Hey guess what guys! All of you comparing Satellite internet with cable & dsl? You are NOT the target market for WildBlue internet. WildBlue internet, being SATELLITE and all, is focused at people who can't get cable or dsl. Good example, my grandparents own property on the freakin side of a mountain. Anticipated time for DSL OR CABLE? 5 to 10 years, give or take...yeah so $50 for WildBlue vs no internet (my grandfather refuses to get a landline when he has a cell phone)...pretty good deal if you ask him!

The sad thing is that people will actually pay $49.95 for that crap! Most likely AOL users!

We were paying $50 a month for dial up and an extra phone line. This service is far superior to dial-up. Furthermore, it's our only other option, since we live in a rural area.

They have the ability to charge this much because their target consumers have little or no other options to choose from.

This is totally redicuous, 49.95 for a 128k connecttion plus what they are failing to mention is that you have to buy the equipment. Believe me, we have checked into this already with Dish and guess what, no matter which package you have, your upstream remains at 128k. This is totally unacceptable. They use the excuse that they are providing a service to rural areas that otherwise cannot get highspeed. We wake up Wildblue, many of those rural areas already have DSL and it feed through a straw (Copper), at 128k just like your company. Come on guys, get with the program, higher upstreams and downstreams at a reasonable cost to the subscribers.

Why would DirecTV bundle with WildBlue, when their parent company owns HughesNET (used to be Direcway). I think it would make more sense to their bottom line but who knows.

HughesNet is owned by Sky Terra, no affiliation with the DIRECTV Group. That is last year's news.

Uhhh, has DirecTV ever heard of BUNDLING?!?!??!!?? Hel-l-l-l-l-o-o-o! Don't all, if most, cable companies lower their prices of broadband internet if the subscriber already receives TV programming?

What a rip-off. $50 bucks ON TOP OF at least $45 for Total Choice + locals per month? Screw that. Bundle the internet, make it $30 per month or so (especially for THOSE speeds) and I'll starting *thinking* about thinking about it.

You're right of course, but that only works in markets where there is competition. Satellite Internet has the advantage of being in a market with no (or very little) competition. In my area only Cable is available and my basic digital cable package + Internet costs about $110/month. If I was willing to live with a slower speed package I could save maybe $30/month, but with no competition there's no reason for the Cable company to lower the bill. There's a town 8 miles down the road where the same package that I have is about $70/month. Why? Because DSL is also available there.

If you were in an area with only a 24kbps (when you were lucky) modem line available, you'd throw down the $50 extra for something like this because you'd have to.

Totally agree — $50 is a serious ripoff for that low-end crap-package. These guys better start at 5M and go up from there if they want to gain business rather than just carve off a tiny slice of the market.

Very true. Satellite's big market advantage (in both TV and Internet) is availability. That's really the only thing I've seen them push in their advertisements for satellite Internet: "Available anywhere in the continental U.S." (from the DirecWay commercial). I must say, it's far better than our only other option, dial-up, even if it is expensive.

Throw in a subscription to Sirius radio and I'd take it.

I live between two main roads and the road I live on is one mile long; we do not receive cable nor sewer hookup. We do get water. we are less than 3 miles from the city and they still will not provide us with DSL. Is this news to anyone in this day and age.
Linda

I live about 15 miles from town but our local phone company Embarq (formerly Sprint Local) offers up to 5 Mbit ADSL now for $39.95 a month. We can't get cable, water, sewer or anything. I was seriously thinking about DirecWay when Sprint and Chater told us there were no plans for HSI in our area. Thank you Embarq! Maybe there is hope for others.

Um, what?

We've had satellite Internet service from DirecTV for over two years now (rural area; would get cable otherwise, because the latency is terrible). This is news?

When satelite TV allows an individual to hook up at least 5 TVs without additional cost or equipment, then, MAYBE, satelite TV will be on an equal footing with cable. Charging for individual boxes for each TV and adding $5 per month for each TV is what keeps me from going to either DirecTV or EchoStar. I hate my cable provider, but I hate Satelite TV even more.

Additionally, 512 kbps down/128 kbps up for $50 per month is rediculous if you can get HighSpeed Internet Service from your telco. I'm paying about $30 per month and probably could get it cheaper if I were willing to change my wife's email address.

This isn't exactly a new idea. DirecTV has had DirecDuo for years.

This also isn't meant to compete with DSL and cable. It's for places that don't have those options.

512kbps down and 128 up? Are they Nuts. Given the speeds of cable internet, that might as well be dialup. People will simply do the math and never sign up. Unless you live on a island somewhere.

$50 for 512 down? HAHAHA wow... rediculous. For that much is almost worth moving into a non-rural area just to save the extra 35 bones a month.

I'm sure it costs a lot more than $420 a year to move... especially if it means having to find a new job.

Exactly right. You'd have to double my salary to get me to move out of the sticks and retain my quality of life. I'm lucky to have cable when people just a few miles away do not. I have co-worker friends who pay the $100 or so a month it costs for Direcway, and they wouldn't want to move where I was, let alone into a city. $420 is about what a month of rent for a 3 bedroom home (not even townhouse) in my area costs. I don't mind spending twice as much on cable Internet for half the speed as I had when I lived in a city. Everything else makes it worth while.

WOW! If your broadband speeds are super-fast, i'd want to move there right now.

It's $79 a month for 1.5mbps down and 256Kbps up and it works pretty damn good. I'm a Wildblue customer and I'm out in the sticks.. It's better than living in the multicultural, diversity up the a** city where crime is more and having peace of mind is non-existant. It works pretty good with Torrents and getting around on the Net. Only problem is the latency which you can't get around because it's a 90,000 mile round trip for a return packet. so about 598ms to 800ms is the expected latency. light travels 186,000 miles a second so a half a second is about right for satelite..

I'm told 5Mbps down and 512Kbps up, but tested is more like 4.5Mbps down and 300Kbps up. Plenty enough for VoIP, work VPN, and everything else I do, but the upload speed bugs me occasionally.

The biggest downside is that good jobs are slim. It took me several years of work elsewhere to find a job here that suits me with a nationally based payscale, benefits, etc. If you like to do anything in a city then you'd also have to get used to driving at least two hours to find one. I think that if you're willing to put up with those two things you'd be able to find a lot of locations like the one I'm in.

I agree. I hate being ripped off by the one and only local cable service for over $100/mo. for basic cable television and Internet, however, as you point out, there are very few urban areas where once finds the average home price (3 bedroom) at under $60,000. Since we own a nice home, with a house payment of under $350/mo., it would be difficult to consider moving. What would we get for that in a nice urban area? A cardboard box?