We live in the country, about 15 miles from two small towns and 38 miles from a large city for this area.in all these places, dsl is available, but not for us. We waited 5 years after moving here for dsl, but if you live in the country, businesses don't care about you. Our dial up at 28k is too slow for sending or receiving photos, music, etc.in addition, we need a high speed connection for classes my children take online. So, with no other options, we decided we had to get satellite. We checked around and saw that supposedly Big Blue satellite had slower speeds & less reliable service than Hughes, so we chose Hughes. Before I go any further, let me say this: If Big Blue is slower and less reliable than Hughes, than it most not function at all.
Since we have had Hughes, we have had extremely unreliable service, very slow speeds and times where you get no service at all. Their customer service is almost non-existent. If you try the live-chat, half the time it doesn't work. When it does work they tell you the same old thing. "It must be your virus protection". When you show it isn't, they tell you to call the tech support. If you call tech support you get New Delhi, India. Aside from the language barrier, the information you get from them is hit and miss. On one occasion, after receiving instructions & doing everything they said, the computer still didn't work. We called back and somehow we got someone in the US, who told us that everything India told us to do was wrong and we had to start the whole process over.
I have copied here the speeds we have received. If you notice, there have only been a few times where I've reached 750 or even close, which is the speed I'm supposedly getting. Mind you these are speeds that are my everyday speed, NOT the penalty Fair Access Policy shut downs. We'll talk about that more later. Here's my speed chart:
April 29th, 02:59PM - 654/125 kbps
April 28th, 07:42PM - 154/122 kbps
April 28th, 07:39PM - 136/110 kbps
April 24th, 07:31PM - 11/151 kbps
April 24th, 07:29PM - 7/421 kbps
April 24th, 01:50PM - 747/121 kbps
April 21st, 10:33PM - 329/77 kbps
April 21st, 10:30PM - 370/36 kbps
April 21st, 08:31PM - 548/116 kbps
April 20th, 10:37PM - 86/3 kbps
April 19th, 05:34PM - 90/33 kbps
April 19th, 05:33PM - 91/30 kbps
April 19th, 08:03AM - 559/113 kbps
April 18th, 05:32PM - 80/31 kbps
April 18th, 05:31PM - 83/21 kbps
April 18th, 11:54AM - 743/121 kbps
April 16th, 06:30PM - 91/28 kbps
April 16th, 06:29PM - 50/30 kbps
April 1st, 11:58AM - 719/122 kbps
March 11th, 12:02PM - 735/125 kbps
March 10th, 08:16PM - 147/35 kbps
March 10th, 08:12PM - 166/61 kbps
February 27th, 03:57PM - 754/124 kbps
February 23rd, 02:11PM - 326/115 kbps
February 23rd, 02:09PM - 424/109 kbps
February 22nd, 08:54PM - 271/120 kbps
February 7th, 07:35PM - 377/115 kbps
February 7th, 07:08PM - 754/122 kbps
January 30th, 09:09PM - 3/1657 kbps
January 30th, 09:05PM - 4/1639 kbps
January 16th, 12:11AM - 763/125 kbps
January 11th, 12:18PM - 751/120 kbps
January 7th, 07:45PM - 154/49 kbps
January 7th, 07:41PM - 165/56 kbps
January 1st, 05:29PM - 407/75 kbps
December 27th, 11:18AM - 207/120 kbps
December 27th, 11:07AM - 185/118 kbps
December 26th, 01:32PM - 152/122 kbps
December 26th, 01:24PM - 177/122 kbps
November 22nd, 10:11PM - 191/119 kbps
November 22nd, 10:03PM - 245/50 kbps
November 22nd, 09:57PM - 231/118 kbps
November 20th, 09:24AM - 747/125 kbps
November 19th, 11:11AM - 12/1673 kbps
November 18th, 05:07PM - 6/394 kbps
November 18th, 05:04PM - 6/1524 kbps
November 18th, 12:54PM - 724/120 kbps
November 9th, 09:38PM - 621/122 kbps
November 9th, 08:40PM - 273/116 kbps
November 9th, 08:18PM - 273/120 kbps
November 9th, 08:14PM - 282/116 kbps
November 8th, 12:34PM - 758/123 kbps
October 27th, 5/459 kbps
My speeds for the months of August & September were the same. Sometimes the speeds were slow, I couldn't even run a speed test.
On one occasion, I had a diagnostic test run to see what speed were receiving compared to other services. Here are the results:
Broadband info.com
Speed Test Results
Your connection loaded 238,820 bytes in 40.077 seconds.
Your speed is 48 kbps.
Now, I pay $60 a month for this service. I get faster service with walmart connect dial-up and it only costs $10 a month.in fact, we've had to maintain our dial-up (which only gets 28k) because our satellite is so unreliable, we need to be able to access the internet, and sometimes just can't.
In addition to slow speeds, poor customer service, and it's unreliability, Hughes has a "Fair Access Policy", which states if you download too much, they will shut down your speed to half. You can supposedly still use your computer, but for 24 hrs., the service is degraded. If I only get a speed of 3,6, 12, or even 100, and then it goes to half speed, I'm obviously not getting service, no matter what they say. However those speeds, such as 6 and 12 were NOT subject to FAP, they were my normal high speed internet speeds. Now, just what is too much access and will get you shut down? Well, I watched an hour movie once, they shut me down. I didn't get to see the other half of the movie ever, because I was off for 24 hrs.
Another issue with Hughes is that they say your service may be slow if it's raining or cloudy.in October, I went a whole week with no service. I contacted them and they said if it's raining, it will interfere. I told them it was just cloudy, to which they said clouds will interfere. Ok, but it's cloudy most of the winter, does that mean I won't get service all winter? They changed their mind then and said only stormy cloudy days, and we went through another hour long diagnostic session where they finally got the service running again.
The latest Hughes debacle is their email upgrade. We received notice that from 2am-6pm on the 4/26 they would be upgrading our email. That night we had no email, nor did we have any the 27th. They put out a notice saying that their upgrade hadn't gone as planned and would take a little longer. On the 29th, they posted this notice:
In our continued efforts to provide the best possible service to our HughesNet subscribers, Hughes began a system-wide upgrade to our customers HughesNet e-mail accounts on Saturday, April 26. This enhanced email service included expanded spam controls and an enhanced user interface. Unfortunately, due to unforeseen problems encountered, this upgrade has not progressed as planned. Please be assured that all of your emails before and during this attempted transition have been safely and securely stored for subsequent transmission to you.
Effective today, we are switching back to our previous email system as swiftly as possible. We anticipate that all the emails in your system up to Friday, April 25, will be arriving to you later today, followed by emails sent or received from Saturday, April 26 until today, April 29.
Please obtain the most up-to-date information on progress of the rollback by visiting www.myhughesnet.com and selecting the HughesNet Customer Care button. We apologize for any and all inconvenience this has caused you, our valued customers. Thank you.
This company can't do anything right. I don't understand why there has been no government investigation or intervention. I am paying two times the price of dsl and getting less than half the speed and service. This company is definitely a fraud and should be dealt with.
And while I'm on my soapbox, one more thing. AT&T, BellSouth and the other companies who give me phone service, and take my money, but won't provide DSL to me because I live out of their service area, shouldn't be allowed to get by with that either. I'm obviously in an area they can provide phone service for and get money from, they should have to give equal access to all customers!
The latest Hughes debacle is thei
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