Wildblue claims their system will be better than competing satellite services. The satellite has a simple "bent-pipe" architecture with Ka-band spot beam technology. The Mentat TCP/IP stack is optimized for satellite data transmission.
What is the impact of latency? Can I play real-time Internet games or make Internet phone calls on your service?
The WildBlue system is engineered to help offset the impact of latency, which is the delay caused by sending signals from the earth to the satellite and back again. However, there is a delay of about a quarter second as the signal travels up to the satellite and back down to the ground. For most applications this latency does not affect performance, however, there are some applications like voice over IP (telephone service delivered over the Internet, also known as VoIP), or real-time interactive gaming, where latency will have a noticeable effect on performance over the WildBlue network, as it would on any satellite-delivered service.
That's 240ms min at the equator longer if off axis, add the usual 90 to 120 normal latency of the internet itself and you are unplayable in action games. No network optimazation will overcome that.
Doesn't matter, Ka-band spot beam or whatever, the signal has to travel up to a satellite 22,000 miles up, and 22,000 miles back down at the speed of light. Bad latency (high ping)is inherent to satellite internet.