About DougMac

Thanks Gabe.  I'm glad I was on the right track.    Regarding "squirreling away" tokens, you make a good point. However, good or bad, I don't think I'm going anywhere soon. We are in a fairly rural county and in our part of the county there is a low population density. I've been talking with my county commissioner who is a big proponent of universal high speed internet.  He's working hard to make it happen. I understand where private providers do the numbers and the infrastructure is to costly for the potential customer base.  My commissioner agrees with me  that this is no different from rural electrification. In the 1930's, 90% of urban areas had electricity. Only 10% of rural areas had electricity, 9 out of 10 farms had none. Electrification did not make economic sense, but forward thinking men like Roosevelt realized those areas would never thrive without it. I feel the same about high speed internet.  If the market won't provide it, government needs to create cooperatives.  It will pay off in the long run. Covid 19 has driven home the need because of telework.   I hope to get high speed in the future, but I'm not a Hughesnet basher. I understand the limitations of the technology and have come to terms with it. ... View more

Gabe,   Thanks.  Sorry for the missing in action.  I tried your suggestion.   I went to Usage History, but now that raises another question.  On the graph, I see two areas, one green, which is normal usage, plus one yellow. I've been buying tokens and I get a message on the "Buy Tokens" page saying X mbytes available.  Does that show how much I've bought?    The green part of the graph is getting thin, since my wife and I are both telecommuting.  I'm guessing that when we run out of data before the end of the month, the yellow will decline as well.  Only when it gets low will I have to buy more tokens.  Is that a correct assumption?   Thanks,  Doug Ya'll stay safe! ... View more

I haven't been to the community for a long time and decided to check it out.  I ran into this post and it got me thinking now that we've been with Hughesnet for a couple of years.   We live in rural Georgia. We had ATT&T dsl, but on a good day it was 760kbs.  They finally di.scontinued our dsl service because we were actually too far from the slick. We went to the Verizon program where they used a cantenna on your house and you connected to a microwave tower.  It was buggy.  Left with no other choice we decided to try satellite internet, although we were aware of the limitations.  Reviews led us to choose Hughesnet over Excede.   From a service standpoint, we've been very happy. We rarely have technical outages. Bad storms interrupt service, but it is just the nature of the beast.  We bought the 50 gig package and it has been a good fit.  We also got VOIP and it works OK, though latency takes a little getting used to.   We made the decision to go with satellite service after thoroughly understanding the limitations. We modify our usage accordingly.  The system is good enough for her to use Web-X to teach her online courses.  I sometimes watch YouTube videos, but we get other content through Dish and Netflix disks.  Yes, I'd love to have gig connectivity, but I wouldn't trade it for the gorgeous home sitting on 13 acres that we have.   I'm happy with the service we get from Hughesnet. ... View more

I just signed up.  I went through Dish. They transferred me to a sales representative.  We had a long discussion, some of it technical, and I decided to sign up.  Before she let me say "I do", she read a long list of caveats including VPN service.  I was then asked if I understood all the limitations and was willing to accept them.   I go through a VPN to get to my work.  I haven't had a problem and it has been no slower than the Verizon service I had in the past.  I use web apps and check my email, but I don't try to edit documents, etc. ... View more

We just got HughesNet. I did a lot of reading and from everything I saw, it was mostly a coin toss.  I went with HughesNet since they partner with Dish and I got a small price break on both.   The "unlimited" plan offered by Exede looked promising.  You get get 150 gig of unchoked data, 50 gig more than the 50/50 plan and you aren't time restricted on its use. However, it is more expensive and on several reviews I read that Exede rarely delivered promised speed, while the same reviews said HughesNet Gen5 met or exceeded promised speed.   Before making the jump, go to their user forum.  You'll find the level of unhappy customers is about the same as here.  I can't tell for sure, but it looks like they "optimize" video but unlike Hughesnet, with the unlimited plan you can't turn it off. ... View more