WildBlue Halts New Sign-ups

[Nick]

WildBlue has told its dealers that it is suspending new orders on three southern
spot beams. The company has "experienced an unexpected spike in order activity"
and as a result, is above 90 percent capacity on all three southern beams including
pending orders.

Due to the unexpected activity, WildBlue said it would stop accepting new orders
beginning today at 6 p.m. MST. Once all pending orders are installed, the company
said it will review the capacity of those beams to determine if there is availability
for additional customers.

[hidave]

They should have cut off subscriptions to The South a long time ago. I signed up in June of 2006, and had good service for a couple of months. But since then, I am continually throttled back. Now I can only use the service before 9 AM. Somewhere between then and noon, I am throttled so severely the service is useless. Yesterday the satellite and MODEM wouldn't connect AT ALL from 9:30 AM until 8:00 PM. How's that for service? WildBlue tech service only sends out a technician (for $75) when I complain and after checking out the system, he just shrugs his shoulders and says nothing is wrong. After all, it works perfectly up until about 9 AM every day, so isn't it obvious nothing is wrong with my hardware/software?????????? WildBlue refuses to admit they are rationing my service. I wish to GOD there was an alternative to dial-up.

[Nick]

Welcome, hidave.

I recently helped my daughter get WildBlue for her home which is literally out in
the middle of nowhere. I haven't heard her complain about the speed (yet?), but
having upgraded from a previous very poor dial-up connection, I would imagine
that anything would be an improvement, even a throttled-back WildBlue.

I'm thankful that I'm in an area served by a very fast Comcast cable broadband.