[okie1962]

My folks live in a rural area in McIntosh country so internet service is very limited. A few years ago they saw advertisements on TV for high speed Hughes Net Satellite internet service. So they called and got set up with a two year contract.

My folks were paying about $70 a month for the service and it was very slow, I mean slower than dial up. I'm not Exaggerating. My dad was looking at getting a Toyota pickup so we were going to check it out online. It took over 7 minutes for the web page to open. We timed it. And the weather was perfect, not a cloud in the sky and the satellite dish was aligned and had an unobstructed view of the sky.

The customer service was very poor. My folks don't really get on line that much so they just kind of put up with it. After their two year contract was up they called and canceled. They went with an air card that they got from their cell phone provider and it works very good. And it is cheaper.

I was just wondering if anyone else has had the same problems?

[Goodpasture]

We ran Hughs for several years. Our contract was for about $100 after we paid for the service. It was pretty decent at the time. Because we send large files (we are real estate appraisers) over the internet we could not handle the "fair use" restrictions which limits the amount of downloads/uploads that can be done "at speed." If you go past the fair use restriction, it slows to about 50 bps and is excruciating........frequently timing out. At that point we had no other options though. We use cell cards when we are on the road, but cell service at home is virtually nonexistent. About two years ago the local phone company got DSL to us. We switched immediately. now, if they would only get us a ground based cable, I could do without DTV........

[robW]

There are three types of satellite internet service: Iridium, IMARSAT, and Hughes. These three are the CARRIERS. Iridium is global and designed primarily for cel phone use. Data transfer rates are not good on Iridium, but it isn't designed for that. It is called "Iridium" because it was originally designed to have 77 satellites worldwide--77 being the atomic number for the element iridium.

IMARSAT is built and maintained by the European Space Consortium. Usually (99.999% of the time) it is sold as a mix of data and voice. If you want to take video in Kenya and uplink to your office in Los Angeles, this is a good system to choose. Also, if you want to link your ship-to-shore communications from Madagascar to Seattle, pick this one.

Hughes operates a series of satellites that cover North America. They sell their bandwidth directly and also to resellers--sort of like cel phone companies allowing other companies to piggyback on their networks for a price. There are many, many operators selling access to Hughes satellites out there. Some specialize in satellite dishes on trucks for remote telemetry (think oil wells, remote mining operations, railroad track repairs in the middle of the Mojave desert). Others specialize in rural residential.

So, when you complain about "Hughes Satellite" service, don't blame the satellite company. If you want to pay for high-speed T-1 like service, it's available for a price. If you buy a slow service from some independent rural operator who says "Hughes Satellites" and uses that name recognition, that's another thing altogether.

Hope that helps.

[Goodpasture]

Originally Posted by Goodpasture

We ran Hughs for several years. Our contract was for about $100 after we paid for the service.

I should have said "paid for the equipment"

[okie1962]

Well they wasn't expecting to get T1 service. They were just wanting to get something that was faster than dial up. Hughes net advertised that they were much faster than dial up, and showed examples on TV of a picture being slowly downloaded on dial up and on the other side of the screen a picture being very quickly downloaded using Hughes Net. That was the service that my folks were interested in. They were paying $70 a month for two years for something that was most of the time slower than dial up.

On one of the many phone calls I made to Hughes Net they told us that we had downloaded too much in a 24 hour period. They have a "Fair Use" policy that Goodpasture had mentioned. They told us that the most you could download was 200MG in a 24 hour period. Well my folks are almost 70 and they don't download anything. The tech guy said that keeping the modem on while you are not using the internet would cause you to be in violation of the fair use policy. So they tried unplugging modem and it did run a little faster but not much. We called several more times and got nowhere with them.

My folks have no neighbors with in at lest a quarter of a mile from them and their house is too far from the road for anyone to hook onto their network.

I see a lot of Hughes Net dishes in the rural areas and was just wondering if anyone had the same experiences as my folks had.