About dcarolan

I would have preferred to just put this into my previous post , “High Data Usage”, but it was closed. So, six months I payed tons for HughesNet service. The last four, only one device was ever attached to it. My 80 year old mother had exclusive access with her IPad, to read emails, look up recipes, and occasionally buy something from Amazon. A little old lady who doesn’t watch videos or stream music easily burned through the data cap every month before month’s end. Meanwhile, I used my phone plan’s data for my own use. But my prayers to the internet Gods have been answered. AT&T was finally able to install basic internet service to my house. At less than a gigabyte per second top speed, I’m getting better transfer rates than I ever got from HughesNet. It’s slow, but I get a terabyte of data. I finally updated my laptop OS after months of using it exclusively offline. Now I can finally take a hacksaw to the ugly bleeping pole the obnoxious installer told me could only be placed IN THE MIDDLE OF MY DRIVEWAY. Yeah, that has looked REAL good from the street for the last six months. So, it’s a good ending to this particular story. HughesNet gets their equipment back and gets a bunch more money from me for breaking their contract; I get to not have a big advertisement for a service I’ve been disgusted with (since installation) in my front yard. And I get an opportunity to tell people to run (don’t walk) if HughesNet ever comes calling to offer “service.” Buh-bye. ... View more

I was shocked at my data usage going into my second month of service with Hughesnet.   For reference:  At my previous home, I had DSL service with a 10 Gig data cap.  Using low quality video settings and a little common sense, I was able to watch Netflix, all the YouTube videos I wanted (sometimes for hours a day) and even played World of Warcraft (at super low quality settings) and only twice went over the cap.   I moved all of the same equipment (two iPads, two phones, a Kindle, a laptop, a DirecTV receiver, an Xbox, a Smart TV and a Roomba) to my new house in the country, where my only choice for internet service is Hughesnet.    I noticed at the end of my first month of service that I was using a lot of my data cap every day.  Being the kind of person I am, I figured I had a bandwidth hog on my network, so I systematically began disconnecting devices each day to find the culprit.  First, The DirecTV Box.  No change...  It goes on and on, next the TV, then the Xbox, then the Roomba, then the laptom, then each iPad in turn, then the Kindle, then each phone. I used 2.25 Gigs a day, no matter what.   Frustrated, I talked to someone in support.  I won't get too much into the frustration of that, but, after 4 hours with everything turned off and nothing plugged in, they sent me a new modem.  I set it up yesterday.  I turned on one phone and one iPad.  I checked email on the phone.  I looked at Amazon for about 20 minutes on the iPad.  My mother asked if she could use the Wifi to check her email on her iPhone.  She used it for less than an hour.  No videos, a few jpegs, nothing major.  1.25 gigs of usage for the day.  I guess that's an improvement, but my 20 Gig cap will still be gone before the month ends.   With Hughesnet, I've given up on video altogether.  I haven't watched a single video of any kind this month.  I knew there would be no gaming with the latency, so that hasn't even been on the radar.  At this point, I'm doing all my day to day internet usage on my cell phone plan, letting my mother use the data to check her email and doing any laptop updates in the middle of the night to take advantage of the bonus time.   All told, my experience with Hughesnet has been underwhelming.  The installer was rude to my mother (she's old, I'm her caregiver) and refused to install the dish in a place where it isn't visible from the road (all I asked).  And...  I can't really use it without burning through data at a ridiculous rate.   Well, that's my vent.  If anyone has a suggestion of what else I can do to make the next 2 years with Hughesnet more enjoyable, let me know.  Thanks. ... View more