Viasat Home Satellite Internet Review

Satellite internet is either a terrible internet option or the best option — it all depends on where you live and what types of internet service are available in your area. Viasat satellite internet isn’t an exception in this regard, and you need to keep this in mind when reading this review.

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There’s simply no point comparing Viasat satellite internet with other types of internet service, especially fiber and cable internet, because satellite internet is virtually always inferior to them in most ways. What makes sense is to compare Viasat with other satellite internet choices, such as HughesNet, and this review is here to help you do just that.

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Viasat Internet Plans and Pricing

Viasat Internet Coverage

Viasat Internet Fees & Bonuses

Viasat Customer Service & Satisfaction

Summary

Viasat Internet Plans and Pricing

Viasat customers can choose from multiple plans, but not all plans are available everywhere:

Plan	Download speed	Limit	Cost (standard rate)
Liberty 12	12 Mbps	12 GB	from $30.00/ mo
Liberty 25	12 Mbps	25 GB	from $50.00/ mo
Liberty 50	12 Mbps	50 GB	from $75.00/ mo
Basic 12	12 Mbps	15 GB	from $40.00/ mo
Unlimited Bronze 12	12 Mbps	80 GB	from $64.99/ mo
Unlimited Silver 12	12 Mbps	45 GB	from $99.99/ mo
Unlimited Gold 12	12 Mbps	65 GB	from $149.99/ mo
Unlimited Silver 25	25 Mbps	120 GB	from $84.99/ mo
Unlimited Gold 30	30 Mbps	100 GB	from $119.99/ mo
Unlimited Gold 50	50 Mbps	200 GB	from $119.99/ mo
Unlimited Platinum 100	100 Mbps	300 GB	from $169.99/ mo

As you can see, Viasat Liberty plans is what you should be looking at if you want to spend at little money as possible. Unfortunately, these plans are not available in all locations.

Compared with other Viasat plans, they also have much lower data caps (12 GB a month for Liberty 12 versus 80 GB a month for Unlimited Bronze 12). If you exceed your monthly data allowance, your download speeds will drop down to 1 to 5 Mbps, which isn’t terrible, but it’s also far from ideal, especially if you want to do more than browse the internet and send/receive email messages.

Viasat Unlimited plans fare much better in this regard, but they’re also considerably more expensive. For example, the Unlimited Gold 30 plan, which offers decent download speeds and 100 GB of data, costs from $119.99 a month, and that’s only for the first three months.

Once the promotional period is over, the cost of the Unlimited Gold 30 plan jumps from $119.99 a month to $149.99 a month, and it’s a similar story for all other plans. Overall, Viasat prices are on the higher side, but such is the life of satellite internet users.

Regardless of which pain you choose, your download/upload speeds and latency will be affected by weather, so anything from rain to a thunderstorm to a dust storm can make it difficult to do more bandwidth-demanding tasks, such as video streaming and online gaming. This is something all satellite internet services have in common.

Viasat Internet Coverage

Viasat internet plans are available in the following states:

**Available in:**
Alabama	Illinois	Montana	Rhode Island
Alaska	Indiana	Nebraska	South Carolina
Arizona	Iowa	Nevada	South Dakota
Arkansas	Kansas	New Hampshire	Tennessee
California	Kentucky	New Jersey	Texas
Colorado	Louisiana	New Mexico	Utah
Connecticut	Maine	New York	Vermont
Delaware	Maryland	North Carolina	Virginia
District Of Columbia	Massachusetts	North Dakota	Washington
Florida	Michigan	Ohio	West Virginia
Georgia	Minnesota	Oklahoma	Wisconsin
Hawaii	Mississippi	Oregon	Wyoming
Idaho	Missouri	Pennsylvania

**Available in:**
Alabama	Montana
Alaska	Nebraska
Arizona	Nevada
Arkansas	New Hampshire
California	New Jersey
Colorado	New Mexico
Connecticut	New York
Delaware	North Carolina
District Of Columbia	North Dakota
Florida	Ohio
Georgia	Oklahoma
Hawaii	Oregon
Idaho	Pennsylvania
Illinois	Rhode Island
Indiana	South Carolina
Iowa	South Dakota
Kansas	Tennessee
Kentucky	Texas
Louisiana	Utah
Maine	Vermont
Maryland	Virginia
Massachusetts	Washington
Michigan	West Virginia
Minnesota	Wisconsin
Mississippi	Wyoming
Missouri

That’s right, Viasat satellite internet covers all 50 states and nearly 100 percent of the U.S. population.

Unlike with cable or fiber internet, you don’t need any existing internet infrastructure to be in place to start using Viasat Unlimited internet plans or, if available in your location, Viasat Liberty plan (check the Viasat internet coverage map for more information). This benefit of satellite internet alone is enough to make it the best option for many people living in rural areas.

Unfortunately, you can’t use Viasat internet with your own Wi-Fi router. The service uses a custom satellite dish and a modem, and a professional technician is required to install both.

The provided Viasat Wi-Fi modem doesn’t offer to much in terms of coverage, so we highly recommend you run a Viasat speed test to verify that you’re getting the download and upload speeds you’re paying for.

If not, then you can attempt to improve them by finding a better place for the modem using a Wi-Fi analyzer like NetSpot to quickly and easily create detailed maps of wireless signal distribution.

NetSpot can also collect comprehensive information about other networks in your area, helping you determine the optimal Wi-Fi settings.

Viasat Internet Fees & Bonuses

To start using Viasat internet, you’re required to sign a two-year contract. The only alternative is paying a non-refundable fee of $500 for the no-contract option. If you plan on keeping your Viasat internet for a while, then it’s obviously better to just sign the contract.

As we’ve explained in the previous section, Viasat requires its customers to use its own satellite dish and a modem. You can rent both for $12.99 a month or pay a lifetime lease fee of $299.99.

Since it takes almost two years of monthly rental payments to cost as much as the one-time fee, paying for the necessary equipment upfront is worth only if you plan to keep your Viasat service for more than two years.

To install the satellite dish and the modem, a technician has to come to your location, and you will be charged a $99.99 installation fee. As a new customer, you should always ask for free installation, but there’s no guarantee that you’ll get it. It’s also worth noting that it costs $200.00 to relocate the satellite dish, so plan its placement carefully before a Viasat’s technician first visits you.

If you decide to leave Viasat before your contract expires, you will be required to pay $15.00 for each month remaining on your contract.

But it’s not just fees and extra payments for Viasat customers. There are also some nice bonuses to sweeten the deal. For example, you can bundle Viasat internet with the Viasat Voice service for unlimited nationwide VoIP calling.

Other noteworthy add-ons include DISH Satellite TV (from $64.99 per month), Viasat Shield Premium, which can protect you against online threats, and Viasat EasyCare, a low-cost support option that includes one free dish relocation for $8.99 a month.

Sure, these bonuses are certainly not a good reason to choose Viasat internet in the first place, but it’s still nice that they’re available — even though they cost extra money.

Viasat Customer Service & Satisfaction

You can get in touch with Viasat’s customer service by:

Dialing 1-833-242-1877
Visiting your local Viasat store
Using the online chat feature
Sending a direct message on Twitter
Messaging the company on Facebook

Viasat is rated 64 out of 100 in the All Others category by American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). To put the number into perspective, the best internet service providers are rated 73 out of 100, while the worst ones are rated 55 out of 100.

Here are some examples of what Viasat customers have to say about the service on BroadBandNow:

We are in our first month and I am not happy. We hardly get even a quarter of the max speed advertised, half the month it hasn’t worked, and right at 100GB, they throttle us to a speed of .25Mbps which isn’t even enough to browse the internet. All of this for $150 a month. Not worth the money at all. I’m about to pay the $15 termination fee.

• Kevin

We installed Viasat one month ago at our cabin in northern AZ. We are using about 6GB per 24 hour period, which gives us 10 days a month or 120 days a year, for about $1200 per year, which equates to $10 per 24 hour period of usage. Since cable is not an option, I am pleased. Obviously, if we lived there full-time, we would run out of good speeds after the 10th day of the month and would have to look at a more expensive plan (and still come up a little short).

• Jim

Service seems to be getting worse with the internet going in and out and speeds slow and nowhere near the advertised 30Mbps! Technology’s getting better yet our service is still flakey even in good weather! Promised better service soon with/when new satellite are added but never happened.

• Steve Holmes

Summary

Viasat home satellite internet can be recommended to people living in rural areas where other types of internet access are not available. When used to enable basic online tasks, such as emailing and web browsing, its fairly tight data caps and lower download/upload speeds are fairly easy to live with. The same downsides of Viasat internet can quickly become unacceptable if you use the internet to work from home, make frequent video calls, or play online games.

Viasat Home Satellite Internet Review

Viasat Internet Plans and Pricing

Viasat Internet Coverage

Viasat Internet Fees & Bonuses

Viasat Customer Service & Satisfaction

Here are some examples of what Viasat customers have to say about the service on BroadBandNow:

Summary

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