Anyone a HughesNet customer?

[rush1886]

Good Afternoon all.
Just wondering if anyone here is a HughesNet Customer, and how you rate the service?
My much better half runs an in home business, brokering loads for 18wheelers, and she would like a bit better service than our current phone company dsl connection provides. From what I've read, the Hughesnet Fair Access Policy (FAP), may be the wrench in the works. Apparently it limits just how much time one can access the internet daily.

We live rurally, and can't even access cable tv or internet, where we are. we do get, and enjoy Direct Tv access, so naturally wondering about the sibling hughesnet.

Any input appreciated.

[jmort]

Had it for years. Fair use really limits it, but it is way better than nothing. If any cell coverage in your area, you can get a cell phone with "hot spot" capability or cell carrier hot spot equipment and unlimited data plan and that would be better in my opinion.

[6bg6ga]

We used to have it at the shop where I work. It is weather dependent. You have a small dish and this makes a difference when you have dark clowds, rain, and or snow. We used it for roughly 3 years and cussed it all the time. When you needed it the most the LNB was bad or a receiver was bad. My advice is to go with a cable provider or a high speed DSL and skip the dish.

[w0fms]

I still have WildBlue and a Verizon 3G mifi for my rural home. All options for those of us who can't get terrestrial wireless or a DSL (or cable) line are horribly awful expensive sucky options.

The FAP's for a month are about what my friends use in town in one day, and I pay $140/mo for both. But that's the way it is since I more than pay less property taxes than the $140/mo makes up by living out in the sticks and I can have my ham radio tower and fire my firearms on my property.

If you need "fastish" internet, and there are no other options, I'd recommend trying 3G or 4G data through a cell phone first and then satellite. WildBlue has be replaced for new customers with "Excede" and IMHO they all suck but the terms of "Excede" are slightly better than HughesNet. Still, it'll be one of the worst and most expensive situations you've every dealt with regarding poor service. Trust me.. I've been doing the sat internet **** for 10 years now... But where I live the POTS landlines were so bad, I had to give up and so a cell for a home phone too. So it's the only choice I have. The internet in the US sucks and it is one of these things where you can argue that the corporations have too much swing and provide proof for IMHO. It's bogus and sad and should have been fixed 10 years ago in this country.

[gew98]

I had hughesnet for three years due ot my rural lifestyle. I went to wildblue...better customer service and user contract at this point for me. And landlines in my area suck donkey !!!. The local phone exchange is half owned by a liberal demorat - the other half by his dike sister. Getting a landline run would set one back thousands....and the monthly fees plus the BS federal taxes on such...they can go to H - E - double hockey sticks !.

[Gar]

Check with Dish Network. I've got it and it isn't to bad, Data limits are okay so long as you're not downloading movies. Speed is fine and yes, it does go out in a heavy rain storm (not much of a problem for me, doesn't rain here all that often.)
I already had Dish Network for my sat. tv and the internet only added 49.00 buck to my monthly. Beats the heck out of dial-up!

[oldred]

Just do a Google search on Hughs Net ratings, to say the service sucks is being kind to those crooks! I had that lousy "service" for two years and had to maintain my dial-up connection for things like E-Bay, etc and DON'T FALL FOR THEIR SPEED CLAIMS! You will have 30 days (IIRC) to terminate without the penalty and during that time you will be quite pleased with the performance but once that time is up and they get you hooked the service WILL go to,,,,,, well you know where. They even lost a class action lawsuit a couple of years ago over exaggerated claims and sub-par service but no one except the lawyers collected anything other than a token payment and Hughs Net did little or nothing to improve service, I would not recommend them to anyone except as a very last resort and I mean unless NOTHING else was available. The reviews are filled with horror stories from irate customers and after having dealt with these lying rascals I have no doubt at all that most of the reviewers are being truthful. I finally finished that contract and cancelled as soon as I could, I just used dial-up for a short time until the Verizon internet service became available with my cell phone package and I have been quite happy with that. The usage limits are a bit constraining and it's also somewhat spendy but FAR better than Hughs Net in both respects, in all seriousness don't waste your money with those rascals if you can get anything else, the service is not even close to what they lead you to believe by saying "up to" when referring speeds that they very rarely if ever reach. You can count on the speeds to be slower than the "up to" claims and I mean a LOT slower!

[dbosman]

Hughesnet offers business service as well as residential.

Satellite ISPs suffer from light speed lag, by the way.
There are variations on two services. One has satellite up link and download. One uses a phone line for data to the ISP and the satellite for download.
The light speed lag for full satellite is 3/16 second up link to the satellite, 3/16 second down to the ISP, 3/16 second back to the satellite, and 3/16 second back down to you for a 3/4 second delay between clicking and seeing a first response. Phone line to the ISP is faster so you only have a 3/8 second between clicking on something and first response. If you're changing pages frequently or filling out a form that continually updates, it can be frustrating, but a whole lot better than dial up to anywhere. Streaming media or video quality may be affected by weather.

Are you really rural or in a smallish neighborhood?
Are you located within binoculars view of a location with good DSL or Cable internet?
Line of sight, point to point internet, over several miles can be set up for a few hundreds of dollars these days.
If a cluster of neighbors got together, you could setup some solar powered repeaters between you and a service location and provide WiFi for the whole route.

[jmort]

"Line of sight, point to point internet, over several miles can be set up for a few hundreds of dollars these days.
If a cluster of neighbors got together, you could setup some solar powered repeaters between you and a service location and provide WiFi for the whole route."

Out here where I live, there are two point to point internet providers that use Verizon FIOS as the source. That is what allowed me to ditch Hghes Net which was far, far better than dial-up/nothing. Try and get cell based internet if possible.

[Win94ae]

I'm a regular Hughesnet customer, not the Gen 4 customer. I get 200MB a day at a specific speed, which is slower than cable, but not too slow. When I exceed 200mb, the speed drops to a bit faster than dial-up.

If there are 2 computers online at the same time you'll think you're on dial-up.

I was locked in at a specific price for 2 years; when that expires, I'll probably switch to something else.

[sparkz]

DSL is faster and costs a lot less, you can get diff packages for downloads but if shes data you should be ok with a smaller 60.00 package (Ouch) the refill time FAP is better then wildblue, but you need to buy the equpt (ouch) and they like to have hand in your pocket for monthley billing and remove money from your bank or CC, you can get a bigger dia dish if you live where theres lots of snow or rain and a 2 watt radio for help with thAT STuff, if it rains or snows lots you may need that and a heater or brush off snow,,

THEY HAVE LIKE THE REST OF THE SATELLITE VENDERS,,,, WORST CUSTOMER SERVICE I HAVE EVER HAD!!
I fix most stuff on my own so I call and get pissed and fix most myself or have to wait for sunspot outtages rare but do happen ( happened twice for about 6hrs in 3 years)

Stay with DSL if you can cheaper, unless like me who lives in the sticks have no DSL or plans to ever bring it near me, so I was forced to get sattellite ISP,

YOU CAN NOT, live stream much of anything as its got a 1.5sec lag so no gaming or movie, VoIP, ect.. to much lag

Give a shout if i can help in anyway
If I could get DSL< I would have it,, also may look into ISDN, some states can be had for 20bux a month

Patrick


PS;
Do all your big file down or uploads after 2AM as its UN-throttled and wide open for usage and don't count for your FAP, and they give you a timer download manager to do that, for like movies and stuff and in morning you go back to reg user,,

[jmort]

We can't even get DSL where I live. Bandwidth is king.

[rush1886]

Gents, Thank You so much! I looked at some reviews on "the web", and that's what got me to thinkin'.

I allowed as how if there was anywhere, and any group of folks to hear the strait skinny from, it'd be here.

The better half and I have some more homework to do, but I can safely cross hughesnet off the list. Thanks again!

[MaryB]

Had Hughes, had Wildblue, both sucked. Went to Verizon cell modem with a Cradle Point router and that was a lot faster but still stuck with data limits each month. Phone company finally hooked up the fiber optics they ran to my back yard so I now have DSL and will not look back to sat or cell service.

[uscra112]

Had Hughes, had Wildblue, both sucked. Went to Verizon cell modem with a Cradle Point router and that was a lot faster but still stuck with data limits each month. Phone company finally hooked up the fiber optics they ran to my back yard so I now have DSL and will not look back to sat or cell service.

Hmm. Friend in Idaho was sold a TV/phone/Internet package with a cell-modem for the Web, and it was as bad as dialup! Worse than useless. I could hit her monthly usage limit in a couple of evenings, too, just reading news, email, and scanning evilBay and Cast Boolits.

I have had Hughes since I moved, about 4 years now, and I'm perfectly happy. It's less bandwidth than fiber optic, but I rarely do video anyway, so I don't care. (Have not even owned a TV since 1977. I don't even bother with U-Tewb - it refuses to work when I have my anti-snooper software turned on, and I won't turn it off.) Once a month I may let a video run, and the bandwidth seems quite adequate.

I have no other option but an abysmally slow dialup where I am. There isn't even cellphone signal at the house, much less cable Don't care. Have no desire for any form of iGadget. I am a computer user, not an Internet Content Consumer.

One thing I really like is that they've apparently got the mother of all firewalls in their servers, so I am never pinged by Chinese hackers. My last abode had DSL, and I oftenn logged 100 pings a day.

I have gotten bad vibes from Dish clients. Jacking up charges is apparently their basic business model. By contrast, at the start of my third year with Hughes, they voluntarily cut my monthly bill from $80 to $50.

If there's a thunderhead between me and the satellite, I lose it. Rarely for more than fifteen minutes. If the dish gets snow on it, I have to take 2 minutes to brush it off. Big deal.

Wildblue, at least as of a couple years ago, was using Hughes satellites, if that makes any difference. So Wildblue could not do anything that Hughes couldn't do.

[Jim Flinchbaugh]

my friend and his wife got hughes about 2 months ago, and they absolutely hate it.

[oldred]

my friend and his wife got hughes about 2 months ago, and they absolutely hate it.



I know of several people who feel the same way including me and I can't understand how anyone could actually like it, put up with it if that's all that's available maybe but like it???

[DLCTEX]

I have had Wild blue for years and it has it's problems, but it beats anything else that is available. If you do not have fiber optic nearby DSL will not be satisfactory. Just 5 miles of wire will cripple it. We are getting fiberoptic soon and I will happily make the switch. I can get my phone, long distance, DSL, etc. for $10 a month less than I now pay for phones + long distance. I currently pay about $50 month for Wild Blue after the fees and taxes.

[firefly1957]

Had Hughes dropped it for verizon then they dropped a tower in my area so i lost service now i have Excede i like it but there is a 10 gig monthly limit use between 2 am and 8 am is excluded from that. Nice thing is if you hit that limit they do not charge extra just slow you untill the months end and at that speed you are probably were you are now. I have not seen a wireless setup for the computer that has unlimited access some are only 4 GB / month and you are charged for any more use.

[w0fms]

I should add that of my 36 acres, I literally have 1200 ft of fiber combined on the North and East sides of my lot. Since I owned it on the North, and for about 2 years now on the East. Supposedly we will be offered DSL from the East fiber some day, and that will probably be one of the happiest days of my life.** The East line was an "Obama" grant, and per the terms they will someday need to offer it along the entire line. Someday seems to be quite relative, but this is Windstream and I did finally get them to tell me that it would likely be in the next couple of years.

The joys of living in the country.

The latency issue is true, it literally takes 1/4 of a second round trip to hit 22,000 miles and back, so that is the BEST ping time you could possibly get. It was close to that in 2005 when WildBlue started. Now, it's over one second (yes 1100 ms) to ping. The 3G resets every month, so I have a real 5Gb per month plan on that. The Satellite is a "rolling" 17 Gb, which in reality doesn't work out to much more than the Verizon 5Gb plan. I have to leave the 3G model outside and repeat it into the house, tho. The joys of living in the county.

I can't tell you the number of times I had a TRIA go out on the WildBlue system at $300 a pop.

The Excede system is the new "WildBlue" and it's supposedly 10x faster with almost the same bandwidth limits, and it's more expensive. The Dish Net internet is re-sold Excede. If you have DouchNet for TV like I do, then the resold one will "save" you $10/mo.

The short of it is that if you have ANY other option, like a Wireless ISP, DSL or even working 3G/4G it's better than satellite. If you can only do satellite, do it, as it does work and is better than nothing or dial up.

** ViaSat will get the results of my "target shooting party" on my lot once I have DSL. I'm going to literally ship the dish..er target.. back to them. I'm not kidding...

[TreeKiller]

Had Hughes dropped it for verizon then they dropped a tower in my area so i lost service now i have Excede i like it but there is a 10 gig monthly limit use between 2 am and 8 am is excluded from that. Nice thing is if you hit that limit they do not charge extra just slow you untill the months end and at that speed you are probably were you are now. I have not seen a wireless setup for the computer that has unlimited access some are only 4 GB / month and you are charged for any more use.
The 10 gig limit is rolling use for 30 days what you used 30 days ago is dropped off every day. They only count the last 30 days usage in the 10 gig limit.I have wildblue and it is not as fast as DSL but way better than dial up. The only other thing available at the house.

[uscra112]

I see several "haters" on here, but just what is it that you hate about HughesNet?

[skruske]

I see several "haters" on here, but just what is it that you hate about HughesNet?

I had Hughesnet for 3yrs as it was the only thing available besides free dial up. I'd much rather have a root canal without anesthesia. The bad - fair access policy, customer service reps who were very difficult to understand, each call to CS with an on going problem resulted in starting over on their punch list EVERY TIME, no matter how often I told them "we've done all that already, I'm calling back in because that didn't work". A few weeks after we became subscribers, a new modem was required to be purchased because of their network changes. Old modem went from 1.5MB to 256k because THEY choked the old network down to get customers to call in to buy the new $300 modems. I was getting just slightly less than 56k with free dial up. New modem was promised to provide 3-4MB, I could only get about 2MB but still had to pay for the "UP TO 4MB".

Hughes' business practices may be very profitable for them but they keep losing customers regularly.

For the record, I work for a land line telco. I am a switching systems tech. I work on the equipment we use to provide internet service. I know how the technology works. I know what Hughes does to limit it's ability to fully provide their customers bandwidth requirements.

Another note for those in rural America. Land line telcos are a dying business for you and me. Extending DSL to the far points of the exchanges is not a priority. As always, the cities get the big services as that is were the money is. Telcos cannot deploy DSL to the last mile when there are only a dozen customers to reach. The cost/benefit is just too much to overcome. Currently via copper land line the effective range to reach a subscriber with DSL is about 24k feet from a server. Anything beyond that & the connectivity does not remain stable.

These days, the best play you can make is with a personal hot spot via cell phone. Verizon and ATT are expanding their cell coverage SUBSTANTIALLY across the entire country. Some companies offer a booster to stabilize a cell connection in a fringe area were signal is limited.

As VZ & ATT expand at a frenetic pace, GOOGLE is getting ready to deploy it's own fiber network to try to capture a large part of the country. Providing data/internet services is a highly competitive market place and providers are feverishly pushing distances to reach everyone they can within line of sight of any cell tower.

[w0fms]

You'd think that rural broadband would be a "last hope" for the landline companies. Done right, they could also see TV. Cell works better out there for landlines, so that why we all drop them, but they could probably charge 2-3x city rates for DSL "out there" and still be competitive (or not since they'd have no real competition). I wish the power companies would do this but the Broadband over Power line stuff was a joke. Now fiber to wifi spots on the poles every so often with a subscribable VPN on it could economically work... So could dedicated point to point from rural cell towers but Verizon couldn't charge $400/mo for 10Gb of service that way...

[montana_charlie]

We had HughesNet when it was called DirecTV, and we had it for about five years.
We switched when the local telephone co-op got their DSL network extended out far enough for us to have it.

Within it's technical limitations, I was quite satisfied with 'satellite internet', but I also learned a lot about what it takes to make it work reliably.
The biggest part of that is the quality of the installation. It the installer is 'sloppy', or if he cuts corners to save himself money or time, your reliability will suffer.

Although many won't believe it, having a properly grounded system ... and a true 'system ground' ... is vital to proper functioning.

CM

[MaryB]

There is a local company here providing wireless internet via and antenna system. Not cell or satellite, land based.

[uscra112]

There is a local company here providing wireless internet via and antenna system. Not cell or satellite, land based.
Ditto in the lower Wood River area of Idaho, where my friend lives. SkyLAN was the company name. But the installation of a new Verison tower has induced her to go that way. I dunno. I trust Verison about as far as I can throw a Buick.

@sruske - You must have drawn the short straw for a local provider. Absolutely none of that has happened to me, since mid-2009 when I moved here. Hardware has been flawless, have never had to call their service lines even once.

@Montana Charlie - when was Hughes linked to DirectTV? I was shown Hughes in 2007 by my IT manager, and it wasn't linked to DirectTV then. As far as I know the two have always been separate, each with their own satellites.

[Duckiller]

Hughes and Direct TV were the same when We had Direct TV. This was about 14-15 years ago When we first got Satelite tv. Not sure when hughes started up, weren't available when we first got TV and we got ground bases DSL for the computer.