Okay. Let me first start off by saying I understand we are a nation under siege by an unprecedented situation. I think the vast majority of people don't understand how much worse it's going to get before it begins to get better, or just how far out that is. We're all in this for the long haul. It will be months. I don't feel I'm entitled to anything above and beyond what I'm paying for. I'm simply trying to understand what my expectations should be so I can come up with a cost estimate for my company. With that being said, here is my question: The announcement by Hughesnet on March 18th said speeds would be increased even for those exceed their data cap. I run out every month, and don't really mind the throttled speeds of 2mbps or less I have seen in the past 2 years. I don't typically do a lot from home. However, these are extraordinary circumstances in which I now find myself. I need to work from home because I'm under mandate by my doctor since I'm likely positive and waiting to hear from the state. Those results will be sometime next week. So for at least the next 5 days, I have to produce 4.5 hours of news from my living room so my anchors have something in the teleprompter to read to our viewers every morning. Luckily, about half my work schedule will fall in the bonus zone time frame, but for the amount of time that doesn't, I need to know what my options going forward are to have something faster than 2mbps connection. For the last 2 years, bonus and unthrottled speeds have been near 25mbps. When testing my setup yesterday, I saw they were at my historically throttled 2mbps, not surprising as I reached my limit. This is where my confusion comes in. How is this an increase to speeds even after reaching data limit as per announcement? I thought perhaps it was due to congestion, which is why I applied a data token, to test. Immediately, my speeds jumped to 40mbps. That leads me to believe the 2mbps I experienced was throttled, which again is understandable. Can't just open the floodgates or the system would be overwhelmed completely. But surely "increased speeds" must be more than 2mbps. You can barely open a browser on that. So I just need to know, is this working as intended. I have to craft a capital expenditure request with justification, and right now I am being asked to find out what speeds I can expect so we can determine a work flow for the newsroom for the foreseeable future.
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