Satellite Internet News

Wildblue Communications Inc. based out of Greenwood Village in Colorado, started offering Satellite Internet connectivity across the United States in June 2005. The Chairman of the company is Mark D. Carleton and CEO is Dave J. Leonard. The revenue so far for this year is $8.7 million. The company has 70 employees and is funded by venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. It offers service using the Ka band geosynchronous satellite Anik-F2 which is operated by Telesat Canada. The competitors of Wildblue are HughesNet and Starband. Wildblue is a new company which will take sometime to generate more revenue and increase its employee strength.

As a young company they may not be able to offer the same level of service like an established provider like HughesNet. The support and installation services are not offered by the company directly but outsourced to local agencies. If a customer applies for a connection the installation will be done by an agency which has been authorized by Wildblue. There have been many instances where customers had to face the pangs of dealing with a new company. The local agencies have no solutions if there are problems with the modem and the dish. The billing process of the company has flaws and needs to be rectified so that customers do not get wrong billing details.

People in rural areas are excited about Wildblue because the only option they have now is 56Kbps dial-up connectivity. Unfortunately, the 1.5Mbps advertised download speed is not achieved regularly. Many customers are frustrated to find that the normal speeds are barely more or equivalent to dial-up connectivity. The charge of a connection starts at $50 which is much more than any other modes of Internet connection. Even if subscribers are not satisfied with the service, they have to continue for the minimum period of 12 months. The complainants say that speed of service is much more during the night when usage is less. This factor makes one to believe that Wildblue has oversold its satellite bandwidth capacity. This is a serious problem and until they take steps to increase speed and reliability quickly people will move away from the service.

Technical support is also not responsive and if they do respond the usual response that one might expect are, weather conditions are poor and hence there is downtime. Some customers have logged complaints that they were able to get across to tech support only after trying for 4 days. Wildblue has also been accused of being unfair by customers in regards to their FAP or Fair Access Policy. Under the manner of the policy customers have been denied of their legitimate bandwidth. The company has used this free bandwidth to increase the subscriber base. A subscriber with a committed bandwidth of 512 Kbps has been able to download only at speeds of 125 Kbps. As a young company, Wildblue is facing these problems and many more. The company should take steps to rectify the errors in processes so that customers do not face recurring speed and reliability problems in future. It will help Wildblue to remain competitive in the years ahead.