[Hidden-tech] Does anybody have HughesNet or DirecTV satellite web access?

[Julie Strothman]

Hi,
I have HughesNet, and they are AWFUL. We've been with them for the required two-year contract and and we pay $70/month for a limit of 300mb of traffic/day. We only stick with them for lack of access to cable or DSL, and indeed, it's a significant improvement over dial-up.
The latency on uploads is a major cost in terms of work efficiency.
My major beef with HughesNet is the download limit per 24 hours. (There is a no-restriction time period b/w 3am and 6am.) When you exceed your limit, your access is clamped down to completely unusable for 24 hours. Before we upgraded to the 300mb plan, we would often find ~100mb-downloads on our usage log when no one was home and all computers were off, causing us to be frequently under "Fair Access Policy," i.e. throttled to nothing. HughesNet of course never admitted that the data is faked and a ploy to get you to upgrade, but it _stopped_ once we upgraded to 300mb. Of course, we still exceed 300mb accidentally from time-to-time, given that many os and major software upgrades these days are between 100mb - 300mb, and we have multiple computers online. (Ensuring 5 people don't exceed 300mb all the time is not easy.) 
(We also have our DirecTV cut out sometimes b/c of bad weather--HughesNet cuts out less often and usually for shorter periods of time.)
Good luck,
Julie


Julie Strothman, Project Manager
Landmark College Institute for Research & Training
River Road. Putney VT 05346
802.387.7137
jstrothman at landmark.edu
>>> "B. Melville" <bmelville.pgs at verizon.net> 01/09/09 9:47 PM >>>
   ** Be sure to fill out the survey/skills inventory in the member's area.
   ** If you did, we all thank you.


Out here in dial-up country, these services look very attractive. 
However, I wonder if they are as fast as they say. HughesNet has 6 
levels of service, and the cheapest level doesn't look that much 
faster than dial-up. I don't know how the speed of their cheapest 2 
levels compares to the speed of cable (which stopped 3 houses before 
us).

Another concern is reliability. Our DirecTV service sometimes cuts 
out in bad weather. I assume that the same would be true for 
satellite web access.

Does anybody have experience with either of these services?
_______________________________________________
Hidden-discuss mailing list - home page: http://www.hidden-tech.net
Hidden-discuss at lists.hidden-tech.net

You are receiving this because you are on the Hidden-Tech Discussion list.
If you would like to change your list preferences, Go to the Members   
page on the Hidden Tech Web site.
http://www.hidden-tech.net/members