For mountain members with satellite internet

[GilpinGuy]

I ditched HughesNet over a month ago due to horrible connections and horrible customer service. One (of many) examples of customer service: I had continuous DNS timeout errors or whatever they're called. The only advice HughesNet gave me was to have technician come out to see if the dish was aligned correctly - $125 for a tech to come by. No way. A few minutes of searching online and I found that a cable might just be loose. OK, I climbed a ladder and found one loose. Solved for $0.00. But hen there would be intermittent connection problems. Several a day, good weather or bad, all times of the day. They were no help, and neighbors had the same problems. More internet searching found that they are "overselling their beams". That can't be good.

We switched to Exede and have had exceptional service so far. If you are struggling with HughesNet, consider switching. If you have DirecTV you get a discount for 6 moths as well.

No, I'm not an Exede installer, or get any discounts for referrals or anything (maybe I should look into that...) or even know anyone working there. I just know that internet access is frustrating for some of us mountain folks. Hope this helps.

[Goodburbon]

I paid extra to get out of a hughesnet contract. Horrible product.


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[sniper7]

Good to know for the day I get to move!

[Ah Pook]

Nice to know there are options out there. Thanks!

[KestrelBike]

Good work troubleshooting that & not giving up figuring out the problem! That's pretty crap if hughes is "overselling" their capacity. Lame.

[BlasterBob]

About a month ago we switched from Wildblue to Exede and the speed and service is SOOO much better now and at a lower monthly price. Can't beat that combination.

[Gman]

It's a problem with all satellite based Internet providers. It costs millions to build and launch the satellites and they have a finite amount of frequencies/bandwidth available to them. If you under-subscribe to allow for high throughput for your customers, you have to charge so much that most folks can't afford it. If you don't charge a premium, you can't pay for the infrastructure.

Some of this can be off-set by using spot-beams and re-using the frequencies, but then you have the cost of maintaining numerous ground stations with transmit/receive infrastructure connecting to terrestrial Internet infrastructure.

So, these solutions tend to get loaded up with lots of subscribers to share the costs and the penalty is limited bandwidth.

Many have tried to make a profit by providing a satellite-based Internet solution, and it just never seems to meet the promise, but folks keep trying. Just to give you a history of how Exede came to be; http://www.exede.com/what-is-exede/the-exede-story

Lots of re-treading there.

[davsel]

We use SkyBeam in the mountains. It's a point-to-point network, so you have to be able to "see" an antenna. You can go online to see if your address is "visible."
It's been good so far (one year), but it does get affected by really bad storms in the area - real pain if you're trying to stream a Bronco's game during a snow storm.

[GilpinGuy]

I had the SkyBeam guy in our area come by here. He stepped out of his truck and almost immediately said, "This isn't gonna work for you."

I hear that it works well for those who do have that line-of-sight.