Satellite Internet

[luvmexfood]

Does anyone have any experience with satellite internet? Only thing available here is dial-up and on my old XP desktop many webpages will not load anymore. I suppose upgrades are needed but can't download them.

Have a laptop running Windows 8.1 and if I try and connect it through the dial-up modem nothing will download. Everything times out. Have tried both IE and Chrome browsers.

Can't even access Yahoo mail anymore. I was told today by an installer for Dishnetwork that Dish contracts with both Hughes and Exede and just resells their service and you are better to deal straight with the companies.

 

[deerseeker001]

I had Hughes net for 8 years was very good but you have download limits,I had Gen4 which was there latest satellite. It worked for me till something better came along.

 

[phiferpharm]

I had Excede until we finally got DSL. It was better than dial-up, but never got through the month without exceeding 10gb of data. If you have to do big downloads, do it after midnight.

 

[nybirdman]

Have you checked with Verizon Wireless?They seem to have about the best coverage.Satellite would be the very last option for me.

 

[rekees4300]

Does anyone have any experience with satellite internet?

5 years ago I had Hughesnet for 2 years. The worse company I have ever dealt with. If you go with Hughesnet be prepared for lots of frustration. But, nevertheless, they would still be better than dial-up.

 

[bamboozled]

Verizon Wireless - Explore - LTE Internet (Installed)

 

[EddieWalker]

I had Hughesnet for several years and I cannot say a single good thing about them. Every time it rained, it quit working. Every time the clouds came out, it quit working. If there was too much dew in the morning, it wouldn't work. Customer service has four levels. Three are in India, four is in Florida. It's almost impossible to get past level 3, but I did on several occasions. Level 1 asks about the weather. If you admit it's cloudy out or raining, they wont talk to you anymore. You have to tell them the sky is clear in order to get to level 2. They they will have you perform a few tests that never work and then on to level three where they agree to send out a tech to fix it. I've had everything replaced several times, from the cables, to the connections on the cables, to several routers and several dishes, transmitters and receivers. Everything is remanufactured, and even if you are the first stop for the tech and he has 4 boxes of transmitters, modems and receivers, there is no guarantee that any of them will work. I know this first hand!!!

Best thing I ever did was to switch to Verizon internet. Then I made a mistake and went to their MiFi wifi, which is a data ***** that never stops eating up data. But that's another topic.

Eddie

 

[DuckSlayer1017]

My wife runs an internet based business out of our house that is out in the sticks. We used Verizon for a few years but now that my daughters are older they are online a lot and we were always going over our 30gb limit. We ended up going with a T1 line that uses the copper phone line but doesn't have the distance limitations like DSL. It's not cheap but neither is Verizon when the data limit is high. The speeds with the T1 are about like DSL.

 

[rekees4300]

Only thing available here is dial-up

Are you sure you aren't covered by Verizon 4G LTE? When I type Lebanon, VA into their coverage map it looks like the town is covered.

Coverage Locator

 

[grsthegreat]

my satellite hughesnet was miserable. They NEVER met their promised download and upload speeds. Once i was able to switch to a microwave internet system, ive been pleased as punch. i still have a small 12" antenna, but its pointed 10 miles to the top of a mountain instead of 22,000 miles into space.

the MAJOR problem with satellite internet is the HUGE ping times. most are so long that your bumped out of sites. This is due to the length of time it takes for signal to reach satellite and return to earth.

 

[KretZ]

The only experience I've had with satellite internet was in Afghanistan. Like Eddie said, every time it rained I was up on top of the building trying to get it dialed in again. We were up against a mountain and our geosynchronous orbit satellite lived just above the horizon so it was always a pain to keep the network up. But when it was up, it was d@mn fast! Plus I was always worried that I had somehow accidentally been sterilized by the transmitter. But we just found out we have a second one on the way, so looks like my swimmers survived ;-)

 

[KevT]

The only experience I've had with satellite internet was in Afghanistan. Like Eddie said, every time it rained I was up on top of the building trying to get it dialed in again. We were up against a mountain and our geosynchronous orbit satellite lived just above the horizon so it was always a pain to keep the network up. But when it was up, it was d@mn fast! Plus I was always worried that I had somehow accidentally been sterilized by the transmitter. But we just found out we have a second one on the way, so looks like my swimmers survived ;-)

Well let me say congradulations on the new family member!

 

[KevT]

My wife and I are both self employed and have to do a lot of email communication. We combined our cell phones, her office phone (also cell) with a mifi plan. Using AT&T (the only one that connects at the house) we get unlimited voice, and text and 30 gig of data which we seem to use about a third of. We can't stream movies or watch netflix, but no issues for us, who has time? LOL

We tried "Dish" and "Hugh's" and never again!!! Our TV is now with "Direct" and we were not even going there with them. Ahhhh, the joys of living rural.

 

[TripleR]

Nothing is available at our house as we're in the country surrounded on three sides by hills, a quarter of a mile away there are several providers. Several say their service will work until they check it, so we've used Hughes for about ten years since Charter moved their lines and it's not bad. I'll go with something else if it's ever available, but not a big deal as I never exceed my data and if it gets slow, I just do something else.

 

[paulharvey]

I've had Dishnet since September, and at first it was fast and pretty reliable. I have a 10 gig data limit. Most months I run out with a couple days left before it resets. This month, I ran out in like 10 days, and didn't download anything... I really am starting to wonder how they measure data use.

When it works, it's fast, but as months pass, it works less and less... they claim something like 150 kbps after data is used up; which is about the same as my Windstream DSL was; BUT after the first month or two, once data is used up, I can't even connect to anything using WIFI. I'm counting down the months till I can get rid of them. $71/month, but the next level is $20 more (15 gigs).

Windstream is available, but it was slow (anything over 100 kbps was good), unreliable (it was completely out for several weeks, and at least several days per month it didn't work), not cheap ($60/month), and their equipment/modem capped out every 6 months ($100 each time, unless you paid $10/month for there insurance plan).

I don't know much about this stuff, but is there anything you can do on customer side to reduce signal loss. Would there be better cable to run from house to Ped? It's just a phone drop now, something like a 4 pair copper. It's only 200 feet from my house to the ped

 

[Xfaxman]

Check for Fixed Wireless Internet providers in your area. https://www.google.com/webhp?source...ie=UTF-8#q=fixed+wireless+isp+for+Lebanon,+VA

We were on one before we moved here and had to go with Hughes Net.

Pro Value is coming out today to see if we can get signal from a tower southeast of here.

Professional Value Internet Services, Inc. - ProValue.net

 

[paulharvey]

Is there a good simple website that explains what all these options are. Dsl, cable internet, T1, ect. It's pretty much all foreign to me.

 

[kcflhrc]

I currently have Excede Satellite Internet with a 10gb limit monthly. Suppose to be 12mb download speeds but the delay is horrible and I run out of data almost every month. I'm in the process of changing over to Pixius that is one of those line of site providers that uses cell towers to put their antennas on. My satellite is $50 per month and Pixius will be $80 but there is no data limit on the Pixius. Should be installed in a week or 2. Hopefully it's good.

 

[Country Geek]

I've had Dishnet since September, and at first it was fast and pretty reliable. I have a 10 gig data limit. Most months I run out with a couple days left before it resets. This month, I ran out in like 10 days, and didn't download anything... I really am starting to wonder how they measure data use.

Well you didn't download anything that you know of. But all kinds of things can be downloading in the background. Most software assumes if you are on wifi you have unlimited data so are programmed to do background downloads then. The most common example is Windows updates. If you have smart phones, they also download updates when on wifi. Those updates can be large. If you use a cloud service like Dropbox, they synch while on wifi. Etc.

 

[Kenneth in Texas]

Exede satellite here and its either this or dial up. Satellite internet is good for me, never have exceeded 10gigs a month, fairly fast, does go out in heavy rain but can live with that. Free downloads from midnight to 5 am. All in all its good for us, especially when dial up is the only other option.