Hughesnet has a very good/fast satellite internet service, and its ‘two-way’. In the past, satellite internet did downstream data with the dish, and any upload traffic was transmitted via dialup modem. Made it impractical. The biggest drawback of their service now is the monthly data caps are too low, and that’s how they tier their pricing. Even their highest plan is only somewhere around 20GB per month, and I can blow through that in two or three days if I’m busy, and we also have kids that use it. After you hit the cap, they throttle you back to dialup type speed, and you might as well shut your computers down if you’re regulated to that.
I suppose the service is great for those who live out in very rural areas and have no other options for internet access, with maybe a couple of people using it, who may only use the internet for web pages/email, with an OCCASIONAL streaming media session, but anyone doing more than that should just stay away from it.
It’s a good start I guess. I think they’ll open it up some when they realize that they’ll get more customers if they implement a reasonable data usage policy. I could have lived with it, had they throttled the speeds back to something more reasonable than dialup speed, like maybe 1mbps. Their speed is around 10mbps before you hit the data cap.
I did just cancel my Dish subscription I had for over 10 years. I wanted to get new equipment and qualify for the new customer discounts. With Dish you have to wait 90 days to get new service with the promos. With Direct TV it is two years!
The feature I like that Dish receivers have that Direct does not is that they have an over the air coax input on their receivers. You can then navigate to a page where you can scan your over the air locals. Then those channels will show up in your program guide right along with your satellite channels. They will be displayed in a different color. An awesome feature. No switching inputs.
I probably get close to 35 over the air channels not available on DISH. ME TV is one example.
I currently have Charter and my download speeds run 80 to 100 mgb, but I also have 400 channels that I don't watch. They recently went to switched digital service so had to add another adapter to my Tivo.