In the past, satellite internet service has been a very slow source of internet, and so it has been very unpopular. In fact, it was considered a ‘last resort’ to use internet. But this may change with Exede, a satellite broadband service by ViaSat. Exede is offering much higher upload and download rates and a very competitive internet speed, which puts it at par with other services which make use of fiber optic. Although for now, the service is limited to certain regions of US, it may be available in more regions in the coming days.
Exede was launched by ViaSat in October, 2011. This is the first satellite service of it’s kind which is providing very high-speed internet access. Currently, ViaSat claims that it will be offering up to 12Mbps download speed and up to 3 Mbps upstream speed. You can get a ViaSat connection for a $50 per month starting charges, although you will have to pay an additional $149.99 as a setup fee. One glitch in this excellent internet service is that currently, it caps a per user internet volume at 7 GB. If you exceed the limit, you get a very slow internet speed.
The company has built a ground-system too, together with the satellite. This ground-system features some web-acceleration technology which makes internet service through the satellite even faster, just like an optic fiber connection. Currently, only the users at East and West coasts of US are able to get the top speed internet from ViaSat. Those in other areas of US will receive an Exede5 connection, in which the top download speed if 5 Mbps while upload stream is 1 Mbps.
Exede is also entering a number of other realms with it’s satellite service. Dish is planning to collaborate with Exede to launch a bundle plan which will include the satellite TV service of Dish. The basic package of this bundle offer will start at $79.95. Jet Blue and Continental are also planning to launch a wi-fi service which makes use of Exede’s satellite internet service. According to Exede, such a service will be far more affordable for airliners, compared to the current internet they use from mobile companies. Moreover, Exede is also very confident that it will soon partner with a number of carriers.
Image courtesy Jan Tik.
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So far their service has been an absolute terrible experience. And I’m not even hooked up yet!! Their logistics team for deployment should be hung by they’re toes. They failed hard. It wasn’t available on the 16th as advertised. The costumer service reps wouldn’t call when they said they would to let me know that it still wasn’t available the week after. I had to call them again in which they said they will probably throw the switch in an hour they would call me back in an hour which they didn’t. The next week a rep told me it was available and gave me an install date, then smacked me with $150 fee (You don’t see that anywhere in they’re advertising perhaps in the small print). The day of install they called and said the tech didn’t even have the equipment for the install!! When we called to reschedule the rep said the computers were down and he couldn’t find our information. He then said he would call back, did he? No. I called today and set up an install date one more time two days shy of a month later. And I called a week before it was even available to get the ball moving so this wouldn’t happen. All I have to say is. . . it better be worth it. If not. . .well I’m getting my money back, and just tethering my phone for free.
I took a day off from work because they were going to install Exede. They never showed, never called. I called THEM, and got at least three different lies. Little do they know, I already have a pretty good internet service, so to HELL with them. They lost a customer. All I’ve ever heard about them is apparently true. I’m sure as hell not statring with a company that is willing to waste my time like this before I even have their service!
I have been trying for over 3 weeks to upgrade
from wildblue to exede. To this date I have yet to be able to get a date for
installation therefore I have no true comment on the speed. Apparently there is
some ‘error’ messages that noone in the tech department can figure out or by
pass there fore leaving me in complete limbo on my upgrade. And now after
reading some of the nightmares of the actual installation I’m even more
worried. Unfortunately because I live in the middle of no where they have me
and many like me by the short hairs with no choice but to deal with this stupid
situation. Unless someone would like to get off their butt and get this figured
out and soon I can promise u the second something else is available in my area
I will be gone from any affiliation with ViaSat and will not be recommending it
to anyone I know or meet in the future… My initial contact I spoke with a
couple of very nice people but my frustration over this situation is now over
shadowing any of their cordial attempts to make me happy in any way. We make
jokes at my work place over our IT guys and the little bit they actually do to
keep their jobs but after dealing with this situation ViaSat IT guys make ours
seem like genius’ … In short if you have any choice other than satellite use
it
I just cancelled them. I have been living out a bit for 6 years now and had been stuck with wireless internet as the best option. I have been through 4 wireless providers since I have been here. It used to go down often and stay down at times for days. However, a larger company bought my latest wireless ISP and did improve the connection. I had not seen it go down for months. I have been waiting for really good internet since I moved here. Calling the DSL and Cable providers every 6 months or so to see when or if they will come into my area. When I got the Exede flyer in the mail boasting 12mb download speeds I about jumped out of my skin. I called immediately and talked to the sales guy. At $59/month it was even cheaper than my current wireless provider. The 7.5gb monthly limitation was a concern, but I decided to give it a try. After a $149 “new account” set up fee, they came out an put in the monstrous dish (didn’t care as long as it worked). The first bill came…$77 dollars! I called and they told me it was prorated and that the bill after taxes would be $59. I said OK and let it go. However, I noticed that it seemed slower with page loads and it went down several times (first day on too…) I did a test with both providers and although the Speedtest.net showed huge speeds on Execde, the pages still loaded slower than my current provider. I ran these tests with two laptops side by side and then switched them to see if it may have been just one of the PC being faster. The old provider was faster with a page load, but the speedtest showed Excede to be faster. I thought that made no sense, so I called Excede to talk to someone about it. They customer service guy took me to another site to test the speeds, one that downloaded pictures of different sized. It was definitely not running like is should have so they sent a guy out to look at it. The guy left about 30 minutes ago and said nothing was wrong. I got everything from the “Oh it must be the bandwidth” to “could be a virus” from the guy and customer service… I hate lame excuses when they don’t really know! I cancelled them. Not what they said it would be, plus a 7.5gb limitation and a two year contract, not happy. They did say they would refund me the $149, but not the $77. I will call it stupid tax and move on. My recommendation? Don’t waste your time and money… they obviously haven’t got it figured out yet…. Satellite still stinks.
I just had my Excede upgrade last week from Wildblue 1.5 plan. There is no comparison between the 2 services. The installer was on time and very helpful. However the cutomer service at Excede/Wildblue still SUCKS!! they want go out of there way to resolve any issues and seem to be in expierenced and just don’t care. But the new system is GREAT!!! Just don’t call expecting any help from there customer service. Make sure everything is to your satisfaction before the installer leaves.
PLEASE DON’T DEAL WITH THESE PEOPLE!!! It has been 3 weeks since my last post, they removed the $149 charge for “installation” and said they would send out a box (I called twice about the box) so I could put the equipment into and ship it back. No Box, now a $340 charge!! I am on the phone with them now (second time as the first customer service rep hung up on me for “cussing” at her…The strongest word used was “crap”! as in “I have had enough of your companies crap”) I was ready to eat the $77 pro-rated charge for my 2 weeks of service that was not what they said it would be, but not now. I will dispute the whole thing… DO NOT TRY THIS PRODUCT AND SERVICE!!!!
I just got Wild blue. The first installer came out he installed the dish 3 and 1/2 feet above the ground, and let a mess in our new home. MY brother cut his toe off a sharp piece of metal shavings from his mess. That wasn’t to big of a deal. Lets back track, before we bought their service They told my brother and I over the phone we are guaranteed 12 mbps download and 3 mbps up load. Rofl BULL SH**! After the installation our internet kept disconnecting constantly… My brother and I were like WTF ?! So we called them. They said we should be getting that speed and they will send a tech over. We told them not to send the same tech over He was very lazy he did a slap nut job and left said nothing that it was hooked up or anything. They said okay np we’ll send you a different tech. The tech came. Guess what? It was the same tech. He came in and said oh it’s your router. Bs I turned the router into a porthub not it’s not going off a WAN connection. He said then it’s your computers then. Bs Computers are brand new. My brother says “hey maybe it’s just you”. The guy said idk what to tell you everything I set up here is right. He, also said it’s the company’s problem call them. I said Don’t you work for the company? He says yes I do, so? I said then it’s also your FK****** problem to! Moron! He left in a hurry. I called the company. told them what happened they said. HE’s a tech he was hired through us he needs to fix it. I said send another tech out and this time if you send that same tech out I’m done with you guys and we will kick him off our property, and not in a nice way. They sent a different tech out this time the tech was pissed to see where the satellite was. He called the boss immediately bitching. So he put the satellite higher up on out house we had to cut a tree down. No biggy on the tree. But Wow he asked us to use our ladder? Lol WTF where the hell is yours? He didn’t have 1. So whatever we let him use it he hooked it all up. comes in and uses the speedtest come up 10 mbps down and up came to 1.62 or 3 give or take. I wasn’t angry I said bro here’s the real test come here. turned my ps3 on ran the test 2.8 mbps down and 285 kbps up. I said to him. NOW! WTF do you see? He couldn’t figure it out. And they still can’t figure it out. from the date this is posted i only had this service for 1 and 1/2 weeks and alrdy bs problems.I found this other person who provides wireless internet cheaper to he’s coming to survey my land so I’m praying I can get something better so I can tell wildblue to shove it. Thanks for reading. Oh and by the way Wildblue, exede, and direct tv all work together so ya’ll no.How I know is I got the wild blues number and when the techs came out 1 was driving a van that had direct tv writin all over it and the other had exede on. Everything the others said was true don’t waiste your money on them garbage satellite internet providersWe’re definitely not anymore. Take all, and God bless.
HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE (yes, I’m yelling) company. Don’t even THINK of signing up.
When I changed over from Hughesnet after ten years (a monopoly in my area) I thought to myself “Thank gods they’re gone from my life forever. That had to be the WORST-RUN COMPANY on the planet.” Boy was I in for a rude awakening. Excede, er, Wildblue, er, ViaSat, er Google (or whomever else isn’t actually taking responsibility for their satellite switching issues) completely screwed up my OS, email accounts, access and sign-ins, switched my private accounts to some Google password, and ate my entire holiday season private emails.
Calls to customer service sent me into a discombobulated queue hell for literally hours on end, sometimes abruptly hanging up on me, other times rerouting me back to the original menu, eventually culminating in incompetent-to-utterly-clueless techs who didn’t even know the difference between a PC and a Mac and who after going through their canned menu for twenty minutes finally told me that tech escalation was “down”. For three days in a row.
Here are a few unresolved case numbers: ****-052 (Melissa, who at least tried). ****911 (Kenny who gave up and referred me to my dialup provider.) ****545 (Steven, who told me he “couldn’t guarantee the problem would ever be resolved”) And these were all SUPERVISORS (whom I spent hours in queue and on hold waiting to speak to.) I also tried to contact you online (when the server was actually operating) only to be contacted two days later with the advice that I “check the POP server on my PC”.
I read their seven page service agreement word by word and saw NOTHING about Google having access to my accounts. I contracted with something called “Excede” and got bait-and-switched to something called “Wildblue” which tells me it’s actually ViaSat and a “partner” with Google. Which I would never have signed up for had I known. When I call the nice installer to check on the setup, my (four) messages to the cell phone number he gave me to call “if anything is amiss” go unanswered. When I go to their status meter to see why I can’t get online, all the little green check marks tell me the system is operating “normally”. Worst of all, I recommended this dreadful company to my aged father, and he signed up. Now he’s even more apoplectic that he was before.
I’m now told I can’t get out of the contract for non-performace and fraudulent representation.
Dishonesty and incompetence are no way to garner customer loyalty. I never thought I’d say this, but in my darker moments I find myself longing for the known devil that was Hughesnet.
this is the most horrible internet service i have ever had…i only use my internet for farmville…and well what can I say…I have not been able to get on it since we moved to this god forsaken country city of stapleton alabama…excede is a BIG joke…please please don’t use them…they tried to tell my husband i have a virus on my computer…well yes I do!! it’s called excede internet…funny how fast it works on att u verse in Mobile…someone needs to investigate this company…I hate griping but this makes me furious!
DO NOT SIGN UP WITH EXCEDE, DO NOT, DO NOT, DO NOT!!!!!!!
I just signed up for it and had to wait through 2 cancellations of the installer and I went ahead and paid the leasing fee to save $40 over the 2 year period. I was told that the total monthly payment would not be $49.99 and when I got my first bill it was $77.85! Upon calling the company ( and being on hold for 10 minutes) I was informed that the first bill was always the highest and that my monthly bill would be $69.99 due to the taxes!
$20 a month taxes?????
I am going to talk with the local district attorney about bait and switch and try to get reaeased frfom the contract.