HughesNet Satellite Internet,One Of The Worst Decisions I've Made Lately

June 11, 2020

[Yosemitest]

HughesNet Satellite Internet was sold to me as 10 times faster than DSL service.
Well ... that's not what I've experienced in the last month since I switched from DSL to Satellite Internet.
I tried to watch a HBO movie and it took me three days to finally get the it, and then only in the early morning hours.
HughesNet Satellite Service's excuse ... "With so many people at home due to the Covid-19 situation, our system is overloaded."

I signed up for a two year contract with both internet and phone service, and in less than a month I've already asked what it would cost to terminate my service.
$620.00 is the quote that I was given to get out of my contract, and my monthly bill is roughly $110.0 a month.
When you try to communicate with HughesNet Customer Service, on average I had to wait over one hour to get a live person.

Bottom line ... AVOID HUGHESNET SATELLITE SERVICE AT ALL COST !
It's horrible.

[Falconspeed]

Thanks for the warning. You are innocent and made a tiny mistake: contracts are very 2005. No one should be pressures into a contract.

Be thankful. “My monthly bill is roughly $110.0 a month.” Be glad.

My monthly bill is $230 and Verizon is wonderful but expensive. That does not include cell phone.

[ConservativeMind]

A friend had that some 20 years ago and the latency was terrible—something like 200-300 ms. He went to a microwave option until DSL came by.

If you have DSL access, consider getting two drops (installs) out of your wiring. You can bond them together with various routers and get up to twice the performance.

[Equine1952]

You have my heart felt sympathy. I moved out in the country a long way and did the Hughesnet crap. I’ve tried DTV and Dish. They all suck. Now its Roku, sling, fire tv and OAN. Over my stream WiFi data. Little cheaper and most crap I don’t watch anyway.

[Yosemitest]

I've got two options, due to living way out in the woods.
Satellite or DSL, because I'm literally at the end of the phone line with AT&T.
My next door neighbor, about 1/4 mile down the road is on a different small town phone line, and cellular service is out of reach at home.
I can drive down the road about 3 miles and get a cell tower with a couple of bars of service.

My latest latency test was about 185m, and that was around 5 am local time.

"... consider getting two drops (installs) out of your wiring. "

Do you have to pay for two separate data lines to get that, with internet service cost on both lines ?

[pepsionice]

The real bottom line on this whole discussion...if one wants non-urban lifestyle living, then this is also part of the acceptance, you won’t have first or second class internet or TV programming.

I would suggest this on HugesNet...it was probably designed for X-amount of customers and service, and the draw went way beyond what they could realistically provide people. Business-wise, I would anticipate a lot of folks leaving it...with some collapse occurring in the next twelve months of the company.

[ConservativeMind]

Yes. In our area, our phone lines had a bunch of extra wires and another DSL line could be created out of those. So you pay for another DSL line with Internet, but now you use half as much over the month from each, so if you had 1 TB without surcharge, you have 2 TB.

There are modems and routers that can negotiate your communications in a transparent manner. Worst case is two separate computers having their own full speed DSL, but not having to do anything to achieve that, as it is automatic.

[Bullish]

But, do you like them?

[Yosemitest]

I loathe the day I decided to purchase their service.

[Yosemitest]

The reason I decided to drop AT&T was a storm that blew down some trees that uprooted their phone lines a couple of miles up the road.
It took AT&T a little over two weeks to fix the line and return our phone service and internet service to operating condition.
My dad's in his mid 80s and that's too long to be without a phone, in case he needs medical attention.

[Lurkina.n.Learnin]

Are you keeping an eye on Elon Musk’s Starlink. It sounds like it might be a viable option.

https://www.starlink.com/

[Laslo Fripp]

Thanks for the warning.

If I weren’t married, I’d cut the cable and save over $2K a year.

TV is a vast wasteland, I never use our house phone and we get 5 bars on the cell service.

[ConservativeMind]

This is a router that had the dual WAN option with link aggregation or failover—you configure it.

https://dongknows.com/asus-rt-ac88u-review/

I have the ASUS RT-AC3100, which is the four port version (a bit cheaper), but it has the same functionality, otherwise.

The reviewer at that link set his AC88u for aggregation of both DSL and Cable Internet drops. Seems elated after several years.

[Bob434]

[[HughesNet Satellite Service’s excuse ... “With so many people at home due to the Covid-19 situation, our system is overloaded.”]]

Your response should be- ‘well since you can’t deliver what you promised- how about 2/3 off my bill?’

[Yosemitest]

I'll have to research it.
Elon Musk’s Starlink is not operational yet, and what will be his "affordable price" for that service ?
He hasn't released the price yet.

[Yosemitest]

5 bars of service ... Get ROKU and cut the cable, unless you've got some very old people living with you who are computer illiterate.
ROKU is easy.
I recommend ROKU's Streaming Stick Plus because you can take it with you when you travel.
You buy their hardware and they have several channels that are FREE.
Then later you can purchase premium channels like "theBlaze TV" or HBONOW or HBOMAX just to name a few, if you want them.

[Spktyr]

“HughesNet Satellite Internet was sold to me as 10 times faster than DSL service.”

10 times faster than the lowest possible speed DSL sold in the US, the kind that doesn’t meet the former legal definition of broadband.

That would be 64k. So if they give you 640K, they’re still correct - but it’s slower than any DSL sold by a major provider today.

And that’s before you get to the inherent 250ms lag of your download going from surface to orbit and back.

[Spktyr]

For that matter, why did you not do research before signing? Hughesnet’s bad rep stretches back at least a decade and a half and has spread far and wide.

[coaster123]

That's what I'd say. But their excuse is valid. I tried to get satellite internet in northern Idaho and was told they were at capacity and I'd have to wait in line for an opening.

I'm glad I couldn't get it. The latency would drive me nuts.

[Yosemitest]

Bookmarked.

Thanks. I'm not a gamer, but I like to keep current on the news, and watch a lot of news videos.
That router is old technology if it was 3 years old on Dec 27, 2018.
I wonder what todays tech is capable of.
But being retired enlisted military, my funds are tight and I'll have to do one project at a time.