WildBlue

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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 downlink and 256 kilobits per second uplink. Actual speeds are similar, sometimes exceeding and at other times falling below the advertised figures. The basic package of 512 kilobits per second, at US$49.95 per month, is approximately three times as expensive as dial-up. The satellite equipment costs approximately US$299, exclusive of the mandatory professional installation service.

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.

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.

Subscribers' WildBlue mini-dish antenna

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.