Jan
10
More Details On ViaSat’s New 12 Mbps ‘Exede’ Service – 7.5, 15 and 25 GB Monthly Usage Caps
As we noted yesterday ViaSat's showing off a new $50, 12 Mbps downstream, 3 Mbps upstream satellite broadband service that the company will be selling through WildBlue, Dish and National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative ISPs. As we also noted yesterday, ViaSat was being a little murky about the limitations of the service, which include a low cap, potential throttling, and involves web acceleration. Today the company made most of the details official, announcing that the service will be called "Exede" and will in fact come with traditional usage caps.
According to ViaSat they're offering Exede in three flavors. $50 nets you a 7.5 GB monthly cap, $80 nets you a 15 GB monthly cap, and $130 will give you 25 GB of monthly usage. Despite very un-fiber-like usage limitations, ViaSat's insisting that their new service offers "feels like fiber" performance (perhaps "feels like desperation in the face of LTE" wasn't marketable).
ViaSat desperately wants this to be a service that seriously competes with landline broadband, but there's limitations in place satellite will never overcome. Since you can't beat physics and magically eliminate the latency that comes with all satellite broadband services, ViaSat's using a new web acceleration technology their press release still doesn't get very specific about:
The Exede service also includes advanced web acceleration technology to provide an Internet web browsing experience with feels like fiber performance. Through a constantly evolving variety of techniques that go far beyond simple caching of web content, this new web acceleration technology quickly delivers pages, even on media and video intensive websites.
In addition to the caps, ViaSat has stated they'll likely explore throttling users should they consistently exceed their allowances, something that won't be too difficult in the age of HD video. The company's new website for the service can be found here. We'll offer some user experiences with the new service once it officially launches next week.read comment(s)
Original story here.