n191cg wrote:
Would someone care to explain to me how more people utilizing the down link would cause slow operation? Light travels at 186,000 miles per second and so do radio waves. When more people tune into a radio station it certainly does not decrease the speed. How about a technical expaination to what's going on here? I signed up for the basic service of 20 mbs DL, did a speed test and it seemed ok. Subsecquently signed up for the 50 mbs service, did a speed test and it was still 20 mbs. Did I just increase my bill for $100 for nothing????
A radio station doesn't have a finite throughput. It's broadcast and receivers pick it up. Radio and satellite are very different.
Data, OTOH, is like water through a hose. If you have a hose that has a maximum throughput of 10 gallons per minute, and then you divide that between ten people, they then only get 1 gallon per minute each each. That's why the more people there are using the service, whether on a specific beam, a specific gateway or the service as a whole, it slows down. The satellite has a finite amount of throughput. It gets divided between gateways, which gets divided between beams, which gets divided between users. Even satellites for satellite radio, like SiriusXM, have a finite throughput, though the bandwidth needed to provide satellite radio to someone is minuscule in comparison to internet, so their satellites can easily handle all connected users streaming radio at the same time without any issues.
As for your upgrade, you're mistaking data with speed. You signed up for more data per month, not more speed. That is unless you upgraded from Gen4 or a legacy plan to Gen5. However, with the exception of those living in Alaska, if you signed up for HughesNet within the last four years, you already had Gen5. All Gen5 plans offer the same speed. 25Mbps down and 3Mbps up, though in practice, as explained above, the actual speeds can vary. It sounds like you upgraded from the 20GB plan to the 50GB plan. That's 50GB of Service Plan Data vs 20GB of Service Plan Data per month. All Gen5 plans also come with 50GB of Bonus Zone data (2AM to 8AM).
