Comments on: Wildblue FAP and how it is monitored

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 06 May 2010 16:16:59 +0000

Wild Blue’s Fair Access Policy (FAP)is presumably meant to cap each user at some maximum level to avoid slowing of the system across the board; a bit like too many people on the cable. This, of course, presupposes that such limitation is reasonable and fair in what is essentially a utility.

Yet, I agree that they are remarkably inflexible and opaque about applying it.

I have the highest priced residential package for my home with only three users, and generally use 25% of my bandwidth allowance. However, this spikes with large downloads or guests with laptops. Wild Blue is in agreement with this assessment, and agrees that the bandwidth usage utility only shows last 30 days usage and not on a daily basis, and lags about 1-2 full days behind real-time. Yet, they are absolutely inflexible about waiving their penalties even though admitting that slowing is to about dial-up speed.

Penalizing long-time paying customers who typically use 25% of what they’re paying for with month-long severe cuts in service for 1-2 day long sporadic (twice in 4 months) spikes in use is certainly a poor business model and seems to reflect the practices of a company fully aware that its customer base is a captive audience with no ready access to real alternatives.

In other words, Wild Blue Sucks For Specific Reasons!

By: Jon

Jon — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 06:04:20 +0000

FAP Status: In violation (In violation)
Percentage
Used Current
Usage
(MB x 1000) Maximum
Available
Threshold
(MB x 1000)
Download
99 % 16.8 17.0
Upload
35 % 1.7 5.0

I am in violation at 16.8 when the threshold is 17! They stole .2 from me.

I sent them a message stating that they remove my so-called FAP violation or I’ll remove myself as their customer.

By: Tom

Tom — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 01:00:42 +0000

All I can really say is that the satelite internet service industry sucks yet they’re our only choice-and they know that! They charge us outrageous prices for subpar service and mediocre internet speed (when its not being throttled). I’ve had wildblue for about 3 years now, we had to increase our package from the 4.2 GB plan to the 8GB and STILL I can’t seem to avoid their unreasonable FAP. I try to leave my computer alone-I don’t even use it on the weekends as I’m at my mothers house and during the weekdays I’m at school. Aside from that I usually just browse web pages and do online school work (when WB isn’t offline) yet we are ALWAYS over the threshold limit. All I can say is that either wb gets its act together or I’m leaving. Dial up would be more practical at this point.

By: Sean

Sean — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 17:49:50 +0000

I Feel everyone’s pain i have had wildblue for almost a month and they keep saying i am abusing the service and their FAP graphs say i’m at 154% over 70 but i haven’t even used my computer in 2 weeks so how can i be over the limit without using it i check it evryday now and it says 154% everyday even when i leave it alone for a week this is a far worse service than hughs.net i can’t wait for comcast or verizon to get to my area.

By: Ernest Lynn

Ernest Lynn — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 20:02:19 +0000

have had wb for about 3 years now. Only service available in my area. 1400 ping times and 50kbs download speeds make me sick but I have not alternative that I can see. I ran over my 250mb a day by only about 20mb. I haven’t DLed anything in 5 days and my usage meter hasn’t moved from %90.

By: Terri Huper

Terri Huper — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 16:21:26 +0000

We have the same story with our Wild blue service in regard to the Fapping. We also are trying to run a business and can’t afford to go without internet service. We are also in a rural area and have no other choices than dial up or satelite. What can we do? I’d like to find out who and where to write a letter to Wild blue to complain. Maybe it wouldn’t change anything, but I want to do something.

By: Bruce

Bruce — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 03:19:28 +0000

I totally hate wildblue. I am on dialup because I have been fapped with no warning or evidence except a one day spike. I have no choice but to tell this service to go to hell. It is bad for my blood pressure to pay premium bills for a service that does not even work. I am so frustrated. Rural America is ripped off on internet and cell service and land line phones. What happened to the Obama stimulus plan to wire the nation…………guess they are too busy fighting useless wars.

By: Thom Janssen

Thom Janssen — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 12:56:06 +0000

Wow, all it took was a Google search for “wild blue sucks” to find this and other web sites dedicated to this problem. All I can say, unfortunately, is “ditto” to the many horror stories and complaints. As I write this I am working with the nearly totally unworkable FAP slowdown. I work on computers and had to get updates for a fresh Windows XP install from SP1 onward - sure enough this pushed over the FAP threshold by a few MB. After suffering through a week waiting to get back to 80% I called Wild Blue only to discover that the new FAP policy is 24hrs at 70%!!
Fortunately, the cell phone wireless option seems to be a viable alternative. I will know better tomorrow on this. Bye bye Wild Blue!!!!

Oh yeah, please include me in any class action law suit info.

By: engnbldr

engnbldr — Sat, 31 May 2008 15:35:08 +0000

Morning!
My wife and I have a remote home, we have Wild blue plus dialup,
a requirement to maintain connections. I am on dialup as I
write this.
Early on, email queries were responded to, now emails are
returned.
We tried several times via phone, my wife was on the phone
from 9 AM until 3 PM, it seems one person gives up, moves us
to the next “tier”, puts us on hold, then the line goes dead.
We then start over.
The problem? No connection, over and over. Rain, wind, clouds,
any weather upset and no service. Here that is 60% of the time.
We were told it was OUR equipment, so I drove 170 miles to our
home and got my biggest system that works fine on DSL at that
location.
No connection.
We tried the laptop, too. Same problem. It ISN’T US, folks!
Now I KNOW it can work, it actually does sometimes. And
fairly fast, too. It just goes down for no reason in the
middle of an email or when I am working, or speeds are slowed
to nearly nothing.
Think of a 17 minute download of my banking site that is 3
seconds at our other home. I timed that one day. Yet sometimes
it is 15-20 seconds, we could live with that. The same site
on dialup is 15-20 seconds at 40K.
We have had to increase our timeouts to even use Wild Blue.
I understand that wireless satellite can be problematic
during weather upsets but we read the ads, paid for premium
service.
We are not getting that, dialup is not only far more consistant
but it also is faster after an hour or two as we are throttled
down to readings as slow as 15K.
We checked, we are nowhere near our “limits” for the service
pay for. No matter, that is done to us anyway. The company denies
doing this but we can read download speeds.
A serviceman would be nice, and we actually got to the point
where one was promised. Except the phone went dead, we
called back and they started over, wanting to “check our
system.” That has been done several times now.
Some conversations with support seem to actually be nothing
but stalling, or pretend attempts to help.
Yes, I understand the problems with Satellite. I just think
the company should explain that these problems can and do happen,
rather than make claims they cannot and do not deliver.
I doubt we will renew, we are checking on Clearwire and
others.
Going to the BBB is a waste of time, all those folks do is
collect money since that is just a private company, we have
been down that road.
The answer to a company offering poor service and response is
to replace them….We sadly are ready to give up with
Wild Blue…*EB