Anyone have real 1st hand experience with Sat internet?

[GMBoy]

Were I live I cannot get satisfactory internet. Cable, DSL, U-Verse, Fios etc is not available. I was with Rise Broadband (they used to call themselves Skybeam) and they were awful! Could never get more than 1 mb speed. Currently I use a Verizon wireless Jetpack that is slow and they cap the data speed at 15 then you run barely fast as dialup. I think my only other option is Hughs Net or other Satalite based service.

Anybody use Hughesnet? opinions, ideas etc? I do know it is expensive.

THANKS!

 

[Black_Thunder]

I used to have Hughesnet when I lived at a different location and it was the only option I had.


yes its expensive and the bandwidth is limited so once the threshold is met the connection is slowed down considerably, but it reset daily instead of monthly like some sat net providers, and some times of of the day usually early mornings there was a few hours where there was no limit so if you had large downloads that was the time to do it.

I guess the new next gen or whatever its called is suppose to be much faster, but I don't know what the pricing is on it currently or if there is a bandwidth limit like before.

customer service is kind of hit/miss.

also It is affected by weather, so with heavy rain and snow you will not have internet, and you will need to clean the snow off the dish occasionally.



I currently have wireless internet where I have just a small antenna that is aimed at a localized antenna broadcast to a local internet provider (Fibernet). it is not affected by weather at all and I have no bandwidth limit.

 

[GMBoy]

Thank you for that information - data limits daily is acceptable to me, the current monthly data quota I cannot accept.

 

[wwillson]

Satellite data is expensive and very high latency, like 600ms latency. They do have caching proxies at the terrestrial station to try to speed up fetching object, but you can't reduce the latency in the data turn between the ground station, up to the bird, and back to you. Your experience will always feel slow for pages that aren't locally cached and most are dynamic, so most feel slow.

 

[bullwinkle]

My brother had Hughes when he lived way out east, with no local DSL nor cable internet available, it was very expensive & pretty slow-I don't think it would have been fast enough to stream anything. in the neighborhood of $100-125 a month too.

 

[rekit]

We were in the same situation. 40 years here, Dial-up at first, some sort of internet that used an antenna later until the trees grew too tall, Then Verizon, then Hughesnet. Never understood how the speedtests would show 20-25 but I would have to turn off the wifi on my phone and use Consumer Cellular mobile data so the local radar would play. I think I saw the real speed once as 9. I would call them and it would speed up for a day or two and go back to slow. I had to run youtube at 240 to even play. And of course it goes out when it started to rain......But if it's all you can get....We finally got Fiber out here and Xfinity (Comcast) and it is a new world out here now.

 

[Fitter30]

Had Hughes net for 28 months. They have over sold their system. Super slow couldn't stream, watch a you tube without extreme buffering. When terminating service spent a hour on the phone with them they were nasty both on the phone and a letter sent that was in the equipment return box. Cancel Dish tv the same time had a pleasant call. Check out Dsl reports for other reviews.

 

[Rmay635703]

Originally Posted by wwillson
Satellite data is expensive and very high latency, like 600ms latency. They do have caching proxies at the terrestrial station to try to speed up fetching object, but you can't reduce the latency in the data turn between the ground station, up to the bird, and back to you. Your experience will always feel slow for pages that aren't locally cached and most are dynamic, so most feel slow.


When I was young my relatives had "satellite " internet that required a dial up connection at the same time to use it.

In terms of speed they said it was faster than dialup and extremely fast for file transfer

These type of situations of limited internet just show why our webpages more then ever need to continue to be optimized.

Now days a short page of text might be 2mb,
When I was making web pages the same page might be 2kb and you would be fired if you made something so bloated that it took more than 200k to compose.

Very sad what passes for scripting these days

 

[Blaze]

We had Starband satellite internet about 8 yrs ago. It was FAR BETTER than dial-up which I'm on now...again. My wife and I just don't spend enough time on the internet to make it worth it. Heck cell phones don't even work out here.

 

[emg]

SpaceX just launched another bunch of Starlink satellites today. I think they're supposed to start limited commercial operation in the US next year, with much lower latency than geosynchronous satellites.

Price probably depends on whether they can sell direct or have to go through the big ISPs.

 

[Andrew1972]

Garbage. Sorry about poor internet. Advocate for good internet locally. Lack of high speed internet crushes home value.

 

[GMBoy]

Originally Posted by madRiver
Garbage. Sorry about poor internet. Advocate for good internet locally. Lack of high speed internet crushes home value.


My home has gone up 173k in value since 2014. Must not be hurting me that much.

 

[GMBoy]

Thanks everyone for ALL the replies and education!! I am not sure what I am going to do now lol!! I think I will just hold on to the Verizon Jetpack a little longer and see if Cable or something else makes it way to me. Cable is currently in a new development about 1 mile down the road...maybe they will soon come down my way. If not soon, I imagine I will just go HughesNet or something next year

 

[cwilliamsws6]

I live in Columbus Ohio, fastest internet I can get where I'm at is U-Verse 16mbps. My next door neighbor has fiber internet, but my house is "out of their service area" despite being 25 feet away. Whatever lol

 

[BeerCan]

Can you get wireless? I have a location in rural Florida that uses wireless. I have a clear shot to the tower so that helps, been using it for about 3 years now. Good bandwidth, can do streaming tv etc no problem. Even use it for VOIP with few problems

 

[Andrew1972]

Originally Posted by GMBoy
Originally Posted by madRiver
Garbage. Sorry about poor internet. Advocate for good internet locally. Lack of high speed internet crushes home value.


My home has gone up 173k in value since 2014. Must not be hurting me that much.


That is great. The reality of home value increase is you don't actually know till you sell it.

What happens, to prospective home buyers high speed internet is a utility and not a luxury. It is critical for anyone who has any part of their job working remotely or wants reliable internet.

Home buyers looking skip homes, areas or even towns without the utility and go to next place that has it and creates demand and home value increase nearby. This is known thing in MA in rural areas with some towns with access and others barely DSL.