skyhammer

I agree that ka band is much more tolerant of rain than ku band,but a heavy rain will knock it right out. I lose the signal on my Directv at the same time as the Wildblue signal goes down. I have gone below 80% of the advertised speed the few times I have been on in the evening,but over all I am at or above the advertised down load speed. I haven't tested the up load speed that often, but I don't remember ever getting the 256 that is advertised. I am happy if I can upload at 20kps consistently. Most of my neighbors have switched to Wildblue from Hughes and most of us are very happy when we compare our present service with what we had before. Before Hughes I had Starband, which used a phone line to upload and a large dish to download. The highest download(log on) speed was 250kps and up load was 28kps(log on) or 3-5 kps actual speed. Satellite is the worst way to get the Internet, except dial up. The monthly fees are expensive for what you get, the installation is expensive and the technology is fickle at best. But, there aren't many other options and the other other available options have their drawbacks as well. The FAP policy of Wildblue is also much better than Hughes.

Here is the upload test. Both up and download tests were done with rather heavy rain, which has been shuting me down for periods of time. So these two tests are slower than my average. I agree that the speeds slow down in the the few times I am online in the evening. I am rarely awake past 8PM as I have to get up at 3:30AM to feed the cows. :::.. Upload Stats ..::: Upload Connection is:: 149 Kbps about 0.1 Mbps (tested with 579 kB) Upload Speed is:: 18 kB/s Tested From:: https://testmy.net/ (Main) Test Time:: 2010/01/17 - 9:03am Bottom Line:: 3X faster than 56K 1MB Upload in 56.89 sec Tested from a 579 kB file and took 31.781 seconds to complete Upload Diagnosis:: Looks Great : 4.93 % faster than the average for host (wildblue.net) U-Validation Link:: https://testmy.net/stats/id-7I5YZCFXE User Agent:: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/4.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0) [!]

:::.. Download Stats ..::: Download Connection is:: 1507 Kbps about 1.5 Mbps (tested with 1544 kB) Download Speed is:: 184 kB/s Tested From:: https://testmy.net/ (Main) Test Time:: 2010/01/17 - 6:13am Bottom Line:: 26X faster than 56K 1MB Download in 5.57 sec Tested from a 1544 kB file and took 8.393 seconds to complete Download Diagnosis:: Awesome! 20% + : 74.62 % faster than the average for host (wildblue.net) D-Validation Link:: https://testmy.net/stats/id-FL21ZRTVX User Agent:: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/4.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0) [!] This is exactly the speed I pay for. Most of the time it is faster. Weekends, holidays, and peak times it is usually a little slower.

My experience with Wildblue is completely different. I pay for 1500KPS log on and nearly always log on at 1700kps at testmy. It does slow down at peak times, right now I at 1200kps. I have had wildblue now for year. Before that I had Hughes for 5 years. The last year with Hughes I rarely got dialup speeds, and i could not get past the tech support in India. Other than having to reboot the modem once a month or so, I am happy with Wildblue. I also like the fact that Wildblue has their own forum, where you can ask questions of Wildblue and get answers from their techs quickly. I wish you good luck, you will need it.