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Running out of data in 5 days

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bookdiva96
Freshman

Running out of data in 5 days

My family lives in a very rural area in northeast Georgia.  Formerly, we had internet service with AT&T and while unbelievably slow, we were able to use it most days.  AT&T assured us there was no way to speed up our service with the equipment they have installed in our area.  With two older students who are in college and high school, we need access to usable internet for them to do their assignments.  After talking with a neighbor who had Hughesnet, we decided to select them as our internet provider.  In reality Hughesnet is our only option other than AT&T—our cell phones don’t even work at our house.  On December 27, 2017, we had a Hughesnet system installed.  It worked beautifully. 

When our data allotment reset on Jan 27, 2018, we managed to use all of our data for the month of Feb. in 5 days--from Jan. 27-Jan 31. On January 30, I called customer support and talked to Barbara in Monterrey, Mexico for about an hour and a half to see what we needed to do to make our devices use less data.  She told me several things.  First, that the first 20 days of our contract the data allotment reset every night to 30 Gb.  This is very deceptive.  In that time we cancelled our old internet service and developed habits using (evidently) a great deal of data.  Since one can only cancel with no penalty up to 30 days after beginning service, in reality this leaves only 10 days to truly experience the service we can expect from Hughes net.

In my phone call with Barbara, she encouraged me to stop unnecessary processes on our devices, which I did, and also to install virus software on the computer that appeared to use the most data.  There were no viruses on the computer, and we ran out of data for the month the next day.

I was a great champion for Hughesnet in the first 30 days of the service.  In spite of the higher cost as compared to AT&T the increased speed and reliability seemed well worth the larger monthly cost.  Regrettably, I have changed my mind significantly.  I cannot in good conscience recommend this product to anyone.

 

1 REPLY 1
GabeU
Distinguished Professor IV

@bookdiva96

 

Regarding the 20 days of data resets, HughesNet does this as a courtesy to allow people to update or upgrade their devices to current without it affecting what would be their normal monthly data allotment.  There is no 30 day trial or 30 days in which to cancel the service without the ETF, so there is no deception.  It's strictly a courtesy.  

 

Regarding the data usage, you can install Glasswire on Windows based computers to see what data is being used on them and figure out ways in which to reduce it.  Glasswire is free and non intrusive.  Nor does it use any data itself (other than the initial program download).  It only monitors the data usage of the computer it's installed on, so it needs to be installed on each one.  To the upper right of the circle graph while on the All view in Usage, make sure to set the options to "Incoming & Outgoing" and "External".       https://www.glasswire.com/

 

Ad blockers will also help save some data.  The most commonly used is Adblock Plus, and it is free.  Make sure to uncheck "Allow some non-intrusive advertising" in the option or a lot of ads will still load.  https://adblockplus.org/ 

 

Also, it's best to not use any cloud services, as this will use quite a bit of data.  In addition, streaming will also use a considerable amount of data, though I know that with two students it may not be possible to not do so. 

 

The following two threads may also help...

 

https://community.hughesnet.com/t5/Tech-Support/Understanding-data-usage-data-loss-and-connection-pa...

 

https://community.hughesnet.com/t5/Tech-Support/HughesNet-Data-Management-Tips-n-Tricks-How-To-Elimi...