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New HughesNet 'Gen 4' Satellite Broadband Failing to Deliver
Keeping Satellite Broadband's Awful Reputation Intact

Despite promises from HughesNet that their new "Gen4" satellite broadband service would revolutionize broadband, customers continue to complain about sluggish speeds and capacity issues. HughesNet's Gen4 was launched back in October, offering users faster $60 10/1 Mbps, $80 10/2 Mbps, or $100 15/2 speed tiers (complete with 20, 30 and 40 GB caps, respectively).

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While much was promised in pre-release press (see right), users in our HughesNet forums say the service is flailing horribly in delivering those promises to many users.

In many instances the new 10-15 Mbps plans are failing to deliver even 2 Mbps for many users, with some seeing speeds as low as 200kbps or so. Many users say speeds that are relatively good in the morning quickly degrade to dial-up quality at night. From the sound of things HughesNet infrastructure simply wasn't ready for the October launch, but customers are now being promised improvements in the new year.

The complaints in our HughesNet forum are flowing heavily, with dozens of users telling me they've filed complaints with the Better Business Bureau over the botched product launch. Customers with slow or no service say they then get to deal with long hold times and numerous technician visits with no problem resolution.

The flailing by HughesNet is nothing new. They're one of the most poorly ranked broadband providers in our rankings, courtesy of the fact that most of their customer base has few if any other options. That's good news for wireless broadband companies, who are now offering faster and more consistent LTE wireless service (albeit also with significant usage caps) in many of these markets.
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battleop
join:2005-09-28
00000

battleop

Member

That's teach them!!!

"they've filed complaints with the Better Business Bureau"

Oh no not a BBB complaint!

Metatron2008
You're it
Premium Member
join:2008-09-02
united state

Metatron2008

Premium Member

Re: That's teach them!!!

They'll just need to bribe send more money to the BBB...

Duramax08
To The Moon
Premium Member
join:2008-08-03
San Antonio, TX

Duramax08

Premium Member

Re: That's teach them!!!

The BBB is a scam. They called my dad about his old painting job he let go awhile back. They told him if he paid a "fee" every year or so, he could be "BBB Accredited" and have access to use that on business cards, websites etc.

Metatron2008
You're it
Premium Member
join:2008-09-02
united state

Metatron2008

Premium Member

Re: That's teach them!!!

It's not a scam. It's just a mob run extortion fund.

compuguybna
join:2009-06-17
Nashville, TN

compuguybna to Duramax08

Member

to Duramax08
how do you think HughesNet got an A+ rating with the BBB??????
Pay them a sh*t load of money, and you'll get an a+ rating (regardless of 3,000 complaints)
said by Duramax08:

The BBB is a scam. They called my dad about his old painting job he let go awhile back. They told him if he paid a "fee" every year or so, he could be "BBB Accredited" and have access to use that on business cards, websites etc.

rradina
join:2000-08-08
Chesterfield, MO

1 recommendation

rradina

Member

How are they going to "fix it"?

Unless there's some kind of firmware bug in the satellite or CPE that's causing management problems, there are only a limited number of reasons as to why things suck:

1) Insufficient bandwidth capacity where the traffic enters/exits the hard-line Internet
2) Insufficient satellite capacity
3) ????

If it's #1 that's almost beyond belief. Who would spend millions (billions) floating a new satellite and launch it with insufficient hard-line capacity?

If it's #2, how can that be "fixed"? I suppose it's possible if they started the service with a limited number of transponders and they can add more but WTF? That's almost as bad as #1.

Anyone have a #3?

Regardless, if it's really #2, the only way to fix that is to stop new subscriptions and wait for enough customers to leave through attrition.

FFH5
Premium Member
join:2002-03-03
Tavistock NJ

FFH5

Premium Member

Re: How are they going to "fix it"?

said by rradina:

Unless there's some kind of firmware bug in the satellite or CPE that's causing management problems, there are only a limited number of reasons as to why things suck:

1) Insufficient bandwidth capacity where the traffic enters/exits the hard-line Internet
2) Insufficient satellite capacity
3) ????

Anyone have a #3?

How about a mis-aimed sat dish at residence or one with line of sight thru trees, etc.
rradina
join:2000-08-08
Chesterfield, MO

rradina

Member

Re: How are they going to "fix it"?

This would cause it to suck only during peak periods?

Besides, this only explains one customer. The article implies that everyone is slow during peak periods. Would this cause everyone to be slow?

FFH5
Premium Member
join:2002-03-03
Tavistock NJ

FFH5

Premium Member

Re: How are they going to "fix it"?

said by rradina:

The article implies that everyone is slow during peak periods. Would this cause everyone to be slow?

Yes, implied. But nothing but a few selected complaints in a forum. Not proof of everyone being slow.
rradina
join:2000-08-08
Chesterfield, MO

rradina

Member

Re: How are they going to "fix it"?

The complaints in our HughesNet forum are flowing heavily, with dozens of users telling me they've filed complaints with the Better Business Bureau over the botched product launch. Customers with slow or no service say they then get to deal with long hold times and numerous technician visits with no problem resolution.
Are we reading the same article?

Besides, why would alignment only suck during peak periods?
TexasRebel
join:2011-05-29
Edgewood, TX

TexasRebel to rradina

Member

to rradina
I seriously doubt it's #2. The satellite is the same platform that makes up ViaSat-1. Exede12 has had at least an 8 month jump on Hughesnet and there have been many users on Exede that are getting 18+Mbps down and 4Mbps up when doing speedtests.

Hughesnet tell you to use their speedtest servers and I've done that over the 3 months I've had the service and not once have I ever seen 15Mbps that is advertised for the PowerMax plan.

If it's not #1 then Hughesnet is secretly selling off most of the 130Gbps of bandwidth that the satellite has and is using it for nefarious purposes.

I'm really believing that Hughesnet rushed out HNG4 because they were really losing market share with Exede. Exede apparently spend a buttload of money with building new gateways and server farms and it paid off.

Hughesnet just decided to use the infrastructure they already had in place with their legacy satellites and now it's showing how damn stupid they were for doing it. If they are claiming that the HNG4 service will improve over the next year, then it's probably because they will start migrating HNG4 traffic to newly build gateways and server farms that can handle the bandwidth.

Heh213
join:2012-06-16

Heh213

Member

Re: How are they going to "fix it"?

said by TexasRebel:

If it's not #1 then Hughesnet is secretly selling off most of the 130Gbps of bandwidth that the satellite has and is using it for nefarious purposes.

What kind of nefarious purposes?

Just sounds like HughesNet as normal to me, I have low expectations.
TexasRebel
join:2011-05-29
Edgewood, TX

TexasRebel

Member

Re: How are they going to "fix it"?

nefarious purposes as in possibly selling it off to FEMA where it can be used at those so-called non-existing FEMA camps that they have spread out all over the US.

before calling me a tinfoil hat wearer, go do some research on FEMA camps.. Jesse Ventura covered them in one of his Conspiracy Theory episodes..

Seeing that Hughesnet is partly owned by the government, I wouldn't put it past them.
big_e
join:2011-03-05

big_e

Member

Re: How are they going to "fix it"?

Everyone knows that FEMA camps are only used to secretly detain Elvis, John Lennon, Tupac Shakur and Michael Jackson. Their internet bandwidth needs can't be that great.
tanzam75
join:2012-07-19

tanzam75 to TexasRebel

Member

to TexasRebel
said by TexasRebel:

If it's not #1 then Hughesnet is secretly selling off most of the 130Gbps of bandwidth that the satellite has and is using it for nefarious purposes.

I'm really believing that Hughesnet rushed out HNG4 because they were really losing market share with Exede. Exede apparently spend a buttload of money with building new gateways and server farms and it paid off.

Well, 130 Gbps is the aggregate capacity of the entire satellite. You'd be competing with other users on beam 44 for the 2.2 Gbps of capacity in your beam -- which covers the Dallas metropolitan area.

As for the other hypothesis, HughestNet claims "All-new gateway architecture ... New distributed Network Management System ... New Web acceleration severs." Maybe the roll-out isn't complete yet.

Slide 11 of the investor presentation from October 8, 2012: »files.shareholder.com/do ··· inal.pdf

diablo18926
R.I.P. Donald Lee Wise
join:2011-04-21
Friendly, WV

diablo18926

Member

I knew it!!

I knew it was going to boil down to this point sooner or later.. 2 months after install and my modem is still showing errors for downlink, some say it does with the TCP connections, while i say its Hughes.. Hughes= crap. Lately I have noticed my speed has taken a turn for the worse, its barely getting up over 1mb/s witch is lousy.. Right after install the service was working like no other, lots of high speed, YT videos would load up with in just seconds, etc. and now its just blah.

In my honest opinion its all because Hughes has not made progress with the bonus bytes and that causes all the customers to have free time downloading, witch also means downloading is'nt being counted. Yeah I had the 7000 at one point and first started seeing 170kb/s for download speed and barely 5kb/s for upload but what fun is that? Later on we started getting 245kb/s for download and 15kb/s (as the years went on) now we have Gen4 and well like i said it started off great but now its puking up blood.. You can't even do P2P with it. You can't access some websites because NOC has them blocked just like wellsfargo.com was but now they have unblocked that.

I have woken up to do my downloads at some mornings and it would'nt even budge sometimes, I try connecting to my skype account, yahoo email, aol email, nothing use to work at the begining all because hughes toke over my pc (my brother said) it turned out that Hughes had token over our computers IP's and caused them to mess up but after changing setting to auto it fixed it.
Nugz
Premium Member
join:2012-03-16
Ogden, UT

Nugz

Premium Member

HughesNet is very slow

I'm in IT support and had to remote into someone with SlowNet and I'm telling you it's slower than dialup.. The ping to the customers computer was over 3000ms some times dropping to 1900ms at best..

For me to be able to change settings or even view the desktop of what the customer sees the ping can't be anymore than 900ms or so.. Even dialup is around 900ms or less..

This customer claimed she paid for the best "business class" hughesnet and she was in the mountains of NC and no other choice for broadband...

I told her she will have to go into the office and connect to the network to have any work done on the computer...
TexasRebel
join:2011-05-29
Edgewood, TX

TexasRebel

Member

Re: HughesNet is very slow

I'm finding if I run a continuous ping with (Ping -t 8.8.8.8), I can see most of the pings for me are in the 600-700ms range.

The few times I needed to get into my PC from a remote location I've had to use GoToMyPC.com which works but it's awfully slow. And I'll get frequent status messages from GotoMyPC that the connection has timed out and I have to wait and it'll start working again.. Which means to be the upstream is nowhere near the 2Mbps that they claim for the PowerMax plan.

I never had this problem with Exede12...

Maybe in 5 years highspeed satellite broadband might work, but by then I think 4G/LTE will have them beat in coverage... Maybe..

scooby
Premium Member
join:2001-05-01
Schaumburg, IL

scooby

Premium Member

Re: HughesNet is very slow

600-700ms is quite impressive for satellite. Theoretically (meaning in a lab environment) the lowest latency possible to a satellite in geo sync orbit is about 436ms round trip. Then you have to add the latency between the Hughes datacenter and which ever 8.8.8.8 anycast server you are pinging.
mlcarson
join:2001-09-20
Santa Maria, CA

mlcarson

Member

Latency - TCP

Wouldn't there be an issue with speeds because of the way TCP works (ie ACK's) with the latency of satellite limiting the max speed to something considerably lower than the advertised offerings?

SimbaSeven
I Void Warranties
join:2003-03-24
Billings, MT

SimbaSeven

Member

Re: Latency - TCP

If that was the case, why is Exede doing just fine?

It seems to me HughesNet put a bandaid on their service in the form of a new satellite without upgrading their infrastructure.

diablo18926
R.I.P. Donald Lee Wise
join:2011-04-21
Friendly, WV

diablo18926

Member

Re: Latency - TCP

said by SimbaSeven:

If that was the case, why is Exede doing just fine?

It seems to me HughesNet put a bandaid on their service in the form of a new satellite without upgrading their infrastructure.

That is exactly what they are doing, while in the proccess of making the older systems even slower wicth make the customers upgrade to the new Gen4, including the HN9k
silbaco
Premium Member
join:2009-08-03
USA

silbaco

Premium Member

Re: Latency - TCP

They have to clear out HN9000 customers if they want to offer Gen4 on the same satellite down the road.

cork1958
Cork
Premium Member
join:2000-02-26

cork1958

Premium Member

I'm still at a loss!

I'm still at a loss as to why anyone who has ANY other option for internet, would not use that route? I'm talking I'd use dial up over satellite any day of the week!

Between the flat out cost, the caps, the times you can actually use the stuff, etc............sure seems like dial up is a better option!
silbaco
Premium Member
join:2009-08-03
USA

silbaco

Premium Member

Re: I'm still at a loss!

Many people say that. But once it comes down to it, it is better than dial-up. Especially people in the rural areas that satellite targets. Dial-up in that area may hit 28kpbs, maybe not. You simply cannot do much of anything on 28kbps anymore. Even web browsing is painful.
Elkhorn
join:2009-12-31
Lyons, OR

Elkhorn

Member

Gen4 ok for me

Upgraded to Gen4 in November, and "for me", speeds have consistently been great. Not always as fast as advertised (this is Hughnesnet after all), but, certainly fast enough for me...........
cybercrime
join:2011-11-23
Honey Brook, PA

cybercrime

Member

satellite will never

satellite will continue to fail if the have caps on it till then it will fail. if they want to make money off of it they need to uncap it. companys need to stop being greedy in this world in order to make money now days
silbaco
Premium Member
join:2009-08-03
USA

silbaco

Premium Member

Re: satellite will never

Satellite is not failing however. They are doing pretty well actually, because people have no alternative.

user1234
@cox.net

user1234 to cybercrime

Anon

to cybercrime
Right, remove bandwidth caps so that the 1% of abusive users that want to use 90% of bandwidth can starve the remaining 99%. Great idea.
waytim
join:2011-12-01
Sterling, MI

waytim

Member

Re: satellite will never

Right, because no matter how low the cap is, everyone will be on during peak hours and slowing it down. Just like truck drivers on the road, they are always there 99% of the time but its not hurting anyone until 5pm!
TexasRebel
join:2011-05-29
Edgewood, TX

TexasRebel to user1234

Member

to user1234
All they need to do if they are so concerned about abuse and congestion during peak times is setup a QOS policy during peak times. This BS with hitting a datacap and thinking that it's Fair Access is completely BS. If someone has to download something, give them the bandwidth to get it fast and get off. Any bandwidth hogging is going to be those watching Netflix HD movies or someone that is doing P2P and seeding like crazy, but P2P doesn't seed well over satellite. Hardly ever see anything uploading when I've done it.

disappointed
@direcway.com

disappointed

Anon

Still a problem, dialup speeds on Hughes

We're frustrated, with dialup-speed service, when we are paying so much for Hughes' high-speed. We had GOOD service, no complaints UNTIL they "improved" it. It's never been the same. Keep getting white pages for websites and some never fully load - if you call their standard response is "Weather," even though there's obviously a widespread problem. They need to do something ,even if it's going back to the "old" system - before they lose customers.
johan_hammy
join:2003-08-08
Dekalb, IL

johan_hammy

Member

WISPs

Do these people ever look into what WISPs may be in their area?
done99999999
join:2012-11-05
Beverly Hills, CA

1 edit

done99999999

Member

Customer service as well

I've been watching their official forum for the last few days. What's going on there is comical. Posts are being deleted, entire threads, and users. Many of which are not violating any of the rules of the forum. It seems saying just about anything over there gets you banned and posts deleted. I feel so sorry for Hughesnet customers that are having issues.

What is going on is mentioned here, for some reason, not deleted yet.
»community.myhughesnet.co ··· on_forum