I got a solicitation in the mail today from ViaSat offering their new Exede internet service.  Max downloads are at 12Mbps and upload max of 3 MBPS for east of the Mississippi and west of the rockies.  Central plains area is slower but still up to 5Mbps.  My current Hughesnet max is 1.5 Mbps for $79 per month, with a fair use threshold of about 400 Mb per day.  In our region Exede offers three plans all of which run at the same speed but vary in download limits.  7.5 GB per month for $49, 15 GB for $79, and 25 GB per month for $129.  They have no fair use policy as such, but if plan max is reached, system slows to 2x snail modem speed until the next month.  But you can upgrade to higher a plan at any time for no set up fee.

 

ViaCom sent up a new state of the art satellite last year and has only been offering their new service for a few months.  They bought out wildblue and appear to have taken the service to an entirely new level.  I ordered today and will be set up Wednesday of this week.  According to the rep, they have added about a half million customers during that period.  Might have to check them out for possible investment.  There is no way to even compare their service to the nowhere near high speed internet service offered by all of the other satellite service providers.

 

Oh yes, vonage and magic jack, and certain other applications and/or hardware work with exede.  Vanage and magic jack don't work with hughesnet.