HughesNet Satellite → satellite internet...unchartered territory for me

Here's my issue...

I live in Louisville, KY and am currently using InsightBB/Time Warner broadband. My download speed is 10 megs, which I am good with. I will soon, before end of 2013, be getting married and moving to my wife's farm. Great place to live, but internet is not good. She has AT&T DSL Lite, which to me seems to be glorified dial-up. Their phone "techs" can't even tell me what her d/l speeds are. The excuse is, she lives too far away to get faster speeds. So we cannot upgrade her plan. I hate AT&T anyway and want to cancel service. I have been reading reviews on various satellite services and am more confused than before I started my research. Looks as if 9 out of 10 reviews are basically horror stories. I don't mind to pay whatever need be to get good internet, but as I said, I am very confused as to what direction I should go. I was a Direct TV customer for 10 years but currently have no TV except antenna. I get all my TV wants/needs online. Therefore, internet is way more important than to have cable or satellite tv. Not sure what to check above; SRS, DRS, etc....sorry.

Any help/advice is much appreciated.

Satellite Internet is an ISP of last resort.
Speeds are all over everywhere. I have a Hughes legacy plan, I have no desire to "Upgrade" to the new "Faster" Gen4 system.
One thing you may have not considered are the bandwidth limits.

One plan for Hughes offers 10GB/10GB
This means that you have 10GB of Anytime data bytes for a month that are used in the hrs of 8:00 AM to 2:00 AM. there is a usage meter that more or less works showing you your remaining allowance in the data category.
You then have the Bonus Bytes category for the month for data used between 2 AM & 8 AM.

If you exceed these limits you will be throttled to a crawl.
You may purchase "Tokens" to add to your data but it is $$$$.

The bad thing with Hughes:
As a Company they are just plain dishonest.
Most customer service is based in India with hold times as long as an hr. then language issues ensue.
Lower Tier support is script rather than knowledge driven.

While a total of 20 GB of data divided into two time brackets may sound like a lot you can burn through that in a matter of several days, so from a practical standpoint forget the regular use of Netflix and such.

Many people report better luck with Excede instead of Hughes but you are still going to have to deal with rather restrictive data caps;
You also need to consider Latency issues with a Sat connection.

Satellite at it's best is better than dialup and fine for browsing and some limited streaming. It has too much latency for twitch gaming and too small Monthly usage caps for Video downloading. Horror stories basically get down to how well the install was done. Customer service varies but it generally isn't responsive, quick, or even fair. I can't comment on the newer gen gear that is being used and HNS is bringing out a voip service for, but having installed thousands of VSAT stations, I can say a good install will do a good job with those limitations in mind.

If I decided to go with Hughesnet, I would get the 79 or 99 dollar pkg...

Since you said cost is no option then get the Exede 25GB package or the highest package offered by Gen4. DONT order through Dish or Directv. Order directly from Hughes or Exede. I would also think long and hard about abandoning DSL (no matter how bad it is) for satellite. Depending on your needs, satellite internet might be okay for you. But don't be expecting to download movies, play online games, etc.

The largest drawback to SAT internet according to users is the upload speed. And of course it is spotty during storms. I installed my dish on a pole in the ground so it is easy to clear snow.

Where I live a section of good farm land rents at $50K a year paid in two installments but it does not resolve the issue of country living and no/poor broadband service. Until cable and telco devise a better mouse trap those of us who live in rural America are in the same leaky boat. In the past microwave has been used to give rural farms pretty good Internet. You can test your GF connection speed here: »testmy.net/results . This is not a graphic intensive Java/Flash site but the results are impressive. It's my experience in rural areas that testing speeds is best between 3-5am .

My dish guy was here Tuesday. He said the packages s were 5/10, 10/20, and 20/30. I have zero idea what it means. Regardless of what you ultimately do, if you do not expect fast uplink speeds you'll probably be okay with what you get.

If you are considering Hughesnet I would advise that you visit the Official Hughes support forum found here:

»community.myhughesnet.co ··· t/topics

Look at the types of problems Hughes customers are experiencing, the duration of those problems and the level of support they receive.

You may also wish to read through the many posts here on DSLR.

Why not go with Millenicom? sprint prob has no service there but Verizon should have..

20GB for 70$ is better then crap sattelite.

I hardly think the largest drawback with Sat internet is upload speed. Not sure where you read that. I would bet the largest drawback is very low caps. Second biggest drawback would be latency which prevents most online gaming.

If you can get a 20MB plan on a 4G system, go that route and stay away from satellite internet.

Unless you are willing to go back to Direct TV or Dish. I think that you should explore alternatives to a satellite ISP. If you do end up needing to decide between Gen4 and Exede 12, for streaming video, it's no contest: go with Exede 12. I'm running both systems. Gen4 struggles to stream low-def video (except for at times like 3AM) while Exede 12 can stream 1080 HDX in 5.1 sound anytime. Roku generally doesn't even work with Gen4 since it doesn't support adaptive speeds. (It seems like I can force it to use 480 SD, but that's usually too much for Gen4.) But even if you chose Exede 12, you're going to be challenged by the data caps. Now if you don't mind watching TV between midnight and 5 AM, Exede does not meter during that time.

Here's a 274 KB (size warning) PDF which might explain why Exede works much better at streaming: »www.exede.com/documents/ ··· licy.pdf

If you do choose satellite, don't let the installer mount it on a roof. Pay extra for a pole mount if necessary, but make sure that the dish is easily accessible.

What is the ZIP code of the farm? There might be a WISP option if Millenicom isn't available.

I'd stick with the At&t DSL and see how it works first. It might be crap, but it would be your only chance at real gaming if you play any games. Assuming it is fast enough to stream, it would probably be the better option for video too. The caps on satellite are simply too small.

AT&T Lite aka 786kb/s is way better than Hughesnet. You wont have super high latency that renders gaming impossible, super small caps which makes watch movies or streaming music unrealistic, and you'll be paying half as much.

Basically, I don't know why you would trade all that for a little more speed, unless you do want to watch netflix and youtube, which hughesnet is the worst possible choice for.

Have you ever had ATT DSL lite? You could not give it to me for free! Really, saying it is way better than Hughes is "way" too much bias. Hughes can be really bad in too many instances, true. I had it for three years, no issues other than at the time 1 Mbs was $70 per month. I have been with a WISP for a few years for 3mbs for $58 a month and it works 85 percent of the time. Never slow, just disappears. So I'm back on Sat. If it bombs, I will look at other options which unfortunately are really limited here. Phone lines are still analog. 3g is 50%, 4g is 2 bar max, 50% of them time. So it is dialup, WISP, or sat. I need to VPN into work 10 hrs minimum a day, so dialup is a no-go. I understand the bias against Hughes, they have invited most of it, but to say don't bother if you can get ATT lite is not looking at all out of a very small box.....