WildBlue

File:Wildbluelogo.gif

WildBlue Communications, Inc. is a corporation based in Greenwood Village, Colorado. The company offers satellite broadband Internet services to both home and business customers. WildBlue is one of the newer satellite Internet services, having begun operating in June 2005.

After nationwide beta testing, the first residential retail customers had WildBlue service installed at their home in June 2005. During the summer of 2005 a dealer network was established to provide installation and customer service to clients throughout the 48 contiguous United States.

WildBlue claims superior performance both in terms of upload and download speed through its use of newer satellite technology. Specifically, WildBlue uses the K_a band instead of the K_u band used by established competitors such as Hughes Network Systems' HughesNet. For improved performance, it covers the U.S. and most of populated Canada with many "spot beams" instead of a single, broad beam covering the entire market. It has adopted DOCSIS technology to reduce costs while maintaining quality of service. Competitors such as Hughes have also announced their transition to K_a band satellites.

The maximum advertised transmission speed with the premium subscription is 1.5 megabits per second download and 256 kilobits per second upload. Actual speeds are similar, sometimes exceeding and at other times falling below the advertised figures. The satellite equipment costs approximately US$299, exclusive of the mandatory professional installation service.

In late 2006, WildBlue modified their calculation of network activity. This change intented to allow for more accurate measurement of data usage, but it appeared to more than double calculated usage, causing routine usage of some customers to unexpectedly exceed WildBlue's imposed 30 day usage limits. As a result, WildBlue ignored two weeks of data usage from November 27 through December 11, 2006.

Satellites

The K_a band communication satellite used by WildBlue is Anik-F2. A second satellite, WildBlue-1, was launched on December 8, 2006 at 22:07 GMT aboard an Arianespace Ariane 5. WildBlue-1 was built by Space Systems/Loral and will occupy the 111.1° W geostationary orbit slot. WildBlue had recently acquired the funding necessary to make the launch possible.

Real-time interactive applications perform poorly through WildBlue internet connections (or any satellite connection) because of the actual distance of 23,000 miles resulting in a half-second latency between satellite and ground stations. Other internet applications go unhindered by this detail.

Equipment

WildBlue uses a 28 × 26 in (508 × 660 mm) mini-dish and external satellite modem to bring their service to subscribers nearly anywhere in the 48 contiguous states. The modem connects to a PC's or Apple Macintosh's network card via 10BASE-T (RJ-45) cables, much in the way a cable or DSL modem would. The modem updates its firmware automatically.

Subscribers' WildBlue mini-dish antenna.

Subscribers' WildBlue mini-dish antenna.
WildBlue satellite modem.

WildBlue satellite modem.
The back panel of a WildBlue satellite modem. The coaxial connections for incoming and outgoing signals can be seen, as well as the Ethernet port for the rest of the network.
Anik-F2.

Anik-F2.

External links