Hughes Net is a rip-off. Speeds are 1/30th of advertised...

[JT_Money]

You know, you guys are right. Not having any internet service at all is better than having your money all but stolen by a wannabe internet provider that clearly cannot provide what it says it can, and whose data policies are blatantly intended to rip off their customers.

I apologise for expecting to much of Hughes, and also for offending any delicate sensibilities with my frustrations. My bad. Here I thought folks on the internet were expected to be adults and capable of handling adult conversation...

[JT_Money]

Gabu, you have no idea what you are talking about. In my area in rural South Georgia, you can get 200Mbps internet, right now.

Go do your research, "Professor"....

[C0RR0SIVE]

200gbps? Sure... when the worlds fastest connections aren't close to that, and a 200Gbps connection is very specialized and used for backhaul purposes between metro cities... ROFL

[GabeU]

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@JT_Money wrote:
Gabu, you have no idea what you are talking about. In my area in rural South Georgia, you can get 200gbps internet, right now.

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No, you can't.  

[JT_Money]

Yeah.... That was my bad. I got the GB data caps and the MB speeds mixed up in my posts.

I'll correct my posts accordingly.

Edited: done, again, sorry for the confusion, I meant speeds in Mbps.

To my knowledge only Google Fiber can even come close to Gbps speeds (for residential users), never mind 200...

Sincerely, sorry for misspeaking.

[GabeU]

@JT_Money

No problem.  

Here's the bottom line.  No one is trying to rip you off.  When compared to ground based or cell based interntet, HughesNet's throughput is considerably more limited.  Because of this limited throughput, they can't offer higher, nor unlimited, data packages.  The more data offered means more people online at any given time, and doing what most people would do with more data, which is both devices that are constantly connected and using data, and streaming, which is even worse.  Their infrastructure can't handle the higher traffic that numerous people doing these things would require, and the service would slow to a crawl for everyone trying to use it.   Think of trying to throw 50,000 cars per hour down a road that is only designed to handle 10,000.  It becomes a traffic jam.  Because of this, the data caps must be in place, and with the amounts they are.  The data caps cause people to ration their high speed data, but it's a necessary evil due to what the system can handle at any given time.  

As for the price, satellite internet is the most expensive type of internet there is to provide, per capita.  The satellites, the gateways, the fees and whatever else.  It's not cheap to offer.  Could it be cheaper?  Probably, but nowhere near as cheap as ground based services, and in the end, they're a business.  

No one is expecting you to accept bad speeds.  The speed tests not only help to verify the problem, but also help to point to the cause of it, and they're a necessary part of the troubleshooting process.  The reps/engineers can't help if they don't know what's going on.   Again, though, the reps will have to verify if WiFi speed testing will be okay, as WiFi itself can be part of the problem. 

[MarkJFine]

This is such a FAQ...

First off, this is satellite internet. The technology is such that it has limited bandwidth for a limited population. Hughes provides what is fair to the people they can provide it to.

It is insane to even try to compare anything terrestrial (wired, signal-based, or fiber) to something that must go thousands of miles and back just to get to the internet, and then again to return a response.

As such, the technology is really meant for those that have literally no other option because the really greedy internet providers have determined that it's not cost effective to run anything out to you, and mobile coverage is poor to non-existant. This is a niche market and only a niche market.

So it begs the question, if you are able to obtain reliable, non-latent, unemetered 200Mbps internet via another means, why would you even choose satellite? You've clearly done the research, but still made the wrong choice, preferring to claiming a 'rip-off' instead... #brilliant

[JT_Money]

Where I live right now satellite is the only option.

I don't care that it costs more, if the cost is reasonable (because of the current offered data caps, Hughes is not), and for the cost you actually get what speeds are advertised, within a normal expected reason of say 10-20%. If an internet provider says 20 Mbps, a normally accepted performance would be in the 15-20+ Mbps range.

When I am within my data cap, I only get 1-2 Mbps down, which is not anywhere near the 25 Mbps advertised. Likewise when out of data, I only get around 100Kbps... Not even remotely close to the advertised 1-3 Mbps.

The fact that the data caps are utterly unreasonable for the average internet consumer, and that the advertised performance is grossly overstated are my points of contention.

The fact that it is satellite is irrelevant to be conversation, because the higher inherrent latency of satellite is not a problem for me. This is the only real technological difference in satellite vs terrestrial, and is not a part of the issues that I have with Hughes.

[JT_Money]

Also, there is no such thing as unmetered internet anymore, to the best of my knowledge. Every provider has a cap, usually in the neighborhood of 250-300GB. The 200Mbps provider I referenced earlier has multiple caps, starting at 250, and going up. My friend has his family cap set to 1TB, and is only paying approximately $90 a month for that data limit and 200Mbps speed.

Satellite or not, Hughes current level of service is absolutely not worth the money, but they know that because it is so niche that they can get away with it because us remote users have literally no choice....

[GabeU]

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@JT_Money wrote:

The fact that the data caps are utterly unreasonable for the average internet consumer....

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It certainly is a good thing that we aren't the "average internet consumer".  And aren't we lucky that we have satellite TV available to us because we don't have the data to stream like many others?

Call me crazy, but I'm just happy I can get internet where I am, and the data allotment is fine with me because I use it within its limits.  I don't expect it to be something it's not. 

And if you've got a billion or so laying around for another satellite, the launching of such, and the infrastructure to support it, I'm sure they'd be happy to increase the data plans.  Not a lot, though.  Maybe double?  If you want it to be like ground based services, it'll probably take a few.  And that's just for a while.  In a few years that won't be enough, either, so add one or two more for some cushion.  

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@JT_Money wrote:

Every provider has a cap, usually in the neighborhood of 250-300GB. The 200Mbps provider I referenced earlier has multiple caps, starting at 250, and going up. My friend has his family cap set to 1TB, and is only paying approximately $90 a month for that data limit and 200Mbps speed.

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Better make that, "Every ground based provider has a cap, usually in the neighborhood of 250-300GB.".  Again, you're comparing apples to oranges.  HughesNet isn't a ground based provider and can't offer a comparable package, nor price.  It's not a choice.