Actually, the plans are designed to get as many subscribers as comfortable as possible on one gateway without bringing the whole network down. Each satellite and ground station has limited resources for people to use across the country. Compare that to a local internet provider that might just have a small server room 3 miles from your house for use by you and those in just a 10 mile radius.
Oh, and technically, your stream buffering problem is likely a latency issue, not a speed issue.
I just don't know why a 3/3 unlimited connection or similar would stress the network more than a small number of people on 25/3, and the rest on 1/1 or lower. It doesn't add up unless you want to incentivise purchasing tokens. Also the fact that the tokens are availalbe at all is proof that they have data to give!
It doesn't add up to you, because you clearly don't understand how satellite internet works and how a potential 75km round trip datalink plus provider delays impact congestion.
Speedgraphic wrote:Also the fact that the tokens are availalbe at all is proof that they have data to give!
Compared to the system impact of offering unlimited high speed data, token data purchased has very little. As well, people limit token data purchased due to cost.
Sure, a few people on a beam with a 3/3 unlimited plan might not impact much but......multiply that by hundreds, maybe thousands, then you're talking huge impact. Many would simply load up their download managers and download 24/7 all month long. Of course eventially it would cascade and 3/3 wouldn't be obtainable consistantly either.
If I remember correctly, the combined bandwidth of the ES17 and ES19 is somewhere around 300Gbps to 325Gbps. Let's say it's 325Gbps. If all conditions were perfect, and the bandwidth could be divided evenly between subscribers, that's 108,333 people that could sustain a one way data transfer of 3Mbps at the same time. That's it. HughesNet currently has over 1,000,000 customers, and I don't know if that number includes government contracts and such. If not, that's even less bandwidth available for each subscriber.
Thankfully, not every customer is online and requiring a sustained data transfer at the same time. But, this is just an example of how little bandwidth there really is to go around. And, like BirdDog suggests, an unlimited package, even at 3Mbps, would cause some subscribers to transfer data nontstop, which would likely result in even more congestion than there is at present.
The soft data caps cause people to prioritize, enabling that relatively small amount of overall bandwidth to be enough, for the most part. This is why, contrary to some peoples' belief, the soft data caps are a necessity.
