Does Anyone Else have HughesNet ??

[Random Rabbit]

We live in a very rural area. Far beyond the reach of cable for internet connection.
Some years back we were able to get a satellite connection thru HughesNet under the "Rural Recovery Act"... that was to assist people like us, that could not get any other sort of high(er) speed internet.
I remind myself Daily that it is so much faster than the dial-up that we had. ( speeds for that were about 24 kb)

Lately... we seem to have long periods during the day... and especially late afternoon early evening.. that we cannot connect to many sites. FaceBook is the worst. I can access CraigsList and Rabbit Talk easily. But FB and my personal email account stubbornly refuse to load.

I'm just wondering if anyone else has similar issues ??

The web site for HughesNet is one of the most Non-user friendly sites... and i hate calling them .... trying to explain to a person reading a script is frustrating at best

Thank You for thoughts. RR

 

[Knacker]

We live in a rural area too that requires a receiver (or dish) to acquire internet. And like you, we have had very poor customer service to the extent where I am absolutely furious and just about yelling on the phone. It has gotten better over the past couple years but sometimes we might go through a bad patch of slow streaming. Generally the slow times come in the winter and at the hours when people are just getting home from work, or the evenings in general.

You may need a "clean-out" which can be done by rebooting your router making sure to unplug its power and waiting a minute or so to plug it back in. It can also be that the sites you are trying to connect to are experiencing "higher than usual" volume. You may have heard this before many times by the person on the other end of the phone, but it is true. The service provider can only control their equipment and it may be that their (your) email service is stored by a third party.

In the end if you are accessing some site quickly and some sites slowly, it is generally an issue with those sites and not your provider.

 

[alforddm]

Lately... we seem to have long periods during the day... and especially late afternoon early evening.. that we cannot connect to many sites. FaceBook is the worst. I can access CraigsList and Rabbit Talk easily. But FB and my personal email account stubbornly refuse to load.

Late afternoon and early evening are high traffic times. Our rural internet here consists of a local (as in just a few counties in southeastern Oklahoma) cellular provider who got a grant for the towers. We often have problems loading pages during peak hours. When you have a limited amount of bandwidth overall and more people are using it at once things just have to slow down. Rabbit talk and craigslist are both "low resource" web pages. So they don't take as long to load. I bet you're just timing out trying to load all the junk from Facebook and other web pages.

 

[Marinea]

Had Hughes for years. I hate to advise this because I have done it and know what you face, but run some speed tests (lots of sites for this), write down the results, and call and complain.

Yes, you'll be advised to reset your router, asked about the weather and such, but there are a few things they can do. Hope they help you.

 

[Miss M]

I remember reading the negative reviews of HughesNet when we moved out here. Thankfully, I found out that a new satellite had just gone up, and WildBlue (more negative reviews) was offering a high-speed service called Exede. Then I found that Dish had just started offering Exede. I went with Dish, figuring I'd probably get better service from them.

We do have slowdowns sometimes, sometimes really bad ones, but it's mostly good. Unless we get throttled. But that's our fault. At least we still have service.

 

[Random Rabbit]

I appreciate the responses.
We get frustrated with the slow-downs. Yesterday was one of the worst. From noon until 10 PM could Not access certain sites.
With the winter weather, too cold to be outdoors very long ( except to tend the rabbits ) we count on the computer for entertainment. Neither of us are big tv watchers.. beyond a few programs.

Now we are trying to do all (or most of) our "surfing" earlier in the day... but that still leaves the long evenings open.........

 

[a7736100]

I have dial up at home at 40K which is much faster than 26.4K but now most sites are full of ads that makes things much slower. Sometimes I cannot even get Hotmail. Often pages time out before being fully loaded. Even here it may only load the first 2 or 3 posts before stopping.

 

[Random Rabbit]

I have dial up at home at 40K which is much faster than 26.4K but now most sites are full of ads that makes things much slower. Sometimes I cannot even get Hotmail. Often pages time out before being fully loaded. Even here it may only load the first 2 or 3 posts before stopping.

My sincere sympathies ! I do remind myself that dial up was soooooooo slow. And there are So many ads with moving graphics now..... Argh !!!
But we have been spoiled with the quickness if the satellite connection...Most of the time.
We tossed the idea of upgrading our connection with HN..... but.... reading the fine print....they cannot Guarantee faster speed. So why pay for it if they cannot deliver what they are selling ???