I'll chime in, if nothing else to keep this super awesome thread alive (hahaha!).
I live in a rural area where there is NO cellphone service, NO cable TV, and NO cable or FIOS internet. Therefore, I have Hughesnet, the ONLY choice available to me, Dish network satellite TV, and the first landline phone I've had since 1998. Do I enjoy the data capped at 20 GB per month (the biggest plan offered in my area)? Not so much. Do I enjoy the three separate bills I pay each month and the high cost of same? Of course not. Do I enjoy being the data police in my household and spending my afternoons configuring everyone else's devices to use as little data as possible? Not by a long shot.
Am I grateful to have Hughesnet? EVERY SINGLE DAY! Most of the time I get speeds close to the national average. Thanks to Hughesnet, I can live out here in the countryside, work on my fixer upper, and still keep my job.
As far as I am aware, the laws of physics cannot be changed, and the cost of building, sending into space, and maintaining a satellite are unlikely to fall significantly in the near future.
I also recognize that Hughesnet is a BUSINESS. And if I recall my econ classes correctly (they were a few decades ago), the purpose of a business is to make money. Hughesnet is not a charity. And internet, TV, and even phones are not essential to life.
Hughesnet provides a service that I choose to enjoy, and they charge what the market will bear. That is the free enterprise system. Granted, if there were more competition, say two or three satellite internet providers in every rural area, the cost to consumers would come down. And I hope that happens.
No one put a gun to my head and forced me into signing up with Hughesnet. I did my research, learned the inherent limitations of satellite internet, and made an informed decision. As GabeU so elegantly pointed out, that has nothing to do with formal education, nor with financial status; you can learn about this stuff for free at any public library with a few clicks on Google.
THANK YOU HUGHESNET for providing a service in my neck of the woods that no one else at the present is willing or able to provide.
:-)
