HughesNet G4

[PoorPlowboy]

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.

WildBlue changed their name to Exede. Maybe they're running from their reputation?

 

[thatguy]

I have hardly ever heard anyone that is 'happy' with satellite internet.. Most are just hoping for something half way better to come along so they can jump ship..

IF you are in the Verizon 4g (or 3g) coverage area their MIFI is pretty good.. We are getting about 12 Mb download on 4g, and 1.5Mb on 3g.. We have been very happy with the service but need more bandwidth so we are considering millenicom (see below). pricing is $20 for the device and then you pay for your usage $30/4gb, $40/6gb, $50/8gb, $60/10gb (each additional 2 gb is $10)

Verizon also has a Home Fusion plan that is only 4g $50 for 10gb or $90 for 20 gb.

Another option is millenicom.com they resell a Verizon 20 gb (10 gb of 4g and 10 gb of 3g) for $70..

Brian

 

[rekees4300]

Is anyone getting service from the new Hughes satelite EchoStar 17 launched July 5, 2012? My wireless provider was bought out by Skybeam in Texas and is getting worse by the day.

I would like to know if the Hughes service is any better than previously reported.

Vernon

It will take much more than a satellite to fix Hughesnet. I recommend avoiding that company unless you have no other alternatives. If you have Verizon 3G or 4G coverage that would be better than Hughesnet. I had Hughesnet for 2 years. When their contract expired I smashed the dish with FEL...felt good! Have had Millenicom for a few years and haven't had any hassles. They have monthly billing (no contract).

 

[ustmd]

Is anyone getting service from the new Hughes satelite EchoStar 17 launched July 5, 2012? My wireless provider was bought out by Skybeam in Texas and is getting worse by the day.

I would like to know if the Hughes service is any better than previously reported.

Vernon

Last year, my provider was bought by Skybeam (posted a thread about it). Service went downhill for about 3-4 months, then recovered. I am fairly sure it had to do with the transition period. Given all of the problems with satellite, it might be worth the effort to stick it out for awhile.

 

[troutsqueezer]

Like some of you, I have been down many roads trying to get fast, reliable Internet service. Wild Blue, Verizon 760 dongle, Verizon MiFi. For the Verizon products, I had to set up an external Yagi antenna (highly directional) and find the cell tower location to point the thing. That worked ok, I was even getting 4G but the signal would fluctuate and revert to 3G frequently.

As mentioned above, Verizon now has a Fusion system, tailored for those who live out in the sticks. We signed up for it a month ago and I am very pleased. First, the antenna (Cantenna, they call it) is in a can about the size of a small pail and is powered (amplified). It was mounted in a place that has wife approval (very important) behind some bushes growing up the house wall. The inside router has by far, the best range of any router I've had (including a $200 Cradlepoint). It goes through walls, sits behind my monitors and gives me three bars anywhere in the house (multiple Kindles here). It also has Ethernet connectivity (hard wire) for my two desktops. Monthly data rate$ is much better than the MiFi at $60/10gigs and $10/gig thereafter.

This is 4G only, BTW.

 

[mikim]

The only cell service I have available where I'm at is AT&T so I went with them for inet service - but the connection was so spotty and the 5G monthly limit was not enough. We then started with a wireless local startup
and it was ok for awhile until he got too many customers. I recently switched to Wildblue Excede....yes excede is wildblue....my limit is 15G which I seem to be able to live with and for now - the speed is very good. Wishing
we had better options. ......I'll put up with the bad internet service any day over living in an area with enough population to have cable. We've had 2 people move onto our road this year.....getting crowded....3 miles of road and now 5 families live here........Wonder if they're taking immigrants in the outback?

 

[Oaktree]

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.

Agree that Wildblue leaves a lot to be desired, at least it's $20/mo cheaper than Hughesnet for what seems to be the same service. Supposedly, as they moved customers to the new Excede service the old WB would get faster due to less traffic. Can't say I've noticed any improvement (didn't really want to pay for installation again, pay a monthly fee for equipment and be stuck with a 2 year contract so I stuck with WB), if anything it's gotten even pokier.

Not sure I agree with cell company packages being any better...a neighbor of mine has it and according to him it's just as slow, low data cap and no cheaper. They've got you and act accordingly.

The local telco has been running fiber in the area this past summer...hopefully we'll get DSL soon.

 

[sam5570]

this is intresting and very helpful for me we have dsl but have no cell service for 7 miles our internet is with century link started out work great now it is as slow as our dial up was i was looking into hughs net satelite so guess i just deal with it till something reputable comes along although i have to say it working good for the time of day so maby there getting the problems fixedd

 

[1fastbob]

Agree that Wildblue leaves a lot to be desired, at least it's $20/mo cheaper than Hughesnet for what seems to be the same service. Supposedly, as they moved customers to the new Excede service the old WB would get faster due to less traffic. Can't say I've noticed any improvement (didn't really want to pay for installation again, pay a monthly fee for equipment and be stuck with a 2 year contract so I stuck with WB), if anything it's gotten even pokier.

Not sure I agree with cell company packages being any better...a neighbor of mine has it and according to him it's just as slow, low data cap and no cheaper. They've got you and act accordingly.

The local telco has been running fiber in the area this past summer...hopefully we'll get DSL soon.

I have actually had both Wildblue and Verizon. In my location Verizon is far and away better both in speed and uptime. Note: I am NOT refering to smart phone data, I am refering to USB connection device data.

 

[tractorshopper]

Had HughesNet for about a year and a half. Got tired of hitting the 100MB/day limit. Couldn't ever get the software to schedule night-time downloads ;-( Was very slow and the limited use was finally more than I could stand, especially since it was a daily limit. I broke down and bought the MiFi from Verizon. It was much faster from the start. I still have a monthly limit (twice what HughesNet was for about 42% more $), but no daily limits in place. If I want to download a movie for the kids off iTunes, I can do this in one sitting now instead of in 2 weeks. Or a new album, can get in about 10 minutes instead of 2 days.

About 2 months after switching, the purple blinking light turned to green blinking light. (this means I went from 3G connection to 4G) Wow!!! MiFi is even more awesome. Faster than the T1 line at work. I also changed to where now I bundle the data for the MiFi with the wife and kids' cell phone data plan and get more Gigs at a lower cost. Another great thing about MiFi is that you can take it anywhere with you, vacation, riding in the car, whatever. You can hook 5 devices to it at once (not that I ever do) and it is it's own tiny router and all in one. Still wish I had DSL so I could get unlimited data for reasonable price, but this is much better than the satellite.

 

[LarryD]

As mentioned above, Verizon now has a Fusion system, tailored for those who live out in the sticks. We signed up for it a month ago and I am very pleased. First, the antenna (Cantenna, they call it) is in a can about the size of a small pail and is powered (amplified). It was mounted in a place that has wife approval (very important) behind some bushes growing up the house wall. The inside router has by far, the best range of any router I've had (including a $200 Cradlepoint). It goes through walls, sits behind my monitors and gives me three bars anywhere in the house (multiple Kindles here). It also has Ethernet connectivity (hard wire) for my two desktops. Monthly data rate$ is much better than the MiFi at $60/10gigs and $10/gig thereafter.

This is 4G only, BTW.

I started looking at phone and wireless card upgrades a few weeks ago for my Verizon account. I've been using an amplified 3G card for home internet several years now and could get 1.5Mbps on good days. The only problem with upgrading the card to 4G meant a new amplifier for the new bandwidth at $200. It appeared I was in an "extended" area for 4G and that was going to be a big gamble, although the card is backward compatable for 3G.
So the girl at the store told me about HomeFusion (not advertised as an option at MyVerizon) that included a tech to verify the siganl before install. I like tests!
Today the tech arrived and BINGO, a 4G signal. The install was free and the equipment was free, just a two year agreement. I did get reduced to 10gigs a month (from unlimited) but my usage meter hasn't been over 3gigs for the past six months. So my new smart phone with the HomeFusion internet access cost me $19.95. Couldn't beat that deal even on T.V.!

 

[rekees4300]

The install was free and the equipment was free, just a two year agreement.

Did you get a special deal? Their website says "A one-time equipment charge of $99.99 applies on all HomeFusion Broadband orders"

Set Your Location

 

[LarryD]

I was eligible for an upgrade on my 3G card. The girl at the Verizon store did all the paperwork. They're not promoting this package on-line, gotta visit a store. I still have to mail in my $50 rebate form for the phone so it really wasn't $19.95 yet, but I'll use a stamp for $50!

 

[Oaktree]

I have actually had both Wildblue and Verizon. In my location Verizon is far and away better both in speed and uptime. Note: I am NOT refering to smart phone data, I am refering to USB connection device data.

That's what my neighbor has...the USB stick. Cell coverage is a little iffy here, maybe that has something to do with the speed.
Curiously, how do you make that work on a home network, do you need a separate stick for each computer?

 

[1fastbob]

That's what my neighbor has...the USB stick. Cell coverage is a little iffy here, maybe that has something to do with the speed.
Curiously, how do you make that work on a home network, do you need a separate stick for each computer?

A couple of ways to do it. Only 1 usb device (stick) required. You can use the USB stick in computer #1 and share it's internet connection and feed it through a router. I had trouble doing internet connection sharing so I run proxy server (software) on the computer with the usb stick and I then connect that computer to a wireless / wired router. I can access either by main computer, wireless router or wired Ethernet through the same router. I can get good signal in my detached garage 100 feet away also. The most important thing is a good cellular signal is needed for the usb device and you could get one with an external antenna plugin to help with poor signal. 2 signal bars or better does the trick for me. Works very well.

 

[TripleR]

We just upgraded to Hughenet Gen4 yesterday and our system is working well with good speeds downloading and uploading. I know other people have had problems, but ours is fine. We had to do an upgrade to get more FAP download as my son takes some college courses online and we were running into problems.

 

[MossflowerWoods]

RRR,

How much more Fair Use do you get? How much faster is it? And most importantly, how much more does it cost? Gotta buy all new reciever etc, right?

I hate my HughesNet... contract is up end of March...

Be well,
David

 

[wcampbell47]

I dropped HughesNet a couple of years back because of 3rd world tech support. My modem died and they wanted me to buy another one with 6 months left on my contract. No thanks. I switched to using Virgin Mobile MiFi for a couple of years. This past August I had Exede 12 installed. The download speeds are great, the tech support is based in the US if you get direct from Exede or ViaSat. They have a Recovery Act pricing schedule that is good for lifetime (double check me on that). They offered internet and tv as a bundle with reduced cost .. so I took that. TV is great. Satellite is fair. What I mean by that is you can have connection issues. Strongly suggest you log onto Wild Blue World Forums and read before jumping in.

All that said what I would really recommend is to check with friends/neighbors with smart phones and see if the nearest verizon tower is putting out 4G signal. You said nearest cell signal is 7 miles. I have saved several marriages here on the coast by installing a cell phone signal booster. That will do two things .. well three. Improve voice quality, improve MiFi speed and save your marriage. I'm thinking you will have higher speed and no connection issues if you can get 4g even if you have to boost it.

Seriously .. go to CellReception.com and enter the city nearest you that has coverage. If there is a tower within 20 miles there is a good possibility you can boost the signal. If you have 4g even better. I would trade my Exede for 4g in a heart beat.

Cradlepoint is the best router I have used to establish WiFi in a home using a USB stick modem to connect to the internet. PM me if you want a reference for equipment.

 

[LarryD]

All that said what I would really recommend is to check with friends/neighbors with smart phones and see if the nearest verizon tower is putting out 4G signal. You said nearest cell signal is 7 miles. I have saved several marriages here on the coast by installing a cell phone signal booster. That will do two things .. well three. Improve voice quality, improve MiFi speed and save your marriage. I'm thinking you will have higher speed and no connection issues if you can get 4g even if you have to boost it.

Seriously .. go to CellReception.com and enter the city nearest you that has coverage. If there is a tower within 20 miles there is a good possibility you can boost the signal. If you have 4g even better. I would trade my Exede for 4g in a heart beat.

Cradlepoint is the best router I have used to establish WiFi in a home using a USB stick modem to connect to the internet. PM me if you want a reference for equipment.

I couldn't agree more with this statement. I used an amplified 3G signal for many years with pretty good results. 4G is an even better solution with HomeFusion from Verizon.

The CradlePoint router was how I used WiFi in the house. PM me if a used CradlePoint MBR95 is something you might like. Also have a 3G amplifier with antenna for those outside the 4G radius.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

I switched from the old generation Hughesnet to the new Excede. Day and night difference, so much better. The installer was a joke, but that is another story. I also have verizon MIFI cell service, 4G. Excede is faster. I end up using all of both data plans in a month, and usually over. My new 4G mifi does not work on my cradlepoint router like the old one did.