HughesNet G4

[Swiftriver]

Swiftriver is right.

I would use less kind words to describe it.
On top of all that, the clock they use to determine the "24 hours"period for exceeding your limits and getting slapped with throttling changes. Some days it expires at noon, 10am, midnight, beats the carp outta me what time...

ALSO it seems we will all need to upgrade, resubscribe and buy NEW equipment to get access to Gen4...

My 2 years is up end of March 13, and I'm gonna look around.

Has anyone heard of this new sat internet company, Excede?

David

Don't bother looking at Wildblue. They were even worse than Hughesnet. If it even looked like it was going to rain or snow we lost internet. Haven't heard of Excede. Maybe there will be a provider that cares about customer service and giving you what you pay for.

 

[1fastbob]

Wildblue is horrible, Hughesnet is awful. Consider a USB device from your local cellphone company if you have cell signal. I use one from Verizon and have done so for several years and I am happy with it. You do need to live in an area with a fairly good cell signal. Years ago I tried Wildblue and for a few months it was just okay, then they did some upgrades and it went to h e l l .

 

[JESSE1]

I've had Hughesnet for about four years now. Better than dial-up but could be better. I don't plan on upgrading to the Gen4, I believe you have to buy new equipment and no doubt be committed to another contract. I intend to check about Verizon wireless when I get the chance.

 

[1fastbob]

I've had Hughesnet for about four years now. Better than dial-up but could be better. I don't plan on upgrading to the Gen4, I believe you have to buy new equipment and no doubt be committed to another contract. I intend to check about Verizon wireless when I get the chance.

If you do try Verizon you have like 10 days to return it if it doesn't work for you. I have mine setup on the desktop That I am using this very minute and I also have a router and can access the internet from any of our 3 laptops from anywhere in the house. The USB connection usually has the equivalent bandwidth of a T-1 line download and a little slower on the upload side, we only have "3G" currently. When "4G" gets here it will be much faster. The only downside that I can think of is if you are one of those "down-loaders" when you go over 5 or 6 gigs of data per month it costs more.

 

[radrock]

I think about everyone is on q here. My wife had Hughes at the office at one time. It worked ok for sending email and general office work. Then someone brought their kid in with them for the day and wham. We got shut down for exceeding the threshold limits. It sure messed up the office that day and several other until we caught on what was happening. The kid was watching movies.

 

[Retired Iron Peddler]

Has anyone heard of this new sat internet company, Excede?

David

Our rural electric cooperative had been selling Wild Blue for some time and now peddle Excede which as far as I can tell is a souped up version of Wild Blue and probably has download limits as the other satellite based services. Fortunately, we have high speed wireless broadband with no limits on downloads which has been very good. We have been subscribers on this system for almost seven years. My part time consulting work is done at home via computer/internet.

We tried Verison Wireless 3g about a year ago and it didn't work well with our router and three desktops running at the same time. Verison would have been a little less cost per month.

Bill

 

[bigbull338]

we had hughesnet for 5yrs with no probs.then it went to crapp.the signal went through the floor.so we had them out to adjust the dish.that was ok for a lil while.then it crapped out again.so we changed to wilsblue excede.an for use its 10x faster than hughes with no probs so far.

 

[1fastbob]

Our rural electric cooperative had been selling Wild Blue for some time and now peddle Excede which as far as I can tell is a souped up version of Wild Blue and probably has download limits as the other satellite based services. Fortunately, we have high speed wireless broadband with no limits on downloads which has been very good. We have been subscribers on this system for almost seven years. My part time consulting work is done at home via computer/internet.

We tried Verison Wireless 3g about a year ago and it didn't work well with our router and three desktops running at the same time. Verison would have been a little less cost per month.

Bill

Verizon internet is certainly ONLY suggested to use if you live where cable or DSL is not available. Satellite generally sucks, but if your are lucky and get put on a good beam then it will be okay for a while. Satellite is bandwidth limited so the more subscribers and the more bandwidth is used the less performance you will have. It is much easier to add an additional cell tower and servers than it is to add a satellite.

 

[jinman]

Vernon, we used to have a Sprint USB cellphone modem and loved it when only 3G was available. We have a Cradlepoint router in our house and it has a USB port for a cellphone type modem. When home, we ran our wireless network off the USB modem. When we went on the road, we plugged the modem into our laptop and could log onto the Internet while cruising down the road. It was fantastic. However, we got DSL from CenturyLink in our area and it is much cheaper with higher speed and unlimited data. The Sprint modem did have a 5 Gbyte data limit each month, but we never approached the maximum because we don't download movies or lots of uncompressed video. Our bill for the modem was around $60 per month total and the only reason we let it lapse was the $29/month DSL plan.

EDIT: I plugged your zipcode into Sprint's coverage map and you can only get 3G from them in your area. However, AT&T has 4G lte. That should be smokin' fast.

 

[General Lee]

A few more points to add about HughesNet..... There is unlimited download usage from 2am - 7am and speed is acceptable but how many people are awake at those times? LOL. The download status meter is a must, you can keep an eye on your download usage. General browsing will not use any usage, but music and videos will and quickly. They also give you one free "restore" token each billing cycle, so if you exceed the fair access policy, you can either use your free token or purchase one for $7.50. You can definitely tell when bandwidth is heavy, because usage is SLOW. I notice it early evening from about 7-10 pm.

HughesNet knows if you pick them, its pretty much the only option you have and they stick it to you.