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I am a wildblue installer and have been installing Wildblue satellite internet systems for two years now in the Mojave desert in California.  Wildblue service is basically for people who do not have access to cable or DSL  high speed internet and are sick of dial-up, it is more expensive than the previously mentioned services, but satellite time is expensive.  My experience with Wildblue is if the installation is done correctly there are very few problems with the service.  Sure, sometimes it seems to be as slow as dial up, but the speed also depends on how busy the internet is too.  The troubles I have experienced in service calls is usually from customer added equipment such as routers and switches, antenna movement due to high winds,(common in the Mojave Desert), but if the equipment is torqued to the minimum required by Wildblue the Antenna should be stable in up to 80 mph winds.  Equipment failures in my experience have been with the TRIA, (Transmitter Receiver Integrated Assembly), as it is out in the weather, and the weather here goes from 20° F to 130°F as typical Winter and Summer.  The Modems appear to be quite stable as I have had one out of box failure in two years, in-service failures have been nonexistent.  Also the RG-6 connectors on the ODU have given me some trouble, probably due to the extreme weather conditions.  I have had the service for 18 months, used for maintenance and testing and it appears to be quite stable.  I did have one thunderstorm kill the service but the rate was in the range of 1 inch per hour,( of course rain here in the desert is a rare, but when it does rain it makes up for lost time.)  I had snow degrade the service once, but brushing the accumulated snow from the antenna cured the problem.  The only other outage I had was when my donkey, Burrito, was eating grass that had grown around the pole mount, blocked enough of the signal to cause it to go down.  Getting the donkey to move was more difficult than all of the other repairs I have done....AE6ST