Tuesday, November 30, 2004

Starband - One Man's Experience

I recently moved to rural New Mexico. My lovely wife Roxane and I have been planning this move for some time as we have grown really tired of living in the congestion of Los Angeles. Readers should note I actually lived in Pasadena, CA, however it's all one large city from shore to mountains. You can drive for hours in LA at 65MPH and spend hours in the city. Well my business is still internet based so I needed a broadband solution. I am well outside the range of cable, dsl and local WiFi. All the peace and quiet comes at cost. So I chose satellite access as the only viable option.

I wish could say that I did the proper thing, and investigated the two major providers of this service and chose the best one but I did nothing of the sort. Instead I allowed my Dish Network install their default selection which is Starband. I really probably should have investigated where I would have found out they came out of bankruptcy last year and had a poor reputation online as a result. The other major provider of satellite access is Hughes company called Directway. I would suggest you check them out first as my experience with Starband leaves a lot to be desired.

We purchased a 5 bedroom/3 bath home in NM with 15 acres of land outside Las Vegas. (yes there is a Las Vegas NM). We closed on the property in early October. I flew out to NM to get everything ready for our arrival, getting power turned on, satellite TV, phones, etc. On October 6th I ordered the Starband system from the local dealer. They informed me that the Starband system would be delivered by Oct. 21 . I thought that would be fine as that would give us time to pack everything in Los Angeles and move it out to Las Vegas. We arrived on October 17th.

On the 20th I called to make sure that the installed would be there on the next day. They told me they would be calling me in the morning as they were expecting the unit via Fedex.

On the morning of the 21st nothing happens.
On the morning of the 22nd nothing happens.
I call on the 25th. I am told the unit will be there on the 26th.
On the 26th nothing happens.
On the 27 th nothing happens.
On the 28th nothing happens.
On the 29th nothing happens.

You can see a pattern beginning to develop here. I call the dealer on November 2nd. They claim they don't know what the problem is. They let me know that they will call me back when the equipment will be delivered. This goes on till November 14 when I am asked to pick up my equipment at their location in town. It seems they will not be installing my system after all as they have allowed their Starband certification to lapse. I called Starband to find the problem. It turns out that this dealer had lost their certifcation a while ago and as result Starband was not accepting their orders. So when I placed my order, nothing actually happened. So this initial problem is not Starband's fault but rather the dealer. Of course the dealer blamed Starband. The real problem lies in Starband's chosen method of growth - Through a dealer network.

A dealer network offers a new company the ability to grow quickly by offering a dealer a clear product to sell and to provide branding support. Of course this results in an uneven customer experience as the support the individuals receive is only as good as the dealer. Of course the converse is often true as well, very often dealers can exceed the customer expectations and provide better service than the original manufacturer. Of course the end customer has no real control and very mixed expectations for service. I found myself bouncing forth between Starband and the dealer, with neither one taking responsibility. This occurred for three days after I picked up my equipment. I needed an installer and there was not one to be had anywhere. Eventually Starband convinced a installer to drive out on a Sunday to install the system. This was a clear recognition of the screw ups thus far and an attempt to rectify them. In the end it took nearly another week after installation to get my static IP address and Telecommuter account with it's greater bandwidth set up.

Keep in mind the cost of a satellite system is typically $700 with a $400-$500 installation charge. Directpc has a different approach by offering a fixed pricing of $999 for equipment and installation. I suspect that DirectPC which has a significant number of business customers is a better performing company. Starband is a residential satellite access service company only (although they allegedly have introduced a business class service).

One thing about Starband I found out was that they simply do not have engineers available on the weekend. That's right an ISP without 24/7 engineering support. Directpc does have engineering support 24/7. When I say engineering support I am not talking about technical support. I am talking about people that can analyze the network, make changes and solve problems. Starband simply does not have this capability in non business hours. So based on that fact alone I would recommend that you look at DirectPC over Starband. I must say in Starband's defense, once the system is up and running it seems relatively reliable for web access. I did experience a two hour outage of mail services this morning which is probably attributed to their lack of capacity.
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Monday, November 29, 2004

New Host

I moved thinking monkey to a new host. This is just a test that everything is alright.