I signed up for the new 481 modem and the 750 / 100 telecommuter service in May of last year.
The installer mounted the dish with a tree partially blocking the LOS to the sat I was assigned to so my first 3 months of service was much time of no lights on the modem. It was so bad that a bee flying in front of the dish would cause a loss of signal.
After I posted pics of the installation that an employee of starband saw, the installer came back and moved the dish to an unobstructed location and for the next two months I had decent service.
After IntelSat lost T 7 for a few days  in November service quality started going downhill.
On Dec 31, 2004 starband did not renew their lease on one of their transponders on AMC 4 and most of the users from that one were crammed onto the one I and most other high dollar 48x modem accounts are on.
Needless to say performance went to crap.
Since the first week of Dec. they have been throttling port 119 to 2.8k for all users unlucky enough to be on the overloaded transponder on AMC 4 and average throughput has been at or near 200 Kbps down. Upstream througput has still been close to the advertized 100 Kbps though.
Last week they sent me an e-mail letting me know how I am a high priority customer and as such they are willing to move me to T 7 where I will get better performance, however, they want me to help pay for the repoint.
I wish there were some way for me to recoup the $900.00 upfront cash I shelled out for the equipment that is now basicly just an ornament with pretty green lights on my desk.

Stay far away from starband.
It is like the broken vending machine where;  no matter how many quarters you put in;  you never get the candy bar from.

I dont know if its just ME or what...but everytime i read about a sat user.......they are upset and dissapointed.....

why cant they fix this? they have DOPPLER up in the sky, taking massive photos of the earth, they can read weather (sometimes hehe) and do all this other AMAZING stuff.......but cant get good internet service up there....

i really just dont understand.....if someone can explain it would be great


and sorry vern about your problems with starband :/

vern,sorry to hear of your poor experience with starband. i posted earlier this week of my experience with starband and their customer no-service department. i signed with starband in october '04 and got a lightning strike that fried my modem and transmitter, their response to my situation showed me just how valuable i, as a new customer, was to them. they offered to SELL me a rebuilt modem 484 ($350.00) and a rebuilt trans ($200.00) and return damaged equipment. i politely asked for a little assistance with the cost, since i've only used their service for less than 3 months. thier response was basically "tough S#!t, write us a check". i now have the almost same fancy little ornaments sitting on my desk, only my lights don't work. i now subscribe to Cox cable and their service and speed is uncomparable. they actually act as though i am important to their company.

again sorry to hear of you misfortune with starband, spread the word, i am!!!

Almost   

Update:

I have located an installer who only lives a couple of miles from me and I may be able to get the dish re-pointed to T 7 at NO cost to me.
I've been told that the nntp server for those on T 7 isn't throttled and the transponders on it aren't severely overloaded so I am hopeful that i can get my performance back to what it was for roughly 2 months of this adventure in space communication with speeds of close to 1 meg down and 115k up.
If it doesn't improve with the re-point I will consider it a lost cause and SB in breech of contract and change over to DirecWay.

The installer came yesterday and re-pointed me to T 7.
No cost to me.

Results:

::::::::::.. Download Stats ..::::::::::
Connection is:: 2184 Kbps about 2.2 Mbps (tested with 579 KB)
Download Speed is:: 267 kB/s
Tested From:: http://www.testmy.net/
Test Time:: Sat Feb 5 15:29:36 EST 2005
Bottom Line:: 39X faster than 56K 1MB download in 3.84 sec
Validation Link:: http://testmy.net/id-DEWJ2AH3O

I'm happy again

Where I live satellite is the only broadband option.
No cable and I can't even get my telco to install an ISDN line for me.
They were willing to install a fractional T 1 @ 256 up and 256 down for two thousand dollars plus a monthly fee of $450.00.

It's either high dollar satellite service or dial up @ 26.4 because the telco is still using asncient analog switches here.

  You must not live in the boonies, most people know that satellite internet is a last resort to dialup.

You are on AMC 4.

I am thinking that SB is going to be losing the last transponder on that bird on March 31.

As for testing SB speeds here or on any other major speed testing site:

I noticed that starting the first week of last December SB had started redirecting speed test site requests through a gi-mongus proxy server located in Ca.

The IPs do not match.

In other words, the IP that this server sees is not the SB IP for my box nor is it the IP for SBs web accelator proxy server.

You may be able to get a clear line of sight to T 7 if the dish is moved to the top of your roof.

You can tell whether or not you can see T 7 by using a cheap compass.
From Lexington T 7 is at  241 degrees on a compass pointing at magnetic north.
The elevation is 26.3 degrees.
For every foot of length the rise is about 6 inches.
So a tree 100 feet away from your dish could be 50 feet or less in height without blocking the line of sight.

From what I've been told those who are on AMC 4 after the last day of this month will really be unhappy with their service.

T 7 is performing at an acceptable level right now but I expect that to degrade more and more as more people are moved from AMC 4 to it.

If you decided to stop paying the bill, I highly doubt SB would be able to enforce the contract.

It doesn't sound any better over here than DirecWay to me, unless one would prefer the green lights over the blue?

Here's some info that may be of interest from another user:

"I have no problem streaming but starband is updating T-7 sat and are overcrowd on GE-4,so some may be having some trouble.

They are trying to move people from GE-4 to T-7 which is going to help.

Also they should have a new sat just east of GE-4 by april."

Starband, from what I've read on other sites, is one of the best out there and better than DirecWay due to their FAP policy. The most you can get with their SOHO package is 500MB, though up to 800MB can be had going through a VAR. Most people as a rule are more happy with Starrband than DirecWay/

One thing to keep in mind is something that's been discussed in lenght on another site, proper installation and GROUNDING.

While other services are coming this year, Wild Blue and Sky America, they are unproven since no one actually is using them yet. Plus, if you read their FAQs, not much different overall. Note how  Sky Amerrica quotes their download/upload speeds, but read carefully and you will find that's the MODEM specs, NOT the actual user specs for what you will get. While they don't actually lie about their service, you do have to read it several times for the fine print and understand how to read exactly word-for-word their statements.

Hopefully the new satellite and T-7 changes will help some because I don't think you will get  a whole lot better. Satellite ISP is after all the nature of the beast and some things just can't be done due to their orbit and distance of travel.

FYI spaceway is no longer going to be used for internet instead they are using it for HDTV.

Our showroom account is running around 200 Kbps and the access to a NNTP site is spanked back to about 25 Kbps.  Really crappy considering it was running in the 500's with no problem with newsgroups a few weeks ago after the repoint.  They said they were to "balance the load" with additional transponder space that was yet to be turned on (that was last Thursday) and said NNTP service might suffer even more since "most people want web browsing" and they could send the extra  bandwidth saved to those purposes...  I'm getting ready to call our dealer direct department about this "load balancing" timeline and to complain about NNTP access...
bumblebee

Well, somehow I put my speed tests in the wrong thread, and I don't see a way to delete a post, so I'll just move them...



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