Hughesnet may be the solution to rural broadband

Since I escaped the big city for the country life four years ago, I have had to rely on Verizon wireless for internet. It ain’t cheap, $200 a month for 30GB…and I was lucky to get 30, there was a short promotion where I was able to double my bandwidth for the same cost, and they bumped me from 12GB a month to 30, (which is, yes, more than double, I know).

I saw that Hughesnet has been busy, launching a new satellite, and getting new packages.


I was offered 50GB a month at 25mps d/l-3 upload for $99. I may be able to get back on Netflix.

Anyone else living in outside of cable have any solutions for good broadband?

Satellite option has always been terrible but maybe now they’ve finally overcome the technical limitations.

I use Hughesnet. I currently have a 10 GB monthly limit with 50 GB between 2-8 AM. If that were substantially improved I would call it real broadband. Right now I can blow through my entire monthly limit downloading one modern game.

But no matter how high the bandwidth cap is, the latency will always be extremely high (700-1200 ms) which makes it completely unsuitable for things like online gaming and VOIP.

Ah, you’re right
http://internet.hughesnet.com/faqs/gaming/

Dammit, that stinks. I won’t be able to use Hughesnet for frontrunning trades either. Now the choice is to add satellite ISP with mobile, not replace it.

Before I move anywhere, the first question I have is, do they have broadband? Fortunately I have never had to make a hard choice between life or a job and broadband.

The absolute worst part of having to move back in with my folks after college was going back to ~42k dialup from BU’s OC48 connection.

I’m not sure whether escaping that or finally getting my own place where my gf and I could shag in peace was a bigger impetus for my job hunt that summer. . .

Oh, I understand. But I can get broadband anywhere, although like everything in the country, it’s just 3x more expensive. It cost me $8000 just to get a septic system for my house. Next time you sign an apartment lease, think about that. ;)

Out of the blue the local electric co-op called yesterday, they have expanded their high speed internet service to my area. I signed up for that last Nov, it’s a new service and they are slowly making their way across the county. The installer who called was short of technical details, he described it as “wifi on steroids”. I have no idea what that means but it is 15mps download speed with no caps. SInce they have voltage cables running to every house, I am guessing the data comes through those wires… will find out more today when they show up.

15mps per user, guaranteed? Or, like wifi, is it a shared resource where your neighbor downloads porn 24/7 and you get the 1% of bandwidth they aren’t using?

I could be wrong but I could have sworn I just read an article of a breakthrough in low latency satellite broadband.

edit - yep I did:

Also - Microsoft’s solution:

OneWeb, eh? That sounds amazing.

Well, my local electric co-op is all mixed up. The rep I spoke with said the installer contractor was mistaken and our area is not staged, and from what info I could pry out of her, they really have not made any progress. Something about fiber and LTE nodes…who knows

I’ll probably go with Hughesnet Gen 5 for a couple years and see what happens after that.

Nice, you saw the future

Hope this pans out, it would be terrific.

Is it negative latency?