It's not the speed, which is adequate for most tasks. Satellite latency and beam congestion can cause issues, especially for streaming and smart devices, not to mention that the latter will eat a lot of the limited bandwidth that satellite provides. You could've saved yourself a lot of grief had you but invested some time in researching the service prior to signing up for it. As for being stuck, you are not stuck -- you can cancel any time. Just pay the ETF and go on your merry way.
subsailor1968 wrote:
This service barely qualifies as Internet service. I have an Amazon Echo and Apple HomePod; I’ve been unable to use either on the service. I don’t use my phone via WiFi, as AT&T’s data plan is far faster. It takes a LONG time to load pages on my laptop (or phone when I try it). I can’t connect via my Apple TV to Netflix or Hulu, they time out. Won’t stream MUSIC.
I had AT&T 12 MBs service a few months ago at a different location and it blew the doors off this.
I’ve had this three days and I regret signing up. It was the only option at the RV park I’m currently at, had to have to eventually work from home. But I know that won’t work. Already tried to VPN to work and it fails, our IT said likely due to slow speed and latency.
I’m buying a house. I definitely won’t be taking this service with me. Annoys me that there is a $400 fee to get out of it. I only needed service for a few months, but had to have it. Now I’m stuck with crap service and a huge bill to cancel.
Again, you didn't do your research. Read the subscriber agreement, paying particular attention to the disclaimers.
The service is designed for 25Mbps down and 3 Mbps up, and that isn't guaranteed. Read the subscriber agreement; your mileage may vary. There are disclaimers galore everywhere, and to make the most of what we get we need to understand how it works and we need to modify our expectations to work with what we get, especially if there are no other options where we live.
Service is advertised literally as "you can watch the latest videos". That means short 3-minute YouTube things, not full scale TV shows and movies. It's also advertised as UP TO 25Mbps, even though a good lot of us see much better than that in the mornings durng the bonus period. Also, show me an ISP that guarantees any speed at any given time of the day... isn't one.
Service is definitely not advertised to fully support VPN at high speed because the acceleration techniques don't support ssl protocols. You can run VPN (and ssh, sftp, and others) but it will be at a much reduced channel rate.
It also has a high latency because the signal is travelling a path between 90-95,000 miles. That's how satellite works, unless you want to design a wormhole that shortens the distance from a geosynchronous orbit on the equator to you and an equivalent ground station on the west coast.
So if you didn't know... now you know... or did you miss that part.