unlimited access

6267jacqui,

There are many reasons why we wont see unlimited satellite internet service any time soon, below are a few.

1: Costs - While cable companies may charge $1000+ for so many feet of fiber ran, the cost for them is far lower, they make a killing anytime someone pays them to expand their networks.  With this, it's also cheap for cable companies to expand if they wish to, to high population areas, they can easily recover costs and make a profit with in the first month of running new cable to the areas they select.

2: Costs again- Satellites are NOT cheap, Jupiter cost several million to be built, and more to be launched.  I can't remember if it was $5,000,000 for the satellite, or if it was in the hundred million.  Can't find the documents anymore honestly.  Then to top it off, Hughes has to build multiple ground facilities to support that satellite, each facility costs several hundred thousand to a few million a pop I estimate.  To top that off, these satellites only survive approximately 15 years, if they don't have issues.  So, with it taking more than just a few months to recover costs, and the equipment costing astronomical amounts, they have to be stingy on costs.  I am seriously wanting to say the satellite was in the $500,000,000 range since they have a $300,000,000 insurance policy on the satellite from what I can find.

3: Jupiter Bandwidth vs Cable Bandwidth - Jupiter only has ~100Gbps of total up/down bandwidth spread out among everyone, where as cable, a single cable provider easily has Terabits worth of bandwidth at their disposal anytime along their own pipes.  1000Gbps = 1Tbps.  It's easier to run new fiber and upgrade a few machines at each end to increase that bandwidth, can't really send someone into space to install new equipment on a satellite.

4: Data allowances are the only form of bandwidth management technically allowed to be used anymore AFAIK.  Hughes does this to prevent the 700,000+ users that they do have from all trying to download at one time, if they did, the satellite would become crippled, and you would be complaining about far more than data allowances.  100Gbps divided among about 700,000 users is 0.142Mbps, virtually nothing, then you have to factor in, you are also uploading while downloading as the server you connect to needs to know you are getting the data in order.

5: Because this is a shared system, congestion is expected to occur, but, everyone should be able to still receive a decent amount of download speed at almost any time, yes it slows down in the evenings, but you should still be seeing a few Mbps in download speeds.  Sometimes something happens along the network, either with your router, modem, the satellite in space, or one of the many ground facilities that support the system that can impact speeds.  When this happens it's advised that you disconnect your router, connect your PC directly to the Hughes modem, and run a series of speed tests over a few days.  Hughes likes to have a set of 5 tests in the morning, another set of 5 in the mid-day, and another set of 5 at night.  All tests are to be performed at http://consumer.performancetests.hughesnet.com or http://my.hughesnet.com/ after logging in.  They need speed tests as well as webresponse.  They are two very different tests.