O/T Satellite Internet Service Information

wsmm

Member
We currently have Verizon wireless Internet service. We still have not gotten 4G service in our area and are running on 3G. Service during the summer on weekends is lousy. Have yet to obtain a download speed of 1MBs or better. We are just on the fringes of the towers reach, 3.9 miles away and we're in the woods. Been looking at Dish Network Internet service lately. Can get the same anytime 5gb data usage, plus an additional 5gb data off hours usage for the same price. Dish will waive installation and activation fee. Monthly ease price of modem will be offset with a credit.They are claiming download speeds of close to or a 5MBs. Anyone have any experience with these two companies or any recommendations, even of other possibilities. No cable, or DSL service available in our area. Two year contract required.
Thanks,
Bill
 
Neighbors have the same service as you. They are asking me about our satellite service. I guess from what they say, our service is a little better, but I still feel we're not getting our moneys worth.
We have no choice where we are. We had Wildblue, got sick of it, and now have Hughes. It slows down to a crawl evenings. And there are just too many miles of weather for the satellite signals to have to go through.
There is enough demand that local governments are considering bringing in a dedicated-cell-phone-tower/signal internet service. We'll see.
 
Wondering if you have run a speedtest on your system. I use speedtest.net. Would be interested if you do to know what your daytime and evening speeds are.
 
Haven't in some time. I thought when we went to Hughes we were told we could easily watch something like a several minute audio/video on youtube. Many evenings it's just too frustrating. Now of course we're told the upgraded service would do just that. When I got it through the guys head that I'm not spending any more money per month (it's $60 now) he gave up.
And it hasn't helped that the monsoons started in late May, and haven't really stopped yet.
 
ok I will relate the experience I had with dish internet service....I had it ..key word had. It was terrible to be frank, they give you only a certain amount of data allowance a month, then if and when you go over , they slow it down to less then dial up speeds, but they don"t tell you that in the beginning. I cancelled the crappy service, they waived the fees cause of the service issues I had then two months later they decided to re instate the fees, so the screwed me out of almost 400 dollars, then since this screwed up my budget so bad I missed one months bill for me tv, then I paid it and was told I needed to pay 500 dollars for them to turn my tv back on.Needless to say I am now an optimum customer for tv also, My advice to the internet thing is to get the Verizon mobile hotspot and go that way and forget dish !!!!!
 
I HAD dish network tv. Customer service is in India. My advice is to stay away. Its probably on a 2 year contract that you will be stuck with.
 
I use my Verizon phone as a hotspot for our laptops. They don't have 4g out here either and the options are the same as yours - stinko.

We don't use the computers all that much but I am pleased with the hotspot for what it is. We always have service and it is fairly quick.

When I tell people that we don't have Internet as it isn't available out here they look at me like I am from the moon. My how times have changed. I never would have dreamed that not having Internet service would put me back in the days of the WPA.
 
Ask around about an amplifier type antenna for your wireless signal before you do anything with the other outfit. They may look good on paper but reality sucks.
 
I use Verizon on my blackberry as a modem, it works really good. Especially compared to telus or rogers.The only drawback is that it gets pricey when i m in canada.
 
What they say they deliver is not always what you will receive. We are eligible for 5, but get less, because of something else in the system that can only deliver a lesser amount of speed.
SDE
 
well i had the old wild blue was better then dial up sometimes then my modem died so switch the the new wild-blue exede it is way better its been raining and still up weather don't bother it as bad 49.99 i think 10gb on 30 day rotation as much as you can use between 12midnite and 5am its not bad could be better but no choice i on 4g 3g edge when i use my ipad and the 4g it seem to be about same speed wenn i was on old wild blue i had the top package and now went back to the bottom have gone over a time or two but what one to do
 
My Hughesnet really stinks anymore. Tonight just about every site I've gone to I've had to load and reload 3 or 4 times. "DNS look up error", My 2 year hitch with these dingalings is done next month
 
About 10 or 15 years ago, we had satellite internet service, because our other option, dial-up was glacially slow. The satellite worked better than the dial-up, but it was still very slow compared to the cable and dial-up available in town. And it cost about $75 a month. Then something went bad with the actual satellite, and it didn"t work at all for a couple of months.

We went looking for better options, and found that a new company had started selling service from a mountain near our home. It was based on microwave links and you had to be line-of-sight to the tower on the mountain. We were, and we signed up. At first, the speed was much faster than we had ever had with the satellite system, but over several year, as the company added more and more customers, the speed got much slower. And the price kept getting higher.

Then a couple of years ago, the telephone company "did some work" in our area and fixed whatever had been keeping us from getting decent service through the phone lines. I think they added some equipment nearby, but I really do not know what they did. The phone company also advertised that the rate would not be raised for 5 years. That rate was less than what we had been paying for the microwave system, so we signed up. In a couple of weeks we had MUCH faster internet for less than what the microwave system was charging us.

I did a little research about satellite internet service, and at that time they explained the poor speed by the fact that the signals have to travel back and forth between the antenna and the satellite. Even with the signal moving at or near the speed of light, each transfer takes some time, which adds up to limit the speed.

My research and experience are from 10 or 15 years ago, and maybe the technology and equipment is better for satellite internet today. It may be the best option, or maybe the only option in remote areas. But our experience was that the satellite internet service we had was fairly slow and quite expensive, both to get started and for monthly charges. I would sure do some checking around to see if there is a faster and less expensive alternative for your location. Good luck!
 
we are 6 years into satellite internet ... no other option... no dsl, no cell phone signal, no broadband...
had wildblue for 2 years...never worked well, constantly broken.
got hughesnet...still slow, sometimes broken...never happy.
was ready to buy a cell phone signal booster and go 3g or 4g or whatever and came home one day to a postcard advertising wildblue"s new excede.
went for it.
love it
it is raining right now
just did a speed test on speedtest.net
8.67 Mbps download, 3.13 Mbps upload.
we CAN stream video with very minimal...or no...buffering.
and it is CHEAPER than hughesnet was.
neighbor has the new hughesnet high speed...seems similarly pleased.
 
We've had Hughes at the farm for years, and up until Gen4 (I may be mixing that up with Glock, but it's Gen something) it worked poorly. That changed with the Gen4. The new modem and satellite link is actually very good. Performance remains good through the evening and they have a much more usable bandwidth cap. The ping went from about 1200 to 960ms. That's a good jump and the throughput is acceptable. The service with all those companies is something you just hope you don't need to call, but with the Gen4 dish and modem, I have not had to.

Verizon wireless internet is my backup, as I've got to get to YT no matter what. It was unusable for a couple of years, signal strength was often -92 dbm. I had a omni-directional antenna, traded that for a directional antenna and it got the signal up in the range where it hardly ever drops out and performance is acceptable. It runs about -80 dbm now which is considered good enough. If your signal is marginal, that type of antenna can improve it a bit. The only drawback is you need an old 12 foot TV antenna mast, the heavy low loss coax, and you have fiddle with it to get it pointed well. If you are running the USB (e.g., a U760) it will plug right in. If you have the mifi router, you can't use an antenna, so it requires swapping for the USB device and buying a new router that can take a Wireless USB modem.

If you don't use Verizon for your cell phone, you can get the same service through Millenicom, they resell Verizon minus the cell service and have a 20GB cap rather than the 5GB cap. Problem is that you get a better deal if you have your cell and wireless internet through Verizon, but a better cap through Millenicom. There may be other companies reselling and competing now so I'd look around if you are going to stay wireless internet.
 

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