# hughes.net



## marvella (Oct 12, 2003)

i just got an offer in the mail for hughes.net satellite installation, with 100 dollars off.

can anyone tell me about it? is it reliable? expensive?


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## georgec (Jul 9, 2007)

Compare it to http://www.wildblue.com/ . I haven't used either, but I'm considering wildblue.


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## donsgal (May 2, 2005)

marvella said:


> i just got an offer in the mail for hughes.net satellite installation, with 100 dollars off.
> 
> can anyone tell me about it? is it reliable? expensive?


There are several threads which have recently been discussed here. Just do a search for them.

Like everything else, you are going to find people who love them and people who hate them.

For my money I would go with Agristar which is a sister company of Hughes.net (they use the same satillites) *but* agristar.com has STATESIDE customer service (not INDIA), and they also are targeted toward the farmer and offer some benefits in that area. Their prices and installation and everything is exactly the same as hughes.net. 

We'll be getting agristar.com when we move out to the homestead (hopefully soon), due to no DSL available (and not likely to be available any time soon). I had a very bad experience with WildBlue, so I am not going with them.

donsgal


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## marvella (Oct 12, 2003)

donsgal said:


> There are several threads which have recently been discussed here. Just do a search for them.
> 
> Like everything else, you are going to find people who love them and people who hate them.
> 
> ...


i DID search here before posting- nothing came up.

i'm on dial up and don't know anything about satellite service. is it expensive?


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## gorgegirl (Jul 30, 2006)

i have hughes net. Yes it is expensive, as compared to dial-up. I pay $60/month. Wild Blue and Hughes net are competitors. Initially I wanted to sign up with wild blue, but they were out of capacity on their satellite for our area. At the time (April), I was told they were having trouble getting their new satellite up....by someone??? can't remember who. Anyhow, I've been happy with my service.....no problems other than the price ;o).


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## Terre d'Esprit (Aug 31, 2004)

When we had our system installed (2004), it was $399.99, and we pay about $60 a month.

I hate hate hate it, but it's the only option other than dial up. We have some good wireless providers here (prairie i-net, i-rule.net) but we are down in a valley and have no line of sight to an access point. DSL or cable are not options, as we live too far out.

When we got it, I asked about weather/environmental effects. I was told that our satellite TV would go out before the internet did. WRONG. It goes out if it is overcast, nevermind fog or a rainstorm. Forget snow, it goes out when it gets cloudy before the snow gets here. The dish ices up, and you have to keep the snow off of it (it's on our roof, some folks have them installed on towers).

When it's down for other reasons, you call India. In defense of the folks answering phones, they are just given a flow chart and key phrases to say. They have little ability to fix anything. There have been times when I have been on the phone on hold for HOURS. You can't do anything without first speaking to their customer service. Ultimately my problem was escalated up the chain, until I talked to someone stateside. But each level higher meant at least a 45 minute wait. Finally, they made an appointment with a service person (has to be FCC licensed) in my state, about 1.5 hours away, to come up and fix it. That took 3 days. Another time it was the power supply in the system box that went down, and they had to send me a new power supply. That took about a week.

The download speed is good, for the most part, not much different than cable. However, anytime you have a secure connection, the speed is like a dial-up network. I logged onto my VPN at work, and attempted to move a few files from one directory to another (remotely). It said that the operation would take 51 hours!! I called work and had my assistant do it, and it moved in less than 10 seconds. Anytime you are purchasing something with a credit card, or any other secure connection, you will encounter a delay.

Also, you have a download cap. You can't download more than 200mb per day. Those YouTube videos and multimedia sites will eat that up in a few hours. If you go over the limit, you are subject to their Fair Access Policy (FAP) repercussions, and your internet speed rivals that of a 24.4 modem. It is worse than dial up.

For additional monthly fees, you can "upgrade" your service. You can have faster troubleshooting response times (you pay for 24 hour weekday response, etc.), or a larger download threshold. 

It's definitely a "your mileage may vary" situation, but I would never, ever get satellite internet again (hughes, agristar, wildblue-- ANY). I'm looking into cellular internet, which is about the same cost. The benefit is that I can have internet anywhere on my laptop (car, work, home). The drawback is that with Hughes, all computers in our house can share a wireless connection, but not with cellular. I have heard that technology is being developed to help that situation, but for now, each computer would need its own cellular card for internet access. So for the moment we are hughesnet customers.

Good luck.

T


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## Dutchie (Mar 14, 2003)

marvella said:


> i just got an offer in the mail for hughes.net satellite installation, with 100 dollars off.
> 
> can anyone tell me about it? is it reliable? expensive?



We have satellite because we need something that can handle transmitting large files which dialup cannot do and satellite is the only "fast" internet connection available here.

When we first got it it was through DirecWave. Since then Hughes bought them out and the service and connectivity has gobe downhill considerably.

I would not go with Hughes if I could avoid it.

Other than that, I like satellite. We do lose it from time to time when storms are in the area. And when it snows we need to brush the dish off from time to time. But we don;t get snow that much so that isn;t really an issue.


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## donsgal (May 2, 2005)

marvella said:


> i DID search here before posting- nothing came up.
> 
> i'm on dial up and don't know anything about satellite service. is it expensive?


Try these:

http://www.homesteadingtoday.com/showthread.php?t=122714

http://www.homesteadingtoday.com/showthread.php?t=116418

http://www.homesteadingtoday.com/showthread.php?t=114783

http://www.homesteadingtoday.com/showthread.php?t=102873

donsgal


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## Snowdancer (Sep 23, 2002)

I've had HughesNet for 2 mos now and love it. I originally tried to get Wild Blue but their installation tech was a no show/no call 3 times & I said forget them.

I haven't had any problems and the tech who did the install was great. I'm living in among a Lot of trees and he was able to site in the only spot out of 8 available satellites and got me a strong signal. :dance: 

I have the middle package which is 375mb/day download/upload capacity.
I pay $78 a month & that includes the protection plan.

My experience is a positive one but I am sure a lot depends on the installer and the people you would be dealing with locally.

I hope you find what you need. Satellite internet although not quite as fast as DSL is so much better than the 26.4 kbps dialup I was getting since moving back to the country.


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## Kung (Jan 19, 2004)

I have Wildblue, and have been very pleased, other than one small problem. It depends upon where you live, as KY said.


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## marvella (Oct 12, 2003)

well, i do live far away from most everything. my current provider offers high speed wireless, but not in my area. it's quite mountainous.

i'm currently paying 50 bucks for 3 months, so 60 to 80 a month is significantly more, and it sounds as if the service can be less than stellar.

i spend enough time on hold tryinng to resolve problems with dtv and at&t.

i think i'll pass but thanks for the responses.


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## pixelphotograph (Apr 8, 2007)

its expensive and they can throttle your speed down if you do alot of surfing emailing and windows updates.
They have a clause somewhere that they have the right to throttle you down and that is the biggest complaint i hear from users. As they start out fast and after so long things start getting really slow.
satellite only has so much bandwidth and they have to keep it even amongst the board.
I for one wouldn't use it unless that is your only choice. I have a friend who uses them because they have no other option. It also has bad lag when playing first person shooter games but if you aren't into that its not a problem.


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## donsgal (May 2, 2005)

pixelphotograph said:


> its expensive and they can throttle your speed down if you do alot of surfing emailing and windows updates.
> They have a clause somewhere that they have the right to throttle you down and that is the biggest complaint i hear from users. As they start out fast and after so long things start getting really slow.
> satellite only has so much bandwidth and they have to keep it even amongst the board.
> I for one wouldn't use it unless that is your only choice. I have a friend who uses them because they have no other option. It also has bad lag when playing first person shooter games but if you aren't into that its not a problem.


I do a lot of downloading (not gaming) so when I get my agristar hooked up (which has the same useage caps as hughes), I am going to make a list of all the stuff I want to download that are big files and take my laptop over to our local wifi hotspot and do my massive downloads there so as not to go over my cap. Sometimes I download files that are 700 megabytes which is twice what the cap is. I'd be throttled down all the time if I downloaded through the satellite.

donsgal


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## hillsidedigger (Sep 19, 2006)

I'm using Hughes.net as I type. It does lose a signal during heavy clouds but thats not all that often.


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## ceresone (Oct 7, 2005)

I paid well over 1,000 for the hughes setup here--used it over a year. biggest problem was constant updates that would freeze up my system--then to call and be transferred to India??? no way--useless satellite on house--went back to dial-up.


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## texican (Oct 4, 2003)

With hughes, there is a FAP, fair access policy. I don't like, but it's there. I had one way for 5 years, and got two way this last winter. You can download a lot, in small chunks. If you start downloading a movie or a linux distro, you'll get past the 200mb FAP limit quick. If you download 50mb, take a break, come back in a couple hours, 50 or a 100 more... come back in the evening, do some more... you can (or at least I can) get around 600mb a day. 

It's all in knowing how the FAP works, and massaging it.

Now they have unlimited downloading between 3 and 6am ET. I queued up 350mb of music on napster, got up the other morning, and dl'ed it in an hour. I could probably dl a movie from netflix... it's just a bummer having to get up in the middle of the night.

With all it's flaws its a zillion times better than dialup.


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## WindowOrMirror (Jan 10, 2005)

Best of the worst options.

I have it... one thing you should know is that the other two networks (more providers but two networks) both have Fair Access Policies that ratchet you down in bandwidth (to almost nothing) for the rest of the billing cycle (the entire month). Hughes ratchets you down after three times as much traffic but only for 24 hours. MUCH more liveable.

Satellite stinks, but when you've got phonelines with shared ground that can only get 14.4k dialup... what're you gonna do?

R


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## CJ (May 10, 2002)

We've had Hughesnet (formerly Direcway) for over 5 years now. First on the farm, then we went fulltime in our RV, we mounted the dish to a tripod and we drag it around with us.

I think it works great. In 5 years, I've rarely had any trouble with it, and I've never needed tech support. Only the most severe rain storm knocks out the signal, and never for very long.

We use the middle package, which allows 375 megs of downloading per day, at a cost of $69 per month. We keep the satellite modem hooked to a wireless router, and so our computer, the XBox, my sewing machines, etc, all share the connection and have access to the internet.

Is it as good as cable? No, not usually, although it is better than a lot of the crappy cable hookups you sometimes get.


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