Not bad for Hughesnet..

[Gabe1972]

[drpecker]

What kind of plans does Hughes offer now.  Can you still purchase the equipment?  Exede charges me $80/month for 20GB, 25-35 Mbps.  They have a free download time but it is from 3 am to 5 am.

[Gabe1972]

 

Getting better over the last month and a half or so. 

 

Right now, with the Gen4 plan, you can still buy the equipment, though I'm not sure how much it is.  $200 maybe?  The Gen4 plans have no free download time.  They have the Anytime Data, which is really the biggest difference between plans, and the Bonus Bytes, which is 50GB with all of the plans.  Anytime Data is 8:00AM to 2:00AM, and Bonus Bytes is 2:00AM to 8:00AM.  If you run out of Bonus Bytes, though, the Anytime Data will be used during Bonus Bytes time, hence the name. 

 

With that said, I prefer to lease the equipment, because if anything goes wrong with it, it's covered.  If you purchase it and later something goes wrong with it, you have to pay to have it fixed, not only for the parts, but the labor, as well.  Sure, in the long leasing costs more, but it's worth the peace of mind. 

 

I have the 15GB/50GB plan.  I don't stream, so it's plenty for me, and for three Windows 10 PCs, too.  I pay about $85 for mine, but I have a 12 month discount.  Normally it would be $79.99 for the plan and $9.99 for the equipment lease, plus tax.  

 

My plan has Smart Browsing, as well.  If I use up all of my data, I can still browse with no noticeable drop in speed.  That's browsing, though.  If you try to download large files while in Smart Browsing, it will throttle you to around 150Kbps.   

[Sean]

I do like the way satellite ISPs provide peak and off-peak bundles as it effectively allows them to provide larger monthly bundles without adding further congestion to day time usage, since not many people care how slow the Internet gets between 2am and 8am while they are asleep.

 

This is something I really wish the cellular LTE (4G) broadband providers would do here in Ireland.  The Three here has popular plans between 60GB and 250GB per month and this is metered 24 hours a day, so there is no incentive for people to do their bulk downloading overnight.  Unsurprisingly their network can get incredibly slow in the evenings such as below 2Mbps compared to 40+Mbps early in the day.

 

The satellite Internet providers do a similar approach by offering an unmetered overnight usage.  However, unlike the speeds above, so far pretty much every speed test I've seen by a satellite ISP here is below 1Mbps (downlink) in the evening and am fairly sure the maximum I've seen anyone show me was under 4Mbps. 

[james1979]

I didn't realize that Hughes was delivering 30 Mbps speeds. What modem model are you using?

 

I'm using Exede-12 now which effectively tops out at around 23 Mbps with a Surfbeam 2 modem. Exede introduced a new modem on a limited basis earlier this year. It was advertised as an "Exede Boost 25" modem, but there have been reports of their new modem achieving 40 Mbps down. I declined the brief opportunity to try it out as I didn't see a reason to spend an extra $10/month for higher speeds that I don't really need.

 

I later realized that I was very likely being offered a chance to try out the modem that Exede will be using for ViaSat-2 subscribers. I'm guessing that Hughes is also trying out new modems (> HT1100) for future Jupiter-2 subscribers. Is my guess on this correct?

[Gabe1972]

Sean,

We definitely get slowdown times during the evening, and I have seen my own speeds drop drastically, sometimes down to nearly 1Mbps.  For the most part, though, they're doing pretty good with their speeds.  One problem, though, is that quite a few of the customers are on the older, original Gen4 satellite, and it has a cap of around 5Mbps.  They are launching a new satellite in December to help alleviate the speed problems those folks are having, and also provide service to more people. 

[Gabe1972]

james1979,

I'm on the Jupiter satellite and I am using the HT1100 modem.  I'm not sure about the HT1100 and the new satellite, but I'm sure that's what they will be using.  Right now they are upgrading people on the HT1000 modems to the HT1100 for free.  People just ask on the community boards and they send them one.  They may even be doing it for people on the HNS9000.  I'm not sure.  I'm getting speeds like this because I am on a beam that is lightly loaded.  My plan actually has an advertised "Up To" speed of 10Mbps, so you can imagine my surprise when I first upgraded to Gen4 in Feb.  I thought the test was wrong, but after a few more, I was shocked to realize that I was actually getting the speeds it showed, which at the time was around 20Mpbs.  A couple of months ago the speed started going up, and right now, during the middle of off peak usage times, it's not at all unusual to be getting in the high 20s and low 30s.  The highest speed I ever got is in the picture below...

 

 

[james1979]

Thanks for that info Gabe. It is not surprising that Jupiter-1 can match the speeds of ViaSat-1 since Hughes sort of cloned the design of ViaSat-1. They were both built my Space Systems Loral who was successfully sued by ViaSat for sharing their patents with Hughes. Not surprisingly, ViaSat-2 was built by Boeing instead of SS/L.

 

I am familiar with HughesNet's efforts to exchange HT1000s for HT1100. I was an early Gen4 subscriber with an HT1000 modem, but my system never worked quite right (<= 1 Mbps) so I cancelled. I later traced the problem to being with my former HT1000 modem after encouraging my neighbors to swap out modems. They are now also getting speeds above their advertised "up to", but nothing like 40-50 Mbps. I'm a bit surprised that an HT1100 is capable of such speeds, but then I don't know much at all about satellite modem designs.