Anyone using Hughesnet Gen 4?

That's Satellite Internet for those of us stuck in the boonies. Anyway, how's it working for ya & what did you have for interent service before? I have Gen 3 but I hear Gen 4 is a step up in perfromance. I understand HN put some high zoot satellite up in space for the G4 to run. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but what about reception on cloudy/stormy days??? Better? Right now HN is offering G4at the same price I'm paying for G3. HN also claims up to 10X the current speed. The key words here are "up to". So no promises on getting big speed all the time.

I'm not a tech guy when it comes to all this so that's why I'm asking.

I am on hughesnet and I would sure like an upgrade, but am afraid that they just wanna dip deeper into my wallet if I sign up for it. They will probably require a 24 month contract and the fine print says that speeds will differ during peak times, and if I am going to pay more for that, then no thanks! I would like to know the "particulars" before jumping in, you know, how much a month, contract term, and any other perks that would benefit ME.

I often wonder how much "negotiating" can be done with these guys when considering a system. They keep offering a deal within the deal (price with a rebate etc). Screw the rebate just knock off the $ from the initial price & get on with it.

Can't speak about the current system, but I had HN until three years ago when time Warner finally showed up. It was supposed to be 1.5 MB down, 128k up. But of course they would only guarantee half of that speed.

It was ok for the first month, then performance steadily degraded. By the Time the two year contract was up it had gone down for a solid month at one point before they got it fixed, and speeds were averaging 1/3 of their advertised capability. The problem is they oversubscribe the shit out of their network. And then there's the latency issues you'll never get around because the physics of geo-synchronous orbit dictate that every packet must travel 100,000 miles to/from the satellite. At the speed of light that is of course approximately half a second.

My experience with HN was two years of broken promises and broken equipment, all for "only" 200 bucks a month plus the initial $800.00 equipment purchase. Yep, $5600.00 for two years of Internet. But umfortunately we had no other choice at the time.

If the OP can come up with any other option - and there are lots more choices now - I'd highly recommend looking elsewhere.

Whoa, $200/month? :huh

What they are offering currently on the Gen/4 upgrage is $59/month and intial $99 install but you get a $50 rebate off all that.

Yes, 24 month contract.

I forgot to mention that included in the price were countless hours spent on the phone with tech support. I had no idea there were so many people in India named Bob

so has anyone called on this GEN 4 ruse? Gawd I wish I had DSL up here! I would bail on hugesnet quicker than a starving homeless person dumpster diving! But for now, it's either dialup or hughesnet..like either of them are good, right?

Have you checked Excede sat. internet?

http://www.exede.com/

Has anyone had success with this somewhere where the old version didn't work so well?

It was always spotty out by where my father lives so they got rid of it....and everything seemed like it would be better soon since Verizon was putting up a 4G tower nearby, but of course there's not enough signal on his land for it so he's still stuck with snail paced internet speeds.

I had Starband for a while (silly web site I put up on their hosting is still there even though I closed the account 9+ years ago in 2003!) until Comcast came along, and then Frontier offered fiber to our niegborhood and I jumped on that too.

The problems I had (besides SB being unreliable) was poor performance (especially uploading), long latency, VPN was impossible (necessary for when I work from home) and when the sun was in the sky behind the satellite it basically overwhelmed the signal and I lost connectivity for 30 minutes to an hour every morning.

I am out in the boonies now, but fortunately Frontier has a DSL site close by.

I'm still on gen 3 and will be until they no longer support the 7000s modem or I can't get replacement bits like the radio / receiver. I use if as a traveling internet option and the gen 4 is spot beamed. You can't travel and use it. Since I RV full time it isn't an option any more than any other fixed location internet is. I expect I'll have to tether a smart phone before too many years are past.

As far as any claims about the service are concerned, take them with a HUGE grain of salt. No matter what satellite system you have you are always subject to weather issues. A light coating of snow on the dish will shut you down just like heavy rain and clouds in line with the bird.

Hmmm. I have the Gen 3 with the HN9000 modem. If I go to Gen4 maybe we could make a deal on my gen3 stuff.

I have gotten use to my gen 3..I pay close attention the the FAP usage etc, I can not justify pouring anymore money into this set up right now. We are on the books to get DSL out here and I will hold out till then. Hughesnet gets enough of my money as it is and I will not let them have any more than what they are entitled to right now

I checked with my local (Centurylink) phone company, seems that there are no plans projected or otherwise for DSL out my way. Looks like I will pull the trigger on Gen4 and be the Beta tester for you all.

Just went to http://testmyspeed.com/ and ran a test.

It showed .258/Mbs download & .152/Mbs upload speed. :huh

I tried that site, it's BS. They had my speed at 1/5 of what I'm getting when running the other speed tests. Try http://www.speedtest.net/

without having to call pakistan and talk to peggy, someone who is going to get the GEN4 thinggy, please report back to us here and let us know the small print..you know, how much out of pocket, how long minimum contract for etc...would sure appreciate it!

Well, with speedtest.net I now get .33Mbps Download and .17 Mbps Upload. Maybe the sky cleared up a little. I got an F- and a F for a grade!

You're slower than Verizon 3G with 2 bars...so if you get that you might want to think about getting one of their data plans. The data cap sucks but if you're just going on ADV it shouldn't be a problem and is probably cheaper than satellite.

Except I have no cell reception here.