Robandlaurie wrote:I believe this should have been explained to us.
Best bet is to have your sales (and possibly support) call(s) reviewed, as it seems they might be still available.
Thanks Mark,.
I've contacted executive customer care.
Sal Ruiz, a rep, told me that they would modify my contract and waive the fee if a solution couldn't be reached.
JR Mendez and I tried on Monday to get it right, and it didn't work. Something about the latency... Couldn't get the 500mbs or whatever they needed to get it to work right. After some period of time, whether it's 2 minutes or 10, it constantly buffers, freezes or the screen goes blank.
JR Mendez that was the first rep to tell me HughesNet wasn't compatible with streaming Sling. So what's the point in having HughesNet if we can't use it the way we intended. I wish someone had informed me before we signed on.
And that's what I told JR. The fair and right thing to do is to cancel the contract and waive the termination fee. I even offered to pay for the service tech's time.
I'm not sure exactly how Sling works, but I assume there's a download side and an upload side, since I think there's an option to remotely watch your DVR, etc.
Right off the bat, I wouldn't expect that remote part to work very well since uploading is limited to top out at 3 or 4 Mbps. Plus, the sheer data required to upload HD programming would be prohibitive given any plan available. Also, depending upon how it talks to the Sling box, it's behind HughesNet's double-natted system so there is no way to access the box's IP address outside of HughesNet without some intermediary proxy/cloud provided by Sling. Inside a home network might be something completely diffferent as it might just need the modem's subnet to go between different receivers in the house and not require external internet at all - thinking kind of like what DirecTV's Whole Home DVR might try to do.
As was alluded by C0RR0SIVE, the download side of things are kind of restrictive as well. Although it will generally work for the occasional videos, satellite internet is not really conducive to being a full-time replacement for television:
a) It can use a ton of data depending upon the resolutions you use and the plans are restricted. HD movies are 3-5GB/hr, so a 30GB plan isn't going to give you much more than 3 x 2-hr movies before you run out of plan data.
b) Depends on the protocol used, but some streaming services use a lot of server resources just by constant, prolonged pinging, which coupled with lag times over 500mS can cause a server to just sit and spin on pings alone, given any kind of additional upstream network delays (like that never happens).
c) If you think about a standard MTU frame size is 1500 there's not a lot of room before things start timing out and buffering, especially if the upstream provider's routing table is hosed.
d) This affects you directly as well as everyone else trying to use the same gateway server, I might add. So the potential for the problem to compound itself exponentially is immense.
I'd say the number one complaint in Tech Support area are people complaining about not being able to stream at the level they want. Granted, that's subjective, but the majority also think the medium is as transparent as it is for a terrestrial service and dont care beyond what they preceive to be what they expected.
Hello Robandlaurie, I appreciate you reaching out to us on the community. I pulled up your account and saw notation that you called in and had cancelled your services. In the notation, it states the agent went over the Early Termination Fees (ETF) with you and that you initially declined. However, they reiterated the fact your ETF charges are valid, and you agreed to it during the call. Because of this, we can not undo the charges.
Upon looking further into your account on other occasions, our agents were attempting to troubleshoot with you, but you were not home at the time and were advised to call back so they could continue to work with you. I did not find notation of any troubleshooting done, instead the cancellation was processed.
When we aren't given an opportunity to troubleshoot the issue and address your concerns, we can't work towards providing the service you signed up for.
I wish you the best of luck with your next ISP.
-Brooke
