Satellite seeks broadband re-entry

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And it's still failing: Sadly, things haven't gotten any better. The DirecWay support is hands down, without question the WORST that I experience on a regular basis. I have spent as long as six hours on the phone with those people trying to sort out problems that they have caused. They regularly lose track of our account login or password. There are plenty of other reasons to call, too.

The initial contact is with some bottom-level person in Bangalore that has poor command of the English language, the DirecWay system and the Windows universe. With any luck, you get escalated (after hours on hold and arguing with the first person) to Tier 2 Advanced Support. Here you get someone who can deal with English, thinks they know everything about DirecWay and computers, and is convinced that you the customer are a total idiot. Condescending, patronizing, rude, obnoxious and generally unhelpful are all appropriate descriptions. They are all trained to be "polite" at any cost, which makes the whole experience even more infuriating.

The poor quality of support wouldn't be an issue if we didn't have to use it so often. As I mentioned, login problems are common. Lately, the system loses signal from time to time, even on a bright sunny day. There's no way to determine if it's my modem, their satellite, their NOC, routine maintenance on their system --- which they WILL do at their convenience, like at 4:00 on a Friday afternoon.

When the system works, it's not bad. Download speeds can approach 1Mbps; typical is more like 200K, although 9600 or less is not uncommon either. It isn't affected by rain very often; seems like high thick clouds do the most damage, but it's not that often (major storms) and usually less than a half hour. Latency is a major problem. We use the dial-up return system (much cheaper, same download speeds and already paid for) so the packet travel time should only be affected on the download side. Yet any sessions that require lots of back and forth --- like checking email --- are really slow. On a 26K dial-up connection, I can check 5 or 6 email accounts way faster than I can check just one on the satellite. Browsing suffers from the same problem. Once the data is flowing your way, it goes pretty fast. But negotiating that data transfer through the DirecWay NOC is slow. That's if they don't lose enough packets that you have to start over.

The only reason we stick with it is our (barely) rural location --- just a mile outside a city in Georgia, hardly Big Sky territory. Sorry DigitalKid, but this is hardly a niche market, but check the figures. The overwhelming majority of connected people in the U.S. fall into this category. We have way more than 50 people per mile, my neighbors are within shouting distance. But the phone and cable companies aren't interested in pulling cable and installing equipment huts here. We have had the phone lines tested and are just 1000 feet from a usable DSL signal. But I have not found anyone at Bell South yet that could be convinced to add another DSLAM for this neighborhood. The cable has even all been updated recently. But we're stuck with dial-up or satellite

Attracting a WiFi ISP has some potential. Maybe. But for now, we suffer with DirecWay as the best option. They may be trying to "reenter" the broadband market, but the nanosecond something else is available, our dish goes in the yard sale pile.; Posted by: Mr Lupner Posted on: 03/12/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use