Which Satellite Internet Company?

   / Which Satellite Internet Company? #11  
We have had Wildblue at our Oregon property for over a year. No problems at all.

We have the faster uplink service, as DW uses it to maintain several websites, teach college courses over the internet, and do consulting.

We have the most primitive installation imaginable. Dish is on a steel pole set in concrete. We have moved our RV from its previous location, so the cable is about 40' short of reaching to the RV. I drove a PT 2x4 in the ground about 50' from the RV, and the WildBlue transceiver, and a wireless router are mounted on the 2x4. I waterproofed it by turning a plastic garbage can upside-down over the 2x4 and ran an extension cord from the RV for power. Works like a dream.

The whole thing is powered by the RV generator with no filtering of any sort.
 
   / Which Satellite Internet Company? #12  
We just got hughesnet's base plan. It runs great.

However, you can't park on it like you would on Cable or DSL. They limit the bandwidth per day per customer that you can utilize (I believe) , and this means that eventually the thing slows down to an unusable speed-after an hour or so. I have a teen that blogs a lot-so if that is you, then get the "Pro" contract upgrade that allows more bandwidth.

Hughesnet is not a bad service at all.

Rich
 
   / Which Satellite Internet Company? #13  
BSVLY said:
We just got hughesnet's base plan. It runs great.

However, you can't park on it like you would on Cable or DSL. They limit the bandwidth per day per customer that you can utilize (I believe) , and this means that eventually the thing slows down to an unusable speed-after an hour or so. I
Rich

I've had Hughesnet for a couple of years and we use a lot of bandwidth with website updates, email, video, etc. I've got 3 computers on the network all sharing the single connection and usually one or two of them are connected 24X7. We have never hit the maximum on the bandwidth. I thought about moving to the "pro" connection but we're all pretty happy with the response so I can't justify the additional expense.
 
   / Which Satellite Internet Company? #14  
Bird said:
Scotty, if you'd like to get an idea of what Dish Network costs, you might look over this website. Looks like they're partners with WildBlue mentioned by jeffinsgf. Of course we're in town now, so we have DSL Internet service, but we do have Dish Network TV.

Mornin Bird,
Yep, I thought it was about $50. Thanks for the link ! Nothin is cheap anymore ;)
 
   / Which Satellite Internet Company? #15  
Mine started out as Direcway Satelitte, but then it changed to Hughesnet or something like that. From the beginning, it's been a disapointment. They sub out the installers and the first ones out couldn't get it to work. Then the next guys out figured it out and had me up and running. But it wasn't reliable. They came out again, and said it was my computer. I spent hours and hours on the phone with customer support. They are in India, but are very helpful and do a good job of documenting what's going on, but you still have to work your way up techs until you get to one who can figure anything out. None of there solutions lasted.

I was building my home at the time, so I just dealt with the problems at that place. To relocat the dish and get it hooked up was $190 if they took down the dish, or $100 if I took it down and they just installed it.

The guy who put it up was with a different company than the first two. He got me up and running, but than I had the same problems again. After a few months of dealing with the technicians, they sent out another guy from a fourth company to figure out what was wrong.

He replaced every single piece of equipment and the cables. He was very **** and spent as much time bad mouthing Direcway as he did the previous guys and companies that were out here. When he was done, I was up and running faster and better then ever before.

He said one of the problems was that the dish was never grounded and that was a problem. He also said the other installers had used the very cheapest connectors on the cable and that was causing me problems. There might have been a problem with my modem too. I'm on my third one.

A few months after he left, I started having a new problem. The system would slow down, freeze up or just stop working. I posted a thread here and got some suggestions to check out some other forums. At one of the forums I read about static electricity building up and causing my problems.

I pulled the cables off my bodem and touched the tips to some metal. I got blue sparks. I'd do this until the sparks disapeared and then everything worked great for awhile. I kept doing this until I figured out the problem. In this case, it was partially my fault. I have two electrical panels in my home totally seperate from each other. One is where the power for my computer and modem is on, the other is where I had grounded my satelitte dish.

You cannot use two different grounds on a system. I still don't understand why this is, but it just is. I cut the ground wire from the dish and since that day, I have not had one problem.

Neither tech support or the installers figured this out, but I don't fault them since this was totaly unique and something I didn't realize or mention to anybody.

Now that it's working like it should, I have fast downloads and my uploads are not too bad. I email pictures to friends and family all the time and most of the time a dozen pictures on an email takes just a few minutes to send.

Rain will knock out internet satelitte much faster than TV satelitte. We rarely lose the TV signal on DirecTV, but will almost always lose it for the internet. It's not so much the rain, but the clouds. Sometimes it will stop working on cloudy days. I'm told this is impossible by the experts, but the reality is different then what the experts tell me.

If you have no other options, then it works to a degree. If you can find another way to get high speed interent, go for it. I'm constantly looking for a different solution to get off satelitte. When I can find one, then I'll change in a heartbeat.

Good luck,
Eddie
 
   / Which Satellite Internet Company? #16  
I have DirecWay/HughesNet and my experience has been similar to Eddie's - disappointing. I can't even find anything nice to say about tech support. Dealing with India is infuriating. Advanced Tech Support is in the US but you have to play 20 questions with India every time you call before they will refer you to Advanced.

Things have been 'normal' for the last 3-4 months - i.e. no notable problems, except the highly variable speeds and weather knockouts. Basic ($59.99) package is not VOIP compatible.

We now have a radio service in the neighborhood - unfortunately I have a hill between me and their tower - that has much better performance and lower cost ($39.99) and is VOIP capable. Trying to gin up a tower to remote locate in order to get service. Radio with VOIP will save me over $100 a month versus Hughes and Verizon.

Check around for the radio services - they are springing up everywhere. Ours is a local company (east Texas) called TeleShare.
 
   / Which Satellite Internet Company? #17  
I've been six months with Wildblue and I am happy with it, certainly when compared to dial-up. I have the least expensive package ($300 setup + $49 per month, 2 year committment) which maxes out at 512 kbps. I've run CNET's bandwidth meter on it many times and the slowest was 195 kbps, fastest was 480 kbps. To be fair, I generally only think to run the bandwidth test when it seems slow to me. I purchased through my electric coop, and local installers put it in.

I had some setup issues which turned out to be a bad dish (I think). Frustrating at the time but once it was setup it worked great. We had ice and snow last week and my internet was running just fine. Ironically, a friend of mine's cable internet was out the whole weekend :)

Considering the alternative, I'm very happy with satellite internet. Oh, and I haven't had to deal with tech support since I've had no issues, so I don't know if they are good or bad.
 
   / Which Satellite Internet Company? #18  
I have had Hughes.net for over three years. It works just great. It is far faster than any dial up account I ever had. I can download windows updates and other programs in minutes that would take hours on dialup. It works just fine for home users. If you are going to try and download hugh files like videos, music or tv ect you will be unhappy. The key is a good installby someone who knows what he is doing. Don't ask me how to insure that. If you have not done so you might want to look here, be sure to click on the other satellite and wild blue tabs also. This is the preimer site for satelite internet. broadband help » Forums » HughesNet Satellite
 
   / Which Satellite Internet Company?
  • Thread Starter
#19  
Thanks for all the replies and good information. What you folks are telling me is almost identical to what's being said on the web review sites. The earliest we can get DSL in this area is 2009 and that's even iffy.
I don't understand the radio service that MarEng is talking about, could you elaborate? Thanks again.
 
   / Which Satellite Internet Company? #20  
My brother has Direcway/Hughesnet. It is his only option right now. It has been working for years. He tried to load Tax Cut on his 7 year old win98 computer and it won't work. He bought a new computer but couldn't get the Hughesnet to work. After many tries with the support desk they asked him if his new computer was a 64 bit. When he told them yes they said his modem wouldn't work with it and he has to buy a new modem for $500. That's about what he paid for the computer. He is currently using a free 90 day dial up on the new computer but internet access on his old one. I told him I can set him up on a network and he can access the modem form the old computer on his new one. However, he told me that he has "one way" using the phone line for uploads and to network he would have to have "two way" on the satellite.
I guess he will have to buy the modem eventually. They have $100 off the modem on new installs but won't extend it to him because he is a current customer. I guess once you are a customer you don't count anymore.
 

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