I called Skyway USA because my business in Commerce, CA for some reason is in an area outside of regular DSL service. I thought they would be a cheap alternative. BOY WAS I WRONG. I told them I was a business and needed the dish for my warehouse. First of all it took them two weeks to get the stupid dish out to my warehouse and another two weeks to track down their installer to set it up. I was super pissed. THEN, when the installer came, he tells me that the chord isn't long enough and we are not able to set up satellite service in my warehouse. I yelled at Marie with Skyway and told her why on earth did no one tell me I needed less than 100 feet of chord length between the roof and the office. She kept saying it was my fault, for not telling them we were at a business location. I told the idiot that the plan was under my company name, why didn't they put two and two together. I said I needed a full refund for wasting my time. She said they would issue me only a small credit since the box was opened. I WAS ENRAGED, I NEVER TOUCHED THE BOX, IT WAS THEIR IDIOT INSTALLER!!! On top of that, they made me pay shipping to return it. With all of their nonsensical cancellation fees, return fees, and incompetenece fees, I ended up paying $500 for a service that I never received.

I am taking them to court. I just can't deal with people who lack common sense.

I agree with alot of the reviews I have been reading. One big screw job!!!

Lets start with the ordering:
We called Skyway USA to find out about their fup. Asked about the speeds and turn over time. They told us they offer a 200k plan and a 500k plan and said they had a 24 hour turn around. I was happy cause Im handicapped and Im on the computer alot during the day. So I signed up for the 500k plan and was billed for everything equipment, an installer, and my firt months usage. Ok right then I shoulda flipped being billed for usage before i even had my system.

Installation:
We called to set up the install. Never got a hold of anyone, finally we found a way to get ahold of the guy in our area. He came out one morning and set it up, had everything run only to not be able to talk to the satillite. We had a bad part on our dish. So SW sent us a new one. He came back and put that part on the dish, again NOTHING! He said he had another SW job in a few days hed see if our router was bad. He tried it at that job and the router we had was broke. SW wouldnt send us a new one at first but after bout an hour on the phone he got them to send a new different type. This one needed a different satellite they used and the dish could see it but wouldnt talk to the satillite. So we had to get two trees cut down at an extra $200. Then it worked up and "running"

Use:
I was happy for about 3 days till I noticed it was slowing down, so we called them a few times till anyone picked up. After the run around stuff someone told use its NOT a 24 hour turn around but a 30 day turn around. I WAS PISSED!!! So after several days of phone calls and the run around and making threats to take them to court for "theft by deception" we got a call from the boss of the billing department saying he wanted to reach a fair solution. He went to check the tapes of the calls and "never" could find anything but he had no choice but to offer us our money back. Well see if I ever get it.

BOTTOM LINE PEOPLE:
DO NOT DO NOT DO NOT!!! BUY SKYWAY USA. It is a rip off.

I give them a - 1. I moved from Hughes.net who I had been with for past 5 years due to Skyway sales rep misrepresentation of claiming better service, etc. I advised them that I am a high volume user and that this service would be to support my remote job. They sold me Gold service. . Two months into the contract, I was moved to the lowest download speed, when I got through to them, I was advised that I exceeded my download/upload for the month and I had to wait till 9/20 for reset, this was on 9/3. Well my reaction was one of shock and dis-belief. This was never disclosed, nor that uploads were on a phone modem.

So I canceled the service and requested money back for equipment, they are trying to charge me for full year. This is one for the California reg agencies. I will also warn everyone about this unethical sales practice.

Bait and Switch!!! They did not tell me that it was going to be this massive satellite dish in their "installation kit". I was expecting a small modem that was pictured in the bottom corner of the Dish Network flyer. I am great with electronics, but even this took a very long time to put together. When I called to explain that I could not get on a roof to install this because I recently had surgery on both of my ankles thier only response was that they could assign a professional installer. I had already paid over $300.00 dollars for the equipment, now I'm supposed to pay another $150.00 to get it installed?!!! Fine, I physically can not do it myself. Kindly, they decided I only needed to pay $75.00 since I had already put the dish together, but the decision was
probably more because I was getting really annoyed at this point.

So I agree to get an installer, which by the way is subcontracted by skyway, and their subcontractor subcontracted me to someone else. What a mess!Surprisingly, I was called the same day. But when I called they guy back there was no answer nor was there voice mail or a message machine. I called the next three days and finally got someone on the phone and the only appointment was five days later. They never showed, they never called, and they would not answer the phone, and again, the phone rang about fifteen times. Then a recording came on saying "the party you are calling is not answering, you will now be disconnected" or something like that. Well, I'm in California and Skyway is on the East Coast, three hour difference, so I again have to wait until the next day to talk to someone.

Finally, I get to talk to Marie, she says her computer shows that the job was completed. What?! She says she'll look into it and call me back. She didn't.

So I try again the next day. The first call I made somehow got me to Corporate Headquarters according to their message where I was given the option to press "0" to speak with an operator, Surprise- I was told to leave a message for a call back. No way. I want to speak with a human. So, I call back, and press the option to upgrade. Misty answers the phone, I ask to speak with a supervisor,she says none are available. Uh-huh. I persist in speaking with a manager and who does she transfer me to? Marie, my old friend, who continues to pacify me with a runaround of B.S. and I tell her I want to speak with a manager. Now I get to talk to Trish, the manager who was not in the building according to Misty. After more runaround and no staight answers and more than an hour dealing with this, bottom line I QUIT. I explained that I will tell the world about this and here we are, the first of many reviews I will be leaving.

I will end up with a refund of about $28 or so they say. Maybe the threats, maybe the fact that I will be calling the BBB, who knows. Do NOT sign up with this company. I never even got the installation done and it was a nightmare. How bad was the internet service going to be if I had this bad of an experience already? By the way this is the SHORT version of what I went through.

I was reading the other reviews today to get an idea of what others thought, but now I think I'll add my two cents (or ten). I've been with Skyway for about a year now, so I think I can give you a reasonable idea what to expect.

The more positive aspects surrounding Skyway USA are:
- You can install your own equipment and aren't force to pay someone for the service. After a rebate, I paid $50 for the equipment.

- It's makes Internet access "usable," compared to dial-up. (At least 75% of the time)

- It's still usable except in the most severe New Hampshire snowstorm or thick fog

- Phone support has been decent, although I'm a software engineer and don't need much of it. Thankfully, you're talking to other Americans.

- If you go over your bandwidth allotment (depending on your plan), you'll only be slowed down, not cut off.

- After midnight you can download as much as you want without affecting your allotment


The negative aspects:
- The service is equal to dial-up, or even worse, about 25% of the time

- It seems like they're still experimenting a lot with their setup

- Speeds are exaggerated (big surprise)

- Only the base plan is $29.95, all others are $50+

- The 2 year contract is serious commitment



I'll start by saying that I installed the dish myself, and for the most part, it went well. If you consider yourself reasonably technically proficient, it's not too big of a deal. The "self install" kit is pretty comprehensive and includes the dish and mount, a 50 ft cable, a 25 ft cable (of very high quality), mounting hardware, grounding wire, RTV sealant, a signal strength "beeper" device, and even a compass to help with dish alignment. Aiming the dish is the hardest part, and if you find yourself getting no signal strength no matter how hard you try, check to make sure your coaxial connections are tight enough. I found that Skyway doesn't always install connectors on the cable correctly, as the protruding copper can be a bit short - you may have to install another connector yourself. I was a bit disappointed by that, but it's not a huge complaint.

We, like most, started with the cheap, bronze plan. We also experimented with the silver plan, which is $50 a month and is marginally better. Is the upgrade worth it? ... maybe. Internet speeds are not blazing fast, they're not like DSL, and they're not going to impress you, period. They will, however, relieve some of the annoyance of dial up, such as content-rich pages taking five minutes to load or not loading at all. As I said before, it makes the Internet usable. You can't watch streaming video as Skyway claims unless you manage to get online at off-peak hours, such as the wee hours of the morning. I'm usually watching the backs of my eyelids at those hours, so I occasionally bring our laptop to work for things like Windows update or larger downloads.

Some days, if everyone is online during peak hours, Skyway simply lacks the bandwidth. What this means is that your "Internet experience" will be comparable to or worse than dial-up, or worse still, unusable. For those who are more technically savvy, the bottleneck usually doesn't seem to be the satellite connection, per se, but the proxy server Skyway forces your connection though. I'm not sure what they're using the proxy for; perhaps monitoring your bandwidth usage or recording which sites you go to. Who knows. What I do know is that, most often, when the connection is slow, the proxy is the weakest link, and frequently you'll even see proxy errors returned while browsing. It usually happens during "prime time" hours, though the frequency of the problem has waned some in recent months. Sometimes, albeit rather infrequently, service outages occur with no obvious explanation. You're just unable to connect for up to a half hour. The combination of these experiences lead me to believe that Skyway is continually tinkering with their setup, perhaps encountering growing pains in keeping up with an increasing customer base. I'm not sure what they're using for a proxy, but it's clear to me that it's inadequate.

This brings me to the whole ordeal of switching satellites. Around this time last year, Skyway was using AMC-4, and around November they switched to AMC-15, citing "more bandwidth" and a better experience. Well, going outside to spend quality time realigning the dish in 15° weather is not my idea of a better experience. Still, to be fair, connection quality has improved some since the changeover. To make it worth everyone's while, Skyway gave everyone a free upgrade to the next best plan for three months. The "gold" plan trial was much better than bronze, I have to say, but it's not cheap normally.

Overall, Skyway has been better than dial-up, but it's not going to dazzle you or anything. From what I hear, thought, the speed and experience is comparable to other sat providers, except the tech support is out of Kentucky instead of India. Even so, I'd be lying if I denied that I'm waiting for the contract to be up. All of the little annoyances start to add up after a while.

I have had skyway for about 10 mo. I have the bronze plan 29'95 a mo. So far I am very happy with it.
Of course what problems we have had with dial up. makes the differance. our phone lines are terrible.
Because we do very little up loading it works well . Our down loads speeds vary, I suppose because of traffic. (the same as our dial up) its at least 10 times faster. We looked at other satellite internet providers, but they were just too expensive. I've never failed yet to get on because of weather. which I think is a plus. Also the tech support has been great!
I installed my own Satellite, and that was simple for me.
But if you have a good phone line, and can get on line at higher speeds your not going to gain
anything. If you expect it to be like a dsl. you will be dissappointed. Though you can I'm sure get higher speed with the more expensive plan, It won't be dsl speed all the time I'm sure. Also if you up load a lot you won't gain a thing there. But for us out in the rural area that doesn't have a choice I'm thankful for Skyway.

What can I say?? Problems, problems, and more problems! I am from the south, and I hate to talk bad about people, but it's ok as long as you do it behind their backs! The tech support guy was so bad, I had to correct his grammar! He kept saying, "Uhh, can ye hold?" Every time I asked a question, he'd say that. I guess he had to call the one educated person working there.

Next, slow speeds, frequent disconnects, customer service won't answer/return calls/emails... you get the idea.

Also, I got charges thrown on my account and had to call several times to get them removed plus deal with some uneducated rude people. I called SEVERAL, and I do stress SEVERAL times to cancel. No one would answer or return my calls UNTIL I filed a complaint with the BBB. Then suddenly, someone had time to call me!

Don't waste your time people!

I have been a skyway customer for over a year now. We do not have DSL due to us living in a rural area. I advise anyone to think really hard before going with Skywayusa. Their speeds are exagerated and the only time I have any speed at all is early on Sunday mornings. Our Skyway modem and power supply went out and we finally got the issue resolved 4 weeks later. I was promised a credit for the time down , but was charged full price. I am still trying to get some type of credit for our trouble. I also thought of paying more for their next level but was told I would get hooked for another year service. If their lower price did not fulfill their speed promises I know their next level will not either. Perhaps all satellite services are the same. I have a co-worker that has the same issue with Hughesnet. Pray for DSL!!!!!

Skyway USA - Cheep alternative to two way satellite - NOT Really! If you have poor dial up, then you will also have poor satellite connections with secure sites using Skyway USA, such as online banking, and business work on secure servers! Skyway's email system half way works sometime, if you call to resolve mail issues they will tell you to use their web mail. This is there resolution to poor smtp/pop service. Mail will not work with attachments unless you use their web mail. Skyway USA always seams to be changing their satellite link service. This is their excuse for poor service. Phone up, satellite down in this day and age just does not work if you have a bad phone connection. Skyway USA recently changed satellite providers again. Prior to that process I had already started a new Wild Blue service so I had removed my Skyway dish and modem. I received mail from Skyway USA telling me to download a file to update their modem, then call them to switch service to the new AMC15. I was unable to do this because their equipment was no longer hooked up so I called them, told them I started a new service because their service was not meeting my needs. I explained to them I knew I would have to pay for the remaining months (4) left on my 1 year contract and I was willing to do that. They told me if I terminated my contract early there was a $50 early termination fee. I have never been able to find this documented anywhere in the contract I agreed to. I emailed the company and told them I would not agree to pay this fee and for them to just continue charging my monthly fees (4 months) until my contract ended. What did they do...........They have never replied to any email, their email links do not work.........They charged my account the 4 months plus the early termination fee, even though I told them NOT to and to let my contract just terminate at the end of 4 months. This company is a waste of time if you think you can get high speed internet. The company has a 256kb download at a $30 a month fee. Seams like a logical thing to do until you use the service. The 256kb is often slower than dial up. I had thought about upgrading to the next level which was 512kb, but since the service worked so bad, I moved over to Wild Blue for the same price they charge for the 512kb access. With Wild Blue you get both UP and Down satellite with no phone and it has been trouble free. Save money with Skyway USA...........NO WAY, either use another provider or stay with dial up. If you try Skyway USA you will be not only wasting your but also your hard earned $. Skyway USA is good at billing, but poor on service!

Horrible company! I would not recommend these fools to anyone! I am counting down the time until my "contract" expires. I'd cancel now but these jerks won't let me cancel without charging me for the rest of the year. The speed is so slow and each time I call, the customer service is horrible. One of the service techs didn't know what Internet Explorer was! There is basically nothing you can do once you get involved with these guys until your contract runs out. HORRIBLE!!!