I had Hughes for over 3 years. It was either that or dial up. When it worked, it was great. It was fast enough that I never noticed any delays.
The original install was a joke, the guy that came out had only done a few of them and after a day of messing with mine, he gave up and I had to wait a week for the owner of the company to come out. He figured out the problems and got it working. After awhile, I had some problems and called customer support. They are in India, which only means anything if you get a tech that you cannot understand. The first tech that you get will run you through a basic list of problems. They are pretty much useless, but after you play that game, they move you up to the next level of tech, who usually fixes the problem. They give you a list of things to chang in your settings, and sometimes that works, other times it doesn't.
Don't believe anybody who tells you that the clouds don't affect your service. Every time you call customer support, the very first question they ask is what the weather is like. They know that clouds affect service, and if you tell them it's cloudy out or raining, they might play along and see if it's something else, but they will also tell you to call back after the sky clears if you still have a problem.
If the tech can't figure it out, they will send out a technician. Every time that I had a technician come out, it was somebody different. Not just a different person, but a different company. Hughes changes companies that they hire to service their customers all the time. If you get a good one, don't be suprised if it's somebody different the next time. I had them drive up from Lufkin and Canton. Both are over an hour from Tyler, which is both a bigger city and right next to me. I've also had them from Tyler and the surrounding area, but like I said, it's always changing.
I've had them re-align my dish, change me to different satelites, replace the cable connections and even replace the cables. I've had three modems and two dishes. Nothing lasted very long and it's a non stop game of getting service. After your two years are up, you have to pay for what they replace. What really killed me was that the dish they replaced that I paid for went out about one month after the warrentee on it ended. All the parts that they use are remanufactured, and in my opinion, not done very well.
The techs all had two things in common. They bad mouthed the previous company and tech who had been out before, and they hated dealing with Hughes in getting paid for repairs and getting parts to make those repairs.
The last time it went out, I was done. I had allot of problems with them and their lousy service. Every time it rained, it died. My TV is with DirecTV Satelite, and it stayed on during most storms, while Hughes died at most storms. I lost emails that I'd send and it would die on clear days. Cold weather also killed it from time to time. It was just the most unreliable thing that I've ever dealt with.
You can do a search here under my name and Hughes or Direcway or Internet and read in more detail my problems. I posted allot of times here about it.
I have a cellular modem now. It's small, simple and easy. You don't need a tech. If it stops working, I'll just buy another. So far, it's never died on me and it's never not worked. I have it in a router so my wife can be online the same time that I am. We took it with us on vacation and were able to surf the net while driving and where we stayed. It was very helpful for finding things to do and to review companies that we were interesting in going rafting with. It's the same price per month as Satelitte, but much better with the really big bonus of being portable.
With the availability of cellular modems, I think it's just a matter of time until satelitte goes out of business. It's a lousy service that charges top dollar and requires others to fix it when it goes down. They support it with rebuilt parts and are very bad about keeping their service people supplied with parts. Don't do it if there is any other option available to you.
If you can get a cell phone to work, you can have reliable internet service.
Good luck,
Eddie
Personally I would rather have dialup than hughes, but I don't have a phone line. I don't have any experience with Wildblue, but I don't think they could be any worse
