand where I live - no cable, no DSL, only satellite. The day I got WildBlue installed I was celebrating - 512 down/128 up for $49.99. yeah, it's more expensive than the DSL/Cable, and the performance can't compare, however it is makes using the Internet a livable experience. No way in the world would I have WildBlue if DSL or Cable was available, but I don't have that option. That's a trade-off for living in the sticks I guess. If I have to settle for 512 down instead of 1.5 yet get to live in the middle of a beautiful woods like I do, fine by me. It's a personal decision.

The FAP is there, but I've never even come close to it. I do not do file sharing, just 1-2 hours of surfing a day. The service is very stable as well - in 4 months I have not had any extended outages. There was a problem with upload speeds on my spotbeam back in November, but they fixed that and I consistently pull advertised speeds or better.

If you don't have any alternative broadband available, I would highly recommend WildBlue.

 

[GeorgeLV]

If I have to settle for 512 down instead of 1.5 yet get to live in the middle of a beautiful woods like I do, fine by me. It's a personal decision.

More like 5 mbit to 30 mbit service in any decently sized city these days...

 

[KE4EST]

Dang who is getting 30 Megabits.....and what household customer needs that.

 

[damaged]

Dang who is getting 30 Megabits.....and what household customer needs that.

A household who wants to watch HDTV over it.

 

[Claude Greiner]

All Satellite based Internet services include a FAP(Fair Access Policy). You can check this out by logging into your account and see how much your usage is and how much your are allowed a month.

The reason I say this is I installed a guy with Wildblue last month. He was allowed 16GBs download every thirty days(this is changing in March for you wildblue customers look at your account). Well he did 22 Gigs in 10 days. He went from dial-up only getting 19.2 - 21k connects to HIGH SPEED he was so exited he started downloading movies and Music, which is OK, but he was downloading tons of it everyday all day. Well he went over he allowed usage and they suspended his account. He is pissed. I told him about the FAP but probably should have been more clear. I have him calmed down now and he isn't going to cancel.

So if you have Satellite Inet watch your usage.
If you install them you might want to remind everyone that you install about this, just to keep someone from cancelling and getting charge backs.

This customer wants to cancel, YEA RIGHT!

Lets look at this guys options....

#1 Go back to Dialup After downloading 22 Gigs or stuff, you know sure as hell aint happening

#2 Spend a few hundred more dollars, cancel and get Starband or Directway. Could happen, but im sure he is not going to want to pay again after he paid to install Wild Blue, and besides I think those providers have their bandwith caps also

#3 Get DSL or Cable. Wait, I almost forgot this was why he got Wild Blue to begin with

I sold Starband several years ago when it first came out. No matter how crappy the service was, people kept it and paid their bill. Now Granted we did good installs, but Starband did have its fair share of service issues when they first started out. The only time we would loose a customer over it was when DSL or cable was available in their neighborhood.

One thing about internet customers and any sort of satellite intetnet service is that customers will gladly pay the cancellation fee to get rid of it the second DSL or cable becomes available.

 

[CochiseGuy]

If you don't have any alternative broadband available, I would highly recommend WildBlue.

Ditto! I just got WildBlue last week and using the Internet is once again a pleasure instead of an aggravation. Yeah, when I lived in Las Vegas I got up to 4 MB DL speed from Cox cable for $30/mo. When I moved to Tucson last summer I went with 1 MB DSL service from Qwest for $25/mo. When I moved to my 10 acre property in rural SE Arizona last winter, the only choice was dial-up @ $21.95 / mo., and because of the phone quality out here, max connection speed was around 19.2kbps. Talk about a rip-off! I love it out here with the roadrunners, quail, and, yes, coyotes, but I need my tech toys. Thank God for WildBlue, and OTA HD locals and, to a much lesser extent, Dish Network HD.

As for the FAP DL/U monthly restrictions, I think it's reasonable. And, I believe if you check your cable/DSL Internet customer agreement I believe you find a similar FAP policy, although they don't enforce it as vigorously. When I had Cox cable Internet I experimented with P2P movie downloading (I didn't inhale! ). I DL'ed over 20GB in one month & Cox sent me a warning letter pointing out their FAP, which as I recall restricted users to 10GB/mo.

 

[mallured]

I got caught in the FAP trap too. I knew about it, but promptly forgot. The kids came home for Christmas and BANG, throttled down the speed. Forget about the notification at 80% -- they told me two days AFTER I went over my limit! If they would have followed their own rules I would have warned the kids, but I didn't think about it. Went a month paying $50 to get a 24k connection.

To top it off, I had the service one month before they announced the 25% reduction in FAP. They didn't do it just for new customers, instead they sold one particular service at a certain price and one month later they dictate that the cap will be 25% less. They have a legal right to change the pricing, but this isn't how to win friends and influence people. They also changed to all emailed invoices with one week less to pay. No choice. It is too bad because I could be raving about the service instead of dissing it. And there is no way to send them an note, priaise, complaint or suggestion.

 

[HCI]

I got caught in the FAP trap too. I knew about it, but promptly forgot. The kids came home for Christmas and BANG, throttled down the speed. Forget about the notification at 80% -- they told me two days AFTER I went over my limit! If they would have followed their own rules I would have warned the kids, but I didn't think about it. Went a month paying $50 to get a 24k connection.

To top it off, I had the service one month before they announced the 25% reduction in FAP. They didn't do it just for new customers, instead they sold one particular service at a certain price and one month later they dictate that the cap will be 25% less. They have a legal right to change the pricing, but this isn't how to win friends and influence people. They also changed to all emailed invoices with one week less to pay. No choice. It is too bad because I could be raving about the service instead of dissing it. And there is no way to send them an note, priaise, complaint or suggestion.

That is the good thing about Hughesnet formally Direcway. You have a certain amount in a 4 hour period and if you are FAP'ed then you only have 8 hours till your back up to speed instead of a whole month.