Satellite Internet - A Good Choice? - Comments Page 2

I had HughesNet for several years before a trickle of DSL finally leaked into our neighborhood. Latency was VERY noticeable, and I wasn't doing anything but trying to download print articles for school. Forget about anything like video or VoIP.

I live in the upper Great Plains. Weather drops in service were frequent and significant. Since I had the option on "snow days" of working from home rather than be part of the traffic problem, internet access was critical. But...no service anytime the clouds moved in. Also, Hughes' firewalls would not allow me to access my company's system via VPN. I tried to work through customer service, and all I could get was the trained chimp named "Robbie" (spelled "Ravi" :)) who read from a screen "we don't support VPN." No attempt to understand I didn't want to SET UP a VPN, I just wanted access someone else's.

With I am saving money and actually staying connected. Although I only have 1.5 Mbps available, it still outruns anything I ever got from Hughes satellite.

Know anyone who'd like to buy a used dish and modem? :)

We live in a rural area, no phone service, no TV reception, limited radio reception, nearest cell service is 300 yards away (Hey, with ATT we had to drive 5 miles to get cell service). We got Exede (Wildblue's new service) in March of 2012 and have been relatively happy with it. We tend to get 12 Mbps when I measure it. Once even got 30 Mbps, but have also gotten 4 Mbps.

The service does drop more than DSL (which we have used when we lived elsewhere), but not all that often. We don't find that rain, which we get a lot (Yea!), bothers the signal. It is definitely nice to be able to access the Internet on a daily basis and to be able to stream radio shows without any issue. (Listening to BBC right now.) Exede also expanded the amount of data you could use in a month from 7.5 GB to 10 GB (plus you can buy more) and it works for us.

Thanks for all the comments - we live about 4 miles from downtown, but no DSL or cable here. Our AT&T cellphone coverage has degraded over the past few months so we cannot even make calls inside the house (apparently AT&T is disabling some 3G towers and thinks that their 4G coverage is much better than it really is). But we use a LOT of data, and use VoIP, so I've been hesitant to try satellite. I was a beta tester for Hughes a VERY long time ago (they wanted someone to try the service using Windows 3.1!) but at that time, you used dialup for the uplink. Right now, our only alternative is our dedicated T1, costing around $500/mo. Sucks, but no alternative so far, and our businesses depend on good Internet service (although the Earthlink/Covad product hasn't proven to be all that reliable, to be frank). Seems to me that the administration said back in 2008 that the were going to "bring affordable broadband to rural America" - just another forgotten promise!

Have Hughesnet for over 1.5 years. With the new Gen4 satellite that was just lanched, our speeds are picking up, think they will get a little faster as other customers in the lower 48 states go to the faster satellite(Gen4)& get off the satellite that we're all on. I live in 'bush' Alaska, Hughesnet has been good, faster than Starband & faster than our local DSL(DSL-only a little faster than Dail-up) Able to watch videos, now. Will also have to say, 'Keep up the good work Hughesnet!'

I was with EarthLink DSL but tired of Indian techs, email account blocking, and wanted faster speed. I switched to DSL Extreme's 7.1 Mbps – the worst experience I’ve had in my life. Only got 1.4 Mbps and the connection kept dropping out.

After two weeks of repeated calls to tech support – most of which were ignored or useless – I found out that my local phone carrier, Verizon, could not carry the speed. DSL Extreme’s website had assured me that the 7.1 speed was available in my area, it wasn’t. I cancelled the service contract. The company tried to charge me $231.00 for early cancellation which I refused to pay, and with good reason. They sent the account to a collection agency. I responded to the agency with the facts that DSL Extreme had violated the terms of the contract by not providing the service contracted for, and for false advertising on their website, not to mention being ignored by their tech support. I've not heard back from them. DON’T EVER SIGN UP WITH DSL EXTREME!

Then I heard about Wildblue/Exede Satellite Internet and called them, they installed it 2 business days later. I ordered the top speed advertised as 12 Mbps and found in speed tests that it far exceeded the advertised speed and measured at 15 to 20 Mbps depending on what speed test I used. Some of them wouldn’t even work at that speed but I found a couple that did, including PC Pitstop.

I initially ordered the 7 Gb/Mo. usage plan package for $49.99/Mo. but eventually had to upgrade all the way to the top 25 Gb/Mo. for my video usage at a cost of $129.99/Mo. It is well worth the price and I have had no problems with it. We don’t get a lot of rain here in So. California so “rain fade” is not a problem here. Their customer tech support is excellent, fast (little or no waiting) and knowledgeable, and no Indians.

Just one more thing: Wildblue/Exede does not use the satellite for the uplink. Instead it uses the 4G cellphone system which is much faster for sending data to the server. PC Pitstop Bandwidth Test came in at Ping: 765ms, Upload: 1.85Mbps, Download: 21.58Mbps. I highly recommend Wildblue/Exede if your bandwidth usage is moderate or you can afford the higher usage fee.

I think the article is a reasonably accurate assessment... I've been with Hughes for about 4 years, after dial up became intolerable. There truly is no other option for me, although it might be time to look into a 3G mobile hotspot.

I'm not a big video user so the cap has not been a problem, other than when I tried to update my Garmin GPS. Hughes actually has been making some improvements, including allowing some banking against the cap.
Their weakest areas continue to be customer service and communication. I've had a few good tech support experiences and some horrid ones. (Including spending an hour plus with a teach only to be told "Oh, our engineers have been doing some things in your area that is causing the problem."
Most of the rhetoric we are hearing from the politicians and economic development types is just that: rhetoric. Well, there's more than rhetoric. There's a huge waste of money involved as well.
Personally, my hope is that the cell phone companies continue to take advantage of this opportunity and expand their product line. Cell service HAS improved dramatically in this area, because the companies see an opportunity--not because the government is helping us.

We had Hughes net then upgraded to Hughes Gen4. After the upgrade Optimize 3 would no longer work. Upgraded to PC Matic, it would not work, ping time too long. Received a full refund for the upgrade (not the remainder of Op-3) We can no longer use PC Pitstop products.