Getting Internet service in rural America can involve a whole lot more than calling the local phone company to check if DSL service is available.  When it is not, satellite broadband is often the only realistic choice to access the Internet.  Unfortunately, navigating through the options, terms and conditions, and restrictions requires the help of a lawyer or rocket scientist.

Kevin Hanssen, a dairy farmer in rural Wisconsin is just one of a dozen Stop the Cap! readers who access us over a satellite Internet connection.  He, along with others, have been writing requesting assistance navigating an increasingly confusing amount of detail about recent upgrades taking place at the parent company of his provider — WildBlue, a service of ViaSat.

As Stop the Cap! recently reported, ViaSat is placing a new satellite into service that will bring improved service for certain customers.  Long time customers like Hanssen have waited more than two years for company-promised upgrades that would bring better speeds and more generous usage policies. Currently, Hanssen faces a tiny usage allowance and “broadband” speeds of well under 1Mbps, especially in the evening.

“As a long term customer, I have lived under a plan that gives me 7.5GB in downloads and 2.3GB in uploads, but my experience with WildBlue may be very different than other customers, because the company has so many legacy and special plans that apply to different customers, so it is very hard to say ‘this is WildBlue’s policy’ because it can vary so much,” Hanssen tells us.

Indeed, over WildBlue’s history, ViaSat has changed its access policies several times, sometimes raising, but often lowering usage allowances accompanied by rate adjustments.  Since 2005, WildBlue customers who originally faced a simple 30-day consumption limit that reset after each billing cycle now face a combination of a usage allowance under the company’s “Fair Access/Data Allowance Policy (FAP),” and an even more confusing rolling speed throttle called the “Quota Management Threshold (QMT).”  Exceeding a monthly usage allowance guarantees broadband speeds of dial-up or less.  Speeds are also curtailed temporarily for customers who run browsing sessions that consume as little as 30MB over a 30 minute period.

With the help of Cisco, which created the throttled bandwidth technology, WildBlue’s combined FAP and QMT systems make it impossible for a customer punished just once by speed throttles to completely clear their record as a ‘known bandwidth abuser’ unless they avoid using any bandwidth for a month.  For most customers unequipped to fully grasp the highly technical explanations of both policies, customer service representatives boil it down to something easier to understand: the less service you use, the better the chance you will not face a speed throttle rendering your connection practically unusable.

With strict limits in place, WildBlue not surprisingly scores among the lowest of all Internet Service Providers for customer satisfaction, and its nearest competitor Hughes does no better.

“As you have written before, satellite really is ‘take it or leave it broadband’ — heavily rationed, confusing, and very expensive,” Hanssen says.

For Hanssen and other Stop the Cap! readers who rely on satellite Internet, the promise of new capacity and faster speeds were supposed to turn “satellite as a last resort” into something more comparable to 4G wireless in America’s most rural areas.  But as our readers share, there is a big chasm between marketing hype and reality for customers on the ground.

Confusing Brands & Pricing

ViaSat has not been content to offer customers a single brand of satellite broadband service.  In addition to WildBlue itself, ViaSat markets plans under the American Recovery Act (the broadband stimulus program), co-branded service from DirecTV, DISH, AT&T and the National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative (NRTC), and forthcoming service on its newest satellite, ViaSat 1, which the company is marketing as “Exede” Internet. Customers west of the Mississippi who qualify for the American Recovery Act program get free installation and more generous usage allowances of up to 60GB per month.

“For two years, WildBlue has told us better usage allowances and faster service was coming with the new upgraded satellite, which we assumed would service all existing WildBlue customers,” Hanssen shares. “Now it turns out they are leaving existing WildBlue customers behind on the old satellite and creating a brand new service to sell new customers on the new satellite.”

Indeed, for marketing purposes, WildBlue and Exede are two different entities, and WildBlue customers looking for faster speeds from Exede will need to pony up at least $150 for new equipment, sign a new contract, and switch to a new Fair Access Policy that actually delivers many customers a lower usage allowance than their existing service from WildBlue offers.

“It’s total bait and switch, promising us faster service and then reducing the usage allowance that goes with it and adding around an $8/GB over-usage fee on Exede,” Hanssen says.

For customers served by the new ViaSat 1 satellite, Exede sells service based on usage, not speed.  The advertised speed (not independently verified) is 12/3Mbps, which will cost $49.99 for up to 7.5GB per month, $79.99 for 15GB per month, or $129.99 for 25GB per month.

“Highway robbery I call it, because some of those caps are lower than on WildBlue so you are paying for better speed you won’t be able to use unless you agree to pay a lot more for a bigger allowance,” Hanssen says.

New Customers Get Priority Over Old Ones?

Customers eager to switch to the new, faster satellite broadband service report they are encountering roadblocks from ViaSat and their large independent dealer network responsible for sales and service of the satellite reception equipment.  An often-heard accusation is that current customers are taking a back seat to new customers already invited to sign up.

That is a charge ViaSat, through its support forum, has strongly denied.

“We’re not giving preferential treatment to new vs. existing customers,” says WildBlue Forum Administrator Steve. “The dates we’ve quoted to existing customers who call in are approximately April/May, but yes, it could be sooner. It all depends on the number and availability of certified installer technicians in a given area. If someone absolutely wanted it now, we’ll try our best to accommodate that along with the big flood of new orders we’re receiving.”

Steve explains the delays to upgrade existing customers are occurring because new customer installations are currently “through the roof.”

But Stop the Cap! has also learned from an independent WildBlue dealer that ViaSat is offering a bonus for dealers who sign new customers, an incentive not paid to upgrade existing ones.  Some new customer promotions also offer free installation and deep discounts until the end of 2012 for 15GB ($49.99) and 25GB ($79.99) service on the new ViaSat 1.  Existing customers do not get the discount pricing and have to pay a $150 installation fee for new equipment required for the new satellite.  Customers within a 2-year initial contract term pay even more: $250.

Customers Revolt

Customers learning about the new pricing are unhappy.

Bill Cameron feels let down as a loyal customer by ViaSat’s pricing:

This new Excede 12 plan is an absolute joke. 12Mbps is awesome but the top plan limits you to a up/down total of 25GB and its $129.99 +$9.99 lease fee. So what good is 12Mbps if you really cant use it? Forget Netflix, Hulu or any Video on Demand. I have DirecTV and was hoping to be able to do some streaming but there is no way. If I want to stay at the same $80/mo price point I will loose 7GB of monthly cap since the mid tier plan is 15GB combined up and down. I don’t know what WildBlue is thinking here. Come on, $140/mo in the middle of a recession? Plus there is a $149 setup fee and even customers who have been with them for 7 years, like me, has to pay it. My loyalty is not rewarded one bit. A brand new customer pays the same amount.

A Broadband Reports reader sums up his views about WildBlue’s broken promises:

[…] We have been living with low caps on Wildblue for years, then for several years they -promise- an upgrade that will change everything. Then they up the speed to something most people don’t need, and REDUCE the amount of data available by a LARGE amount, increasing the price as well significantly. It was not what we were lead to believe. This was supposed to be an upgrade, but the speed is useless without quantity, that point has been made over and over.

And it doesn’t take someone sitting all day to go over the caps. It can take a little over an hour every day for one person to go over on the current 512Kbps plan, imagine with more speed how easy the person can go over with about 23% less data available.

Bottom line, it was not an upgrade, period, for many of us. Every neighbor I know is thinking the same thing, some currently drive 30 miles one way to get to a free hotspot to have enough bandwidth for online classes. The offered new plans are not enough for what they do either. Is anyone that understands the limits of satellite asking for anything unreasonable, NO. We were expecting an increase of some sort, any kind, not further insane restrictions after years of being restricted. A downgrade and overcharging is not an upgrade no matter how they try to spin it to us. If so few use what’s available as they say anyway, what would have been the harm of doubling the current caps. PERFECTLY REASONABLE EXPECTATIONS.

Kevin Hanssen wishes he had better options:

At this point, just about anything would be better than WildBlue.  Since AT&T shows no interest in bringing me DSL service, it’s probably going to be wireless broadband or nothing.  We have spotty cell coverage in this part of Wisconsin, but should a provider do something about that, we would still be facing tiny usage allowances in the 2-10GB range.

This is why universal service policies should extend to broadband service, to make certain rural America has reasonable access at reasonable prices.

There is nothing reasonable about satellite or wireless Internet at these speeds, allowances, and prices.  WildBlue wants new customers at all costs, even if they walk over their loyal customers to sign them up. But why shouldn’t they? Their only effective competition is Hughes, and they are actually worse!

Comcast is willing to install cable service for a neighborhood in Ashburnham, if six families agree to split the estimated $94,000 installation fee.

Paying more than $10,000 each just to get cable television from the nation’s largest cable operator is not a top priority for those living on Old Pierce Road and Rindge State Road, but getting reliable Internet access is.  Comcast officials have refused all requests to extend cable service to the families, because there are simply too few of them in the company’s eyes to justify the expense.

Families were surprised to find neither Comcast or Verizon interested in serving the neighborhood, because state broadband maps show coverage in Ashburnham from both the dominant cable and phone company.  Comcast suggested the families sign up for satellite Internet service or use a wireless provider instead.  But families complain paying Verizon Wireless or AT&T for mobile broadband is expensive and has resulted in rationed Internet use because of very low data caps.  Even worse, when the weather turns bad, the wireless Internet service effectively turns off.

The affected families want better answers.

“I’m not afraid to spend $400 to get out of a [wireless] contract if I can have Internet when it’s cloudy out,” James LeBlanc of Rindge State Road told the Sentinel & Enterprise. “But I don’t have $10,000 just sitting in my pocket.”

Wireless broadband for rural Massachusetts is simply not a serious solution for most because of the low usage allowances that accompany the service.

“It’s difficult when it’s raining out, and we can’t get online, and I have to tell my kids, sorry, you can’t do your homework tonight,” his wife, Wendy LeBlanc told the newspaper. “My oldest goes to Overlook (Middle School) and I’m going to have to send in notes for any assignments that require Internet research to be done at school.”

“It’s a hardship for our family,” said Brian Belliveau, of Old Pierce Road. “We don’t have enough Internet service. We get into situations where we use all of our data within the first two weeks of the month and have to go without it the rest of the month. Our kids are in school with kids who have service all the time, and they don’t understand why we don’t. It’s hard to explain.”

Comcast’s attitude so far has been ‘tough luck — it’s a money thing.’  Company officials simply won’t front the construction and installation costs because it would take too long to recoup that investment.  That leaves the families with few alternatives.

Although Ashburnham, a community of 6,000 in north-central Massachusetts, is considered “rural,” it is not nearly rural enough to qualify for federal broadband funding.  Besides, according to broadband mapping data supplied by area cable and phone companies, Ashburnham is already “well-served” with broadband.  But don’t tell that to families without Internet access.

Local officials were stunned the multi-billion dollar company wouldn’t assume upfront expenses in return for goodwill and devoted, long-term paying customers.

“I may be sort of old-fashioned, but a company sometimes has to do what is in the best interest of its customers to gain their loyalty,” Selectman Gregory Fagan said. “I’m offended when you say the company can’t afford it. Our schools are giving our children Internet assignments. There’s been discussion of giving tablets to all kindergartners. It’s not like in the ’80s when these things were a luxury. They are must-haves now.”

Would-be customers of Time Warner Cable’s broadband service in Vienna, a small town in Oneida County, N.Y. are confused about why the cable company will not provide them with broadband service, even though cable company lines pass right over their respective driveways.

Pete Rauscher sees neighbors within a mile away happily using Time Warner’s Internet service, even though he cannot buy it for himself.

“I’d like to get the service…so do [my neighbors],” Rauscher told WSYR-TV in Syracuse. “It isn’t right that somebody within a mile of us has the same cable service, but we don’t.”

Rauscher and his neighbors are victims of a de-facto cable industry standard that says wiring fewer than 35 homes within a mile is not financially viable.  Rauscher might understand this, if a Time Warner-owned cable line didn’t pass straight over his driveway.

The cable company says it would cost at least $17,000 to provide Rauscher with broadband service, an installation fee way out of his budget.

Parts of Oneida County are still without any broadband service, except for those lucky (and wealthy enough) to receive and pay for a wireless 3/4G broadband connection from Verizon Wireless.  That company charges $80 a month for up to 10GB of usage, much more expensive than what Time Warner would charge.  DSL is not provided in that section of Vienna.

Time Warner says it regularly re-evaluates expansion into currently unserved sections of its service area.  Two sections of nearby Camden now receive cable service from the company, partly thanks to new housing developments in the rural region.  But for now, the cable company remains resolute in not serving customers who do not meet its population density test.

[flv width=”480″ height=”290″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WSYR Syracuse Fight for High Speed Internet 1-12-12.mp4[/flv]

WSYR-TV tells the story of rural Oneida County residents who cannot get Time Warner Cable broadband service, even though the cable company lines cross their driveways.  (2 minutes)

ViaSat, the parent company of satellite Internet service provider WildBlue, will introduce new pricing and speed packages Tuesday for its satellite broadband service.

WildBlue has offered satellite-based Internet access for several years, but the speeds and heavily-restricted “fair access policy” have left many customers looking for something better.  But for many satellite Internet customers, DSL or cable broadband is miles away and will be indefinitely, so any improvement in satellite broadband is good news.

“Are the days of satellite fraudband finally over?” asks Stop the Cap! reader Madeline who lives in rural Idaho. “I was a customer of WildBlue and Hughes in the past and both were not worth bear spit.”

Madeline and her family are potato farmers, and have been for three generations.  She remembers when the phone company started selling dial-up Internet access and got hooked on the Internet to get updated weather reports, trade farming information, and stay in touch with relatives.  But as the web has grown more multimedia-oriented, dial-up has progressively become an intolerable way to experience it.

“In the 1990s, web ads and pages were simple and they’d load quick,” she says. “Now it’s all video ads and other things that take five minutes or more to appear, so you become stuck waiting until you give up.”

WildBlue’s new satellite, ViaSat 1, may change the perception of a satellite Internet experience that is only slightly more tolerable than dial-up.  With speeds up to 12Mbps, WildBlue’s new speed packages will finally deliver something more than the 1.5Mbps “Pro” service the company currently sells for $80 with a 17GB usage cap.

“The key words with satellite are ‘up to‘ because you never get the speeds they promise, especially at night when everyone is on,” Madeline says. “If you use what they consider to be ‘too much,’ your speeds are cut further.”

ViaSat 1 has a total capacity of 140Gbps, double that of the company’s other satellite — KA-SAT.  That wireless pipeline will eventually be shared by commercial, government and residential customers.  With several hundred thousand anticipated users, WildBlue will continue to restrict usage even with the new capacity.  No word on what specific limits will be put in place, but it is likely customers will at least enjoy a speed boost from the new satellite.  ViaSat hopes to economize using web compression technology and other traffic management techniques to make efficient use of the satellite’s broadband capacity.

Madeline remains unconvinced, however.

“You don’t choose satellite Internet because you want to, you choose it because you have to,” she says. “My guess is WildBlue will continue the same low caps — especially to make sure we steer well clear of web video — and will still charge us a lot of money for service you can’t use all you want.”

Madeline went back to dial-up and frequently visits some nearby relatives who receive Internet from a Wireless ISP.

“While everyone else in the country is talking about Netflix and making video calls to relatives, we are still sending e-mail and setting egg timers to make sure we don’t stay online too long and get throttled before the month is out.”

WildBlue’s Existing Packages (Company-supplied information)

PACKAGES	VALUE	SELECT	PRO
Features	Good for e-mail and basic web browsing only.	Better for frequent e-mail use, web surfing, music downloads, online shopping, and sharing photos.	The current top of the line plan delivers slightly better speed, but more importantly, a more generous usage allowance.
Download Speed	up to 512 Kbps	up to 1.0 Mbps	up to 1.5 Mbps
Upload Speed	up to 128 Kbps	up to 200 Kbps	up to 256 Kbps
Email Addresses Powered by Google — more than 7GB each	5 email addresses	5 email addresses<	10 email addresses
Spam & Virus Filtering	Included	Included	Included
Thresholds*	7,500 MB download 2,300 MB upload	12,000 MB download 3,000 MB upload	17,000 MB download 5,000 MB upload
24/7 Technical Support	Included	Included	Included
Equipment Limited Warranty	Included	Included	Included
Anti-Virus Anti-Spyware Software	Free during your first 12 months of WildBlue service ($2.95/month thereafter).
WildBlue.net Portal	Your WildBlue.net home page will bring you a mix of news, weather, sports, and entertainment, plus powerful features that you can customize, all brought to you through a single web page powered by Google. You’ll have access to more than 2,000 Google Gadgets that you can add to your customized home page.
Dial-up Access (optional)	10-hour package of remote-access dial-up for $7.95/month.

WildBlue’s Acceptable Use Policy.

*A “threshold” (a/k/a “usage cap”) is the amount of data that you can upload or download in a 30-day period before WildBlue’s Fair Access Policy (speed throttle) applies.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Wildblue Demo.flv[/flv]

WildBlue produced this demonstration to show off web browsing over its new ViaSat 1 satellite.  Keep in mind this browsing session took place before the satellite was available for general customer use and the company avoids mentioning its usage limits, which are extremely small in comparison to wired broadband.  (3 minutes)

Parts of rural Minnesota are teaching the nation a lesson or two about how to deliver rural broadband — form a community co-op and provide it yourself, or wait forever for a commercial provider to deem it sufficiently profitable to deliver a reasonable level of service.

Minnesota’s Broadband Task Force indirectly proved the case for community Internet access with their first official report on the state of broadband in the North Star State.

While the populous Twin Cities are well-provided-for by large cable and phone companies, most of rural Minnesota gets far slower (and spottier) access to telephone company DSL, which is increasingly uncompetitive and inadequate for the 21st century knowledge economy.  Commercial providers have repeatedly told rural Minnesota their 1-3Mbps DSL service is plenty fast enough, at least for those who can purchase the service.  City slickers enjoy speeds of 10Mbps or more in Minneapolis and St. Paul.  But as many more rural residents and small businesses will tell you, DSL just cannot get the job done at current speeds, especially for higher bandwidth applications.

Not all of Minnesota is stuck with second-class Internet access.  Two sections of the state where residents were unwilling to accept the broadband status quo now have speeds that rival anything on offer in Minneapolis or St. Paul, because they decided to provide the service themselves.

Farmers Mutual in Madison, Federated Telephone in Morris, and Paul Bunyan Communications in Bemidji have been running fiber optic cables up and down area streets and delivering next generation broadband to some very happy customers.  All are cooperatives — community-owned providers that put their customers (who also happen to be the owners) ahead of Wall Street shareholder profits.  The result: modern and reliable service, instead of “good enough for you” Internet access at sky-high prices from for-profit phone companies.

Farmers Mutual provides service at speeds up to 20/20Mbps, with faster service forthcoming in the future.  They also believe in an open Internet, free from provider interference.  Just outside of their service area, DSL (where available) often runs at speeds of 1Mbps or less.

Federated Telephone offers a unique Ethernet-based broadband service at 20/20Mbps speeds that advertises unlimited usage — a selling point when larger phone companies like AT&T now place limits on Internet access.  Outside of their service area, many rural Minnesotans are stuck using satellite Internet service or dial-up.

Paul Bunyan Communications goes one step further with a network that already delivers 25Mbps broadband in communities like Bemidji and Grand Rapids (Minn.)  Those speeds are simply unavailable from commercial providers in northern Minnesota.

Minnesota’s broadband story is retold across America.  Urban communities have fast speed, but high prices.  Rural communities have inferior DSL at high prices or nothing at all.  Only about 57 percent of Minnesota households now meet the statewide speed goal of 10/6Mbps service.  Cable operators have no problems achieving 10Mbps download speeds, but 6Mbps upload speeds are very uncommon.  Phone companies cannot reliably achieve either with traditional ADSL service.

The state’s broadband goals are aggressive:

By 2015, the state of Minnesota will:

• a. Be in the top five states of the United States for broadband speed universally accessible to residents and businesses; and,
• b. Be in the top five states for broadband access (availability); and,
• c. Be in the top 15 when compared to countries globally for broadband penetration (adoption).

Community owned co-ops are the most likely to help the state achieve their broadband goals. The state is currently ranked 24th in broadband speed.