Jharris
Thank you for reaching out to us and welcome to Hughesnet. On installation day, it is important to give the service about 24 hours to judge true performance as there is a good amount of firmware updates being downloaded by the modem. This can slow speeds down quite a bit for the first 24 hours. It does not always take that long but it can.
Out of curiosity, were you able to do any research about satellite internet and how it works compared to the common cable and DSL providers before you signed up with our service?