equipment lease

The lease payment doesn't go away. As long as you lease it, you'll pay the fee. This is clearly stated in the subscriber agreement. The installers are subcontractors, and they have no say regarding HughesNet's policies. Unfortunately, if it was in fact the sales rep that stated the three year thing, it's far too far out from the call to review it, so there's not really anything they're going to be able to do today.

The only option to not pay the lease fee is to buy the equipment instead, but this has to be done at the time of service agreement.

Any person who signed up for a lease account and is still with HughesNet is still paying the lease fee, and there are likely some that have been lease customers longer than you.

For reference, if you signed up eight years ago and you've never upgraded, there's a good chance you can upgrade to Gen5 and at least get a newer type modem, though the outside equipment you have may be Gen5 compatible, so it may not need to be upgraded. It's also possible that, if you upgrade to Gen5 service, you could terminate your lease account and start a buy account, but only a rep can say whether that's the case.