Seriously looking at Excede

[lighthope1]

When Gen5 plans were announced, I thought they were still pretty stingy with their data allowance.  And now that Excede is starting to offer 150g plans, that sounds a lot better.

Plus the fact that I'm still pretty miffed at the horrible service I got when they misaligned the dish. (Three seperate no-shows from the tech was it?)  So I am looking for any reason to dump HughesNet.

They say in about three years or so, tech is moving to low-orbit satellites (probably not ready for widespread use for 8-10), so we have that to look forward to.  🙂

But yeah, HughesNet really needs to re-evaluate their plans.  If (and that is admittedly a pretty big "if") Excede opens up 150g in my area, I am so going over to them!

[MarkJFine]

Nowhere on their site do they offer 150GB. Perhaps you saw their 'unlimited' up to 25Mbps plan for $150/mo.

And if you read their description of 'unlimited' it really means they can drop the speed to 1-5 Mbps at any time.

[BirdDog]

And if you read through their forum many are suffering with slow speed. Offering 150 GB at "guaranteed" high speed is something that will never happen. Even cable doesn't guarantee speed.

[MarkJFine]

One more item... LEOs only provide faster latencies of around 25ms. The 1Gbps estimated for a SpaceX bird is the rate for an entire beam equivalent. That ultimately gets split up amongst users.

[lighthope1]

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@MarkJFine wrote:

One more item... LEOs only provide faster latencies of around 25ms. The 1Gbps estimated for a SpaceX bird is the rate for an entire beam equivalent. That ultimately gets split up amongst users.

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They offer latencies of 25ms, not 25ms less.  That is orders less than 600-800ms latency HughesNet or Excede offers.

And sure, every satellite's overall throughput gets split up between its users.  HughesNet does that as well.  I believe the plan is to have a whole bunch of LEO satellites as opposed to just two or three like the big satellite internet providers currently have.

I can't even begin to imagine what the cost of that must be.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/06/low-latency-satellite-broadband-gets-approval...

[lighthope1]

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@BirdDog wrote:

And if you read through their forum many are suffering with slow speed. Offering 150 GB at "guaranteed" high speed is something that will never happen.

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I generally read the same thing on HughesNet forums.  My take on it is that, like HughesNet, they oversell their beams.

I don't stream movies except on YouTube, so I don't need the blazing fast speeds.

[gt86]

Not true before I moved where I am now the requires me to have satelitte internet as I'm in the middle of no where I had Road Runner Lighting Internet at 100 Mbps quaranteed and could have had 300 Mpbs if I wanted to pay for it.

[lighthope1]

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@MarkJFine wrote:

Nowhere on their site do they offer 150GB.

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To quote their site: "On unlimited data plans, after 150GB of data usage..."

That is certainly far more generous than HughesNet's stingy 50g plan.

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@MarkJFine wrote:

And if you read their description of 'unlimited' it really means they can drop the speed to 1-5 Mbps at any time.

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 If I read their description correctly, they can drop it after you exceed 150g, not "at any time."

[Zap]

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@MarkJFine wrote:

Nowhere on their site do they offer 150GB. Perhaps you saw their 'unlimited' up to 25Mbps plan for $150/mo.

And if you read their description of 'unlimited' it really means they can drop the speed to 1-5 Mbps at any time.

---

For a short time Exeded (now Viasat) did offer a 150GB plan for $100/month before the unlimited plan was offered.

[GabeU]

The largest plan Exede offers in my area is the Liberty 30 plan, which after three months ends up being $20 more than the regular price of Hughes' 50/50 plan, and $50 more than the deal new sign ons get for that plan.  Sheesh.  Not a very good deal at all.  

Lets see, 30GB for $99.99 for three months, then $149.99 thereafter.  And it's ONLY 30GB.  

100GB (50/50) for $99.99 for twenty four months, then $129.99 thereafter.  

SMH.      

[GabeU]

Hughesnet isn't going to offer what they can't support.  Larger plans means more people trying to stream, which means the system slows to a crawl for every person utilizing it.  The infrastructure must be in place to support larger plans before they can offer them.

Trying to throw 50,000 cars per hour down a road that can only handle 10,000 doesn't tend to work very well.

And while everyone certainly has the right to do as they wish, and I commend you for doing your homework, keep the old saying "The grass isn't always greener" in mind, as sometimes, when you get there, you find that it was only painted.  

[Zap]

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@GabeU wrote:

Hughesnet isn't going to offer what they can't support.  Larger plans means more people trying to stream, which means the system slows to a crawl for every person utilizing it.  The infrastructure must be in place to support larger plans before they can offer them.

Trying to throw 50,000 cars per hour down a road that can only handle 10,000 doesn't tend to work very well.

And while everyone certainly has the right to do as they wish, and I commend you for doing your homework, keep the old saying "The grass isn't always greener" in mind, as sometimes, when you get there, you find that it was only painted.  

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GabeU, you are such a HughesNet apologist.  To say that "Hughesnet isn't going to offer what they can't support." is ridiculous on the face of it as I can attest by regularly getting single digit Mb/s speeds and in the last 3 weeks speeds measured in kb/s on a 25Mb/s plan.  You are correct that the "grass isn't always greener."  I switched from Exede to HughesNet because they offered the 25Mb/s plan before Exede did.  That was big mistake.  I was on 12Mb/s plan and rarely dropped below 10Mb/s.  Right now I am at 2Mb/s.  That is less a tenth of the advertised speed.

[GabeU]

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@Zap wrote:

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GabeU, you are such a HughesNet apologist.  To say that "Hughesnet isn't going to offer what they can't support." is ridiculous on the face of it as I can attest by regularly getting single digit Mb/s speeds and in the last 3 weeks speeds measured in kb/s on a 25Mb/s plan.  You are correct that the "grass isn't always greener."  I switched from Exede to HughesNet because they offered the 25Mb/s plan before Exede did.  That was big mistake.  I was on 12Mb/s plan and rarely dropped below 10Mb/s.  Right now I am at 2Mb/s.  That is less a tenth of the advertised speed.

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It's no apology, it's a fact.   Hughes isn't going to offer what they can't support.  Not getting the speed of the service you bought because of an issue is different from buying a service that can't, and never could, be provided.  

Call me whatever your little heart desires.    

[DougMac]

We just got HughesNet. I did a lot of reading and from everything I saw, it was mostly a coin toss.  I went with HughesNet since they partner with Dish and I got a small price break on both.

The "unlimited" plan offered by Exede looked promising.  You get get 150 gig of unchoked data, 50 gig more than the 50/50 plan and you aren't time restricted on its use. However, it is more expensive and on several reviews I read that Exede rarely delivered promised speed, while the same reviews said HughesNet Gen5 met or exceeded promised speed.

Before making the jump, go to their user forum.  You'll find the level of unhappy customers is about the same as here.  I can't tell for sure, but it looks like they "optimize" video but unlike Hughesnet, with the unlimited plan you can't turn it off.

[lighthope1]

Looks like Excede is rolling out their new Satellite now.  Still not available in my area.  😞

I'm going to keep checking.

150g unthrottled simply can not be beat.

Even their 50 gig plan beats HughesNet.  100/month vs 129.99/month.

If HughesNet would give me 50gigs at 100/month, I could live with that.

But they don't.

I know the arguments.  HughesNet doesn't have the capacity. HughesNet won't offer what they can't support.

I don't care about their problems.

All I care is getting as much as I can for as little as I can.  Just like every single other person and business out there. I am not a charity.  I am not going to take pity on a company simply because they "can't."

If Viasat (Excede) comes to my area, I'm gone.  Unless HughesNet wants to make me a better offer.

[gt86]

Do not switch to Excede you will regret it I switched from Excede to Hughes. The speeds are allot slower on Excede the customer serive is 1000 times worse and they rip you off. You can't even see your bill until after it's paid and they require you to have auto withdrawl where as with hughes you see your bill before its due not after its paid like Excede and you don't have to have auto withdrawl if you don't want it to pay your bill you can pay a extra $5 a month like me and get a actual paper bill that is due 30 days later.