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HughesNet Gen5

Hughes Successfully Launches High-throughput Satellite

Setting the stage for the next generation of HughesNet Gen5 satellite Internet service

 

EchoStar XIX, the world’s highest-capacity broadband satellite, will power HughesNet® Gen5, the next generation of the nation’s #1 high-speed satellite Internet service. HughesNet Gen5 will deliver more speed, more data and more advanced features for consumers and small businesses with limited Internet access options.

Scientists working on satellite
 

Technology Innovation

EchoStar XIX launched on December 18, 2016 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Check out the coverage!
INDUSTRY LEADERSHIP
 
40 YEARS' EXPERIENCE
Hughes invented satellite Internet and has over 40 years in the satellite business.
 
GLOBAL IMPACT
Hughes is a global leader in satellite broadband, with more than 5 million satellite systems installed in over 100 countries.
 
CONTINUING INNOVATION
HughesNet Gen5 is based on the experience and expertise of bringing high-speed satellite Internet service to more than 1 million American consumers and small businesses for 15+ years.
 
DELIVERING ON OUR PROMISES
HughesNet was recently ranked first in delivering advertised speeds in the Federal Communication Commission’s 2016 “Measuring Broadband in America” report for the second year in a row.
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MORE OF EVERYTHING YOU WANT

The new HughesNet re-imagines the satellite Internet experience to deliver a breakthrough service that gives you more of everything you want. HughesNet Gen5 will provide more speed, more data and advanced features that enable you to do more of what you love online.

Father with two small children playing on ipad

47 REPLIES 47

Plus 14.99 per month for the equipment or an extra 349.00 to buy it?  Good grief.

Drewman
Freshman

I entered my address and got an error message too, so I called and spoke with a representative today. I live in SW Michigan and was told that Gen 5 isn't available in my area yet. I should call back in a month or maybe 2. Not exactly the answer I was looking for. I can't believe the satellite still isn't ready yet.

C0RR0SIVE
Associate Professor

It is ready, but they are giving priority to those that are on Spaceway3(gen3) over Jupiter 1(Gen4) users.  Once they have a majority of the Spaceway3 users on Jupiter II, they will start letting Jupiter 1 users update to Jupiter II or Gen5 style plans I assume.

It honestly makes sense why they are doing it this way, seeing as Jupiter 2 is more or less a Spaceway3 replacement due to age and the very limited capacity of the older bird.

Thanks CORROSIVE. I wish the customer service rep had explained it that way to me.

Hi Drewman,

 

Thanks for joining the community and posting. I had someone else here at corporate confirm that if one were to call in today to request an upgrade to Gen 5, they can do so. Getting installed right away is another matter, but at the very least you should be able to upgrade. Give us a call at 866.347.3292 to upgrade. If there's any issue, please post back and let me know.

 

If you have a tech or billing question and need help, please start a new thread in the appropriate board. Unsolicited Private Messages may not get replies.

Slow performance? Click me!

Thank you Liz. I called the number you posted today and was again told that uprading to Gen 5 is not an option for me until sometime in April and that I would have to call back then. He wouldn't take my info and wouldn't accept an order, he just told me I had to call back next month. 

You're welcome Drewman. Thank you for telling me what happened when you tried to order, this doesn't seem correct. At the very least, we should be able to take your order for Gen 5. We'll look into this.

 

If you have a tech or billing question and need help, please start a new thread in the appropriate board. Unsolicited Private Messages may not get replies.

Slow performance? Click me!

@Drewman wrote:

Thank you Liz. I called the number you posted today and was again told that uprading to Gen 5 is not an option for me until sometime in April and that I would have to call back then. He wouldn't take my info and wouldn't accept an order, he just told me I had to call back next month. 


That's most likely correct. Some areas/beams are rolling out later than others. This applies to new customers and to upgrades.

 

Also, you may need to wait a bit until they free up some "space" on Jupiter 17, your current satellite. This should happen naturally in a few months by attrition as some customers fall off. Until then HN may have problems providing these higher speeds and plans because of congestion on J17. In any event, you'll need a new HT2000 modem to support the higher plans. Moving to J19 will also require a tech visit.

El Dorado Networks |Diamond Springs, CA | eldoradonetworks.com

Liz,
I'm a newer customer like 6 weeks ago. I left fairpoint because of continuously having bad service or no service at all. Now that being said my HughesNet was suppose to run a lot better. I can't even stream movies through my fire stick anymore with satellite which is very frustrating considering we use our data in our phones all the time.
My question is, can I upgrade to Gen5 and will there be anything that would be requested from me in a financial way?


@chowie220 wrote:
Liz,
I'm a newer customer like 6 weeks ago. I left fairpoint because of continuously having bad service or no service at all. Now that being said my HughesNet was suppose to run a lot better. I can't even stream movies through my fire stick anymore with satellite which is very frustrating considering we use our data in our phones all the time.
My question is, can I upgrade to Gen5 and will there be anything that would be requested from me in a financial way?

I can't speak for your location, but I just called and found that there is a path to upgrade with no money down in my area and with 14 months left on my Gen 4 contract.  I'm in the Raleigh/Durham, NC area.  I would call and ask.


@Liz wrote:

Hi Drewman,

 

Thanks for joining the community and posting. I had someone else here at corporate confirm that if one were to call in today to request an upgrade to Gen 5, they can do so. Getting installed right away is another matter, but at the very least you should be able to upgrade. Give us a call at 866.347.3292 to upgrade. If there's any issue, please post back and let me know.

 


I just called this number and was able to schedule an upgrade appointment for Tuesday.  Thanks for the info!  I've been seeing significant slowdowns on Gen 4 in the evenings and even sometimes during the day in the last month or so.  I hope this upgrade solves that.  I'll post about the experience.

jprodr19
Freshman

I am finishing my first month of Gen 5 service after almost 2 years on Gen 4.  (The closest cable internet comes to our home is about 9 miles away).   I called Customer Service on May 4,  the same day I received the email from Hughes informing me that Gen 5 was now available in my area, and I  requested the update.  Successful customer service call!  On May 5 the installer, who came from a town 50 miles away,  arrived right within the promised time window, swapped out the receiver on the Hughes Dish, hooked up the new Modem/Wifi Router combo, activated the system and in less than one hour I was up and running.  

 

I am overall very pleased with the speed and reliability of the Gen 5 service.  It is night and day compared to Gen 4.   With Gen 4, besides the slow speed, I would get frequent satellite outage errors and would have to wait a few minutes before accessing a web site or receiving emails.  With Gen 5 I have had absolutely no problems.

 

One very welcome side benefit of Gen 5 is that we live in area with lousy cell phone service and we were never able to use our Verizon cell phones until we drove about 7  miles from our home here on the lake.   (btw AT&T does not have cell coverage in our area, nor do the other national cell phone providers).  The Samsung Verizon network extender  that I bought a few years ago (when we lived elsewhere and had cable internet but weak cell service), is  plugged in to the Hughes Gen 5 modem and  now allows us to receive and place cell phone calls within and in the vicinity of our home. (btw we did try a Wilson Electronics cell booster outside our home but it could not pick up the closest Verizon tower which  is 20 miles away.).   While we still mostly rely on our AT&T land line  for phone calls (the local AT&T land line is  not able to support DSL), as we try and minimize Hughes data use for completing cell calls, it is great to be able to look at the caller ID and answer our cell phones when we want to, and actually be able to speak with the caller.  The Gen 4 speeds were not sufficient to allow the Samsung Verizon network extender to work properly.    With Gen 5 we are finally no longer living in the extreme boondocks. Is it also my imagination or does Gen 5 seem to work better than Gen 4 during thunder storms when clouds are really thick?

 

So for my first month experience with Gen 5,  I would like to award 5 stars to Hughes Customer Service, 5 stars to the Installer, and especially 5 stars to  the reliability and speed of the Gen 5.  

 

PS: I just hope they limit the number of subscribers they sign up for Gen 5,  so as not to degrade the overall speed and reliability for all users, as seemed to be the case with the Gen 4, where as I understand it,  way too many users were causing the whole Gen 4 experience to degrade.

GabeU
Distinguished Professor IV

@jprodr19

 

I have no doubt that there will eventually be enough people on the Echostar 19 satellite that it will cause a certain level of congestion and speed dips during peak usage periods, but I'm sure it will be a considerable time before that happens, and when it does, I also have a feeling that it won't be quite as impactful as it was getting on the Echostar 17 with Gen4.  The ES19 has over double the capacity of the ES17, too, so that will surely help.  

 

Gen5 is most definitely a step up, that's for sure.  

 

And that Verizon network extender you mentioned...pretty nifty.  

 


@GabeU wrote:

@jprodr19

 

I have no doubt that there will eventually be enough people on the Echostar 19 satellite that it will cause a certain level of congestion and speed dips during peak usage periods, but I'm sure it will be a considerable time before that happens, and when it does, I also have a feeling that it won't be quite as impactful as it was getting on the Echostar 17 with Gen4.  The ES19 has over double the capacity of the ES17, too, so that will surely help.  

 

Gen5 is most definitely a step up, that's for sure.  

 

And that Verizon network extender you mentioned...pretty nifty.  

 


One full month connected to Gen 5! I am overall very pleased although I am using my higher speed data allowance at about 10 times the rate I was before, even though we are NOT downloading videos etc.   In spite of that, the performance even after all daytime and nightime high speed data was used up by about day 18 of my month, remained satisfactory with 3mbs download speeds and close to that in upload speeds.  I am also pleased with the coverage of the built in Wifi in the HN Gen 5 modem, as signal reaches to the other end of our home,  unlike the Netgear wifi that I was using with the Gen 4 modem.

 

I did call customer service on my data usage and the very helpful support person was able to tell me all the specific devices that were connected to my HN wifi modem and was able to list them by each of the 3 iPhones, the dell PC, the android device,  the Verizon extender, etc.  He further was able to tell me that one of the iPhones had used over 1GB of data in the last few hours--nothing like having kids home for the Independence Day holiday!.   He also told me that the Verizon (made by Samsung) Range Extender had used about 10GB of data since the modem was last powered on.  (which I think was one month ago when the Gen 5 modem was installed--but maybe we had a blip of a power outage about 3 weeks ago during a storm--at least enough for a couple of my clocks to be flashing 12:00-but don't know if that was enough to repower the HN modem or not.  In spite of this high data usage by the Verizon Range Extender, it is remaining connected, as it allows us to use our cell phones near and within our home, rather than having to drive 7 miles to get cell signal.  Even the throttled back Gen 5  data speeds at the end of the month were still good enough to permit the Verizon Range Extender to work reasonably well--a little bit more garbling compared to earlier in the month--but it so much better than the Gen 4 era, when even when we had our full data allowance the Range Extender was basically useless.

 

It appears that Hughes is still adding features to their wifi modem--I told the customer service person that the ability for me to check on which device was using a disproportionate amount of data would be very useful (so I know which kid to blame-I am not serious--we don't see them enough as they both live a long ways from here and we wish they could come home more often).  If they can then further make  information on apps or web sites, by connected device,  that are the largest data burners I think it would keep a lot of customers from ''blaming'' Hughes rather than understanding that certain social media web sites really use up a lot of data.

 

So I hope HN adds such data monitoring and analysis capabilities for subscribers that log in to to their accounts sooner rather than later.  I think it would really cut back on customer service calls relating to data usage. 

 

 I did end up disconnecting my Directv from the HN wifi, as that seems to use a lot of data even when no 'on demand' movies were watched during the month.  It appears that all of the Guides and Program Search features of Directv which normally download (slowly) from the directv sattelite, switch over to using the Wifi network  for all the updates, when a  wifi connection is present.  I keep my PC network setting set to the Metered position, I have my android set to 'do not auto play video content' such as from news websites, but the Directv box cannot be controlled that way. So I simply reset the Directv Menu Settings to disconnect from the wifi. 

so far 2 weeks and very reliable, even in a bad t-storm yesterday, I'm getting close to 49.x MPS - not bad, 2 take away's for me so far

1) the ATT app and phone they provide the installers are thje leakest link in what would have been an uneventful install. 45 mins waiting and his and my frustraiton due to his phone, provided by AT&T and the app required to fininsh the install keep rebooting and freezing up, so bad that once he was done, he tore out ASAP without giving me any info in the wirelss administiion interface, I had to call and get the ADMIN password.

2) the 5G channel has some distance issues and very choppy video, I switched all my devies to the 2G channel, and no issues, the WI-FI distance on that channel is outstanding. 

 

Carmen Vitullo

Glad to hear you're enjoying your HughesNet service, Carmen!

 

2Ghz does have a greater wifi range than 5Ghz, but is slower. This Netgear article explains the differences between the two pretty well:

 

The primary differences between the two frequencies are the range (coverage) and bandwidth (speed) that the bands provide. The 2.4 GHz band provides coverage at a longer range but transmits data at slower speeds. The 5 GHz band provides less coverage but transmits data at faster speeds.

 

The range is lower in the 5 GHz band because higher frequencies cannot penetrate solid objects, such as walls and floors. However, higher frequencies allow data to be transmitted faster than lower frequencies, so the 5 GHz band allows you to upload and download files faster.

 

Your WiFi connection on a particular frequency band can also be faster or slower because of interference from other devices. Many WiFi-enabled technologies and other household devices use the 2.4 GHz band, including microwaves and garage door openers. When multiple devices attempt to use the same radio space, overcrowding occurs. The 5 GHz band tends to have less overcrowding than the 2.4GHz band because fewer devices use it and because it has 23 channels for devices to use, while the 2.4GHz band has only 11 channels. The number of channels that are available to you depends on the regulatory domain. If you’re experiencing a lot of interference from other devices, consider using the 5 GHz band.

If you have a tech or billing question and need help, please start a new thread in the appropriate board. Unsolicited Private Messages may not get replies.

Slow performance? Click me!

that's what my experements have shown so far, I have a smart/tv and it's right in the next room, conected to the 2g network and youtube fails to load, so I'll make sure to try the 5g network for video streaming close, inside. I do have a Direct/TV wireless network also and of course the wireless phone systems....wow- can't wait for the wireless AC to all my electrical applicances 🙂 

Carmen Vitullo
GabeU
Distinguished Professor IV


@Pete_Vit wrote:

that's what my experements have shown so far, I have a smart/tv and it's right in the next room, conected to the 2g network and youtube fails to load, so I'll make sure to try the 5g network for video streaming close, inside. I do have a Direct/TV wireless network also and of course the wireless phone systems....wow- can't wait for the wireless AC to all my electrical applicances 🙂 


Be careful with that DirecTV connection.  Connecting DirecTV to Hughesnet is normally advised against as there is no way to control the data the DirecTV receiver uses, and it can use a lot.  


@GabeU wrote:

@Pete_Vit wrote:

that's what my experements have shown so far, I have a smart/tv and it's right in the next room, conected to the 2g network and youtube fails to load, so I'll make sure to try the 5g network for video streaming close, inside. I do have a Direct/TV wireless network also and of course the wireless phone systems....wow- can't wait for the wireless AC to all my electrical applicances 🙂 


Be careful with that DirecTV connection.  Connecting DirecTV to Hughesnet is normally advised against as there is no way to control the data the DirecTV receiver uses, and it can use a lot.  


I don't use the Direct/TV connection and I don't think just any device can connect to its network, its specifically designed for the wireless Geni Mini's, I can see the network on my devices but cannot connect, and that's just fine.   

Carmen Vitullo


@Pete_Vit wrote:

@GabeU wrote:

@Pete_Vit wrote:

that's what my experements have shown so far, I have a smart/tv and it's right in the next room, conected to the 2g network and youtube fails to load, so I'll make sure to try the 5g network for video streaming close, inside. I do have a Direct/TV wireless network also and of course the wireless phone systems....wow- can't wait for the wireless AC to all my electrical applicances 🙂 


Be careful with that DirecTV connection.  Connecting DirecTV to Hughesnet is normally advised against as there is no way to control the data the DirecTV receiver uses, and it can use a lot.  


I don't use the Direct/TV connection and I don't think just any device can connect to its network, its specifically designed for the wireless Geni Mini's, I can see the network on my devices but cannot connect, and that's just fine.   

To add; my old netgear router manager tool allowed me to manage clients so my DTV's I/P address is blocked, I'll check and make sure I still have that blocked, that sucks up so much data and no way to manage who,what and when shows are downloaded 


 

Carmen Vitullo
PineyRose
Freshman

I received a notification that I can upgrade to Gen5. We currently have the 9000 system. We did not upgrade to Gen4. If I upgrade, what equipment do I have to buy, or lease, and is there an installation charge? I tried to find out online but it kept saying there was an error with my zip code, 37370.

 

Thanks!