HughesNet Gen5 Internet — 2018 Review

In early 2017, HughesNet launched a new satellite and shook up its pricing structure. Here's everything you need to know about the internet providers latest offering.
HughesNet
In early 2017, HughesNet launched a new satellite and shook up its pricing structure. Here's everything you need to know about the internet providers latest offering.
Overall Rating 3 out of 5
Download Speed:
25 Mbps (all plans)
Price:
$49–$129/mo
Contract Terms:
2 yrs
View PlansSee HughesNet Deals
Written by:
Published 01/15/2018

Our HughesNet Review

The takeaway — is HughesNet good? HughesNet’s service update (Gen5, released in March 2017) made drastic changes to its speeds and service plans. HughesNet still has its share of lingering problems—poor customer service and long-term contracts—but the Gen5 update is such a huge improvement that we can’t help but get a little excited. It’s almost like we’re dealing with a new and improved HughesNet.

PROS

  • Same speeds nationwide
  • Higher-than-advertised speeds
  • Discounted pricing

CONS

  • Long-term, restrictive contracts
  • Weak customer service
  • Limited equipment

HughesNet Gen5 plans and pricing

Data PlansPrice*Download SpeedUpload SpeedDetails
10 GB$49.99/mo25 Mbps3 MbpsView Plan
20 GB$69.99/mo25 Mbps3 MbpsView Plan
30 GB$99.99/mo25 Mbps3 MbpsView Plan
50 GB$129.99/mo25 Mbps3 MbpsView Plan

*Offer dependent upon physical address. Certain geographical areas are not eligible. 

Out with the old (Gen4) HughesNet and in with the new (Gen5) HughesNet.

The new HughesNet Gen5 service for 2017 is the result of HughesNet launching its EchoStar XIX satellite. HughesNet says the EchoStar XIX is the “world’s highest-capacity broadband satellite,”1 which seems worth bragging about, but we care only because it means better satellite internet plans for us.

HughesNet plans make so much more sense than before (Gen5 plans compared to Gen4 plans), and we love it.

…less competition means higher prices all around.

As happy as we are that HughesNet simplified its plans, we’re still not hot on the prices. We can’t blame people for balking at 10 GB for $49.99 per month, but that’s the nature of the beast: satellite internet was made for those without access to other types of internet (cable, DSL, etc.)—and it’s an expensive technology. Until more people decide to launch satellites into space, we’re stuck with a lack of competition in the satellite internet market. So, as it goes, less competition means higher prices all around.

HughesNet
The 20 GB plan has enough data for most people, and they commonly run promotions for new customers.
View Plan

We’ve heard from plenty of customers who complain satellite internet is so much more expensive (and slower) than other internet service providers (ISPs), and we’re not making excuses for HughesNet pricing. But here’s what we say: satellite internet is for those with no other choice but dial-up internet service.

Don’t get satellite internet if you can get DSL, cable, or fiber internet service.

If you compare HughesNet’s prices to other satellite internet providers, you won’t find much of a difference. HughesNet’s biggest competitor, Viasat (formerly Exede), has a similar price range: $50–$150 per month, compared to HughesNet’s $49–$129 per month. If you’re looking to save a few bucks, the monthly service price may not be the biggest differentiator. However, equipment and associated fees may be something to consider.

HughesNet equipment requirements

What equipment do you need for HughesNet?

HughesNet equipment consists of a .75 M satellite antenna (about the same size as a satellite TV dish) and a modem. You can get your hands on the equipment by choosing a purchase or lease option (see table*).

PurchaseLease
Satellite antenna and modem$349.98$9.99/mo. for 24 mos.
Standard installation$199.99Free
Lease set-up feen/a$99 instant savings for qualified new customers

*Restrictions may apply. Offer ends 7/31/2018.

Should you purchase or lease HughesNet equipment?

Purchase or lease, you’re going to have to dig deep into those pockets. If you purchase the equipment, you pay close to $550 up front ($350 equipment + $200 installation). If you lease, you pay close to $340 over two years ($10 x 24 months + $100 set-up).

Remember, the contract is for two years minimum, so if you’re planning on using the service for just that duration, it’s about a $210 difference ($550 purchase or $340 lease). If you have long-term plans for sticking with satellite internet (more than two years), the purchase option makes way more sense.

What are the early termination fees for HughesNet?

We’ve heard from so many customers who were shocked by early termination fees (ETFs) and equipment-related charges. Yes, there is an early termination fee if you end your contract before 24 months. The fee is $400 if you cancel during the first 90 days of the contract, and then it decreases by $15 per month for each month of active service. Ouch!

If you leased the equipment, you have 45 days from cancellation to return the equipment in good condition, or you can be charged up to a $300 fee, which is separate from the ETF. That’s some serious dough, so if you have a question about fees, be sure to check the paperwork.

HughesNet Gen5 internet speed

How fast is HughesNet Gen5 internet?

HughesNet lists 25 Mbps download speed and 3 Mbps upload speed for every single one of its plans. That’s a huge improvement over last year’s speeds (5–15 Mbps download, 1–3 Mbps upload), but we recommend taking a closer look at the fine print: “individual customers may experience different speeds at different times of the day.”2 In other words, actual speeds will vary.

Internet speeds are never guaranteed—especially download speeds. That being said, HughesNet has delivered better-than-advertised download speeds in the past. The FCC measured HughesNet’s actual-to-advertised speed as 152% in 2016.3 That means, believe it or not, most users get faster speeds than what they pay for. Really. An ISP delivering faster speeds than advertised can be difficult to comprehend, but the data is there to back it up. Who knows if HughesNet Gen5 can deliver those same kinds of results selling 25 Mbps download speed, but we’ll find out when the results come in from the FCC.

HughesNet Gen5 data caps and allowances

How much data do you need?

Because all of HughesNet’s plans now advertise the same speeds, picking a plan might be as simple as deciding how much data you want.

HughesNet did away with marketing gimmicks and simply named plans according to data limits: 10 GB, 20 GB, 30 GB, and 50 GB. But how do you decide how much you need? Well, it might help to know how much data is in 1 GB.

1 GB is about equal to one of the following:

  • Visiting 445 webpages
  • Watching 78 minutes of Netflix (in SD)
  • Listening to Spotify for 24 hours (96 Kbps)

If you want to watch Netflix or other video-streaming services using satellite internet, you’re going to have some challenges ahead. We know people who run out of data in the first few days binge-watching Netflix. HughesNet, or any other satellite internet provider for that matter, can’t handle video streaming. Video streaming hogs data, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find some creative workarounds (we encourage you to list any ideas in our comments!).

Heads Up icon

Heads up

A VPN won’t cut it. If you use a virtual private network (VPN), your internet speed can be reduced by 50–70%, according to HughesNet.

How does HughesNet bonus data work?

HughesNet’s bonus data (Bonus Zone) gives you an extra 50 GB of data a month with whatever plan you choose. It sounds awesome, but there’s a huge caveat: you can use it from only 2 a.m. to 8 a.m. But don’t get too disappointed—we think you can find a few ways to make the most of it.

If you have the know-how—or you can get someone else to help you—you can set up your computer to perform system updates during bonus data hours. If you’re especially “techy,” you can even download your shows and movies during the night hours to watch later. (We highly recommend it!)

What if you hit the data limit?

Your internet speed will be throttled when you exceed your data limit. There’s no overage fee, which is nice, but your speed will be so slow you probably won’t want to use the internet. We’re talking speeds “as low as or lower than 1 Mbps.”4 So don’t expect to do anything else but checking email and surfing the most basic of websites.

If you run out of data during the month, you can always get “data tokens.” These tokens are another feature of the Gen5 update, and they are sold in the following increments:

  • 3 GB for $9
  • 5 GB for $15
  • 10 GB for $30
  • 25 GB for $75

You’ll notice the prices for data tokens work out to $3 per 1 GB. It’s by no means an amazing price, but it’s way better than getting penalized with overage fees.

Customer satisfaction

Like every internet provider, HughesNet can improve on its customer service and satisfaction. It provides installation services through third-party installers. So you never know what kind of service you’ll get when someone comes to install your satellite internet dish or when you call customer support. To be fair, we didn’t experience any issues with customer service—but that doesn’t mean you won’t.

To help set expectations for satellite internet service, we recommend checking out the “What to Know Before You Buy” section in our Best Satellite Internet review.

The bottom line — HughesNet review summary

HughesNet made the smart move to include the same bonus features and standardize speeds in all its plans, so it’s a little harder for us to come up with a solid recommendation.

Still, we think the 20 GB plan will work best for most customers. It has a good amount of data.

HughesNet Review Recap

  • Good for rural areas
  • Gen5 pricing is clear
  • Reasonable data caps
  • Not great for gaming

Have questions? Ask us.

We love helping out with questions. If you’re trying to find a workaround for watching Netflix or wondering how much data you need to jam out to Spotify, ask us in the comments section below.

Have a complaint? Make it count and tell the FCC.

We’ve heard some brutal customer service stories, but all we can do at Reviews.org is try to make our information better. If you really want to make your voice count, tell the FCC. The FCC’s Consumer Complaint Center lets you easily leave a complaint or share your experience. Who knows–your words to the FCC could make a difference by demanding more from service providers.

See all available internet providers in your area.

Sources

  1. HughesNet, “What’s New”
  2. HughesNet, “Why HughesNet”
  3. Federal Communications Commission, “Measuring Fixed Broadband Report”
  4. HughesNet, “What’s New”
  • Billo

    When does the plan reset from the low speed to the advertised speeds?

    • http://dev-reviewsorg.pantheon.io/ Trevor Wheelwright

      Hey Billo, thanks for the question!
      HughesNet resets throttled speeds back to advertised speeds at the beginning of the new billing cycle.

  • Gabe1972

    Great service. Had it since Nov 2004 and upgraded to the Gen4 service in Feb 2016. Getting nearly twice my advertised “up to” speed. Unlimited would be nice, but I understand the restrictions of a satellite ISP and why data caps MUST be there. Overall a great service for those of us with no ground based options (save dialup).

    Their Hughesnet Community based support is miles above the phone based support. Equipment lease fees, but if leasing it’s always covered under warranty.

    • http://dev-reviewsorg.pantheon.io/ Trevor Wheelwright

      Hey Gabe, thanks for letting us know, it’s great you had a positive experience—we love hearing feedback like this!

      • Cody Jannise

        If you work for HughesNet Customer service. GOD BLESS YOU! Hughes Net has the WORST Customer service ever. I am trying to setup a business account and literally get transferred 8 times. I have never experienced such terrible customer service and incapable people in my life. All I want is internet for my business and to spend over $300 a month in services and cannot get any help.

        • http://dev-reviewsorg.pantheon.io/ Trevor Wheelwright

          Sorry to hear you had a bad experience, just curious, do you plan on staying with HughesNet or have you looked into either Exede or dishNet for satellite internet?

          • Anthony1234

            Thanks for responding Trevor. I believe you’re missing the point. What I
            and most people filing complaints want is for Hugesnet to live up to
            their end of the contract. Telling people they’ll have enough bandwidth
            to stream and download files is disingenuous to say the least. As
            stated, Hugesnet has oversold the capacity of its satellites and
            consequently available bandwidth is being divided among the customer
            base – far more than Hugesnet can deliver and far less than what
            customers were promised. It’s only a matter of time before Hugesnet
            will suffer the consequences of these devious actions.

  • Alix Wood

    I will never suggest this service to anyone, even my worst enemy. I called them because I was told they were the only ones that service the community that I just moved to, and when I was asking about the service plans, the man asked what I would be using the internet for most, of course I said streaming movies and Netflix. He assured me multiple times that this would be the plan I needed and would work great. Once I had it installed, I tried to use the wifi on my phone that night and it was very poor reception. I ended up cutting my wifi off and using my data. I called them a few days later, (of not being able to get it to work) and asked if there was something wrong with my router or what the deal was. He informed me that I had used up the whole 10gb that they had provided and that I still had 50gb that I could use between the hours of 2AM and 8AM… I informed him that it was NEVER mentioned that this was how the data worked and that it was completely ridiculous. I asked if I could cancel my service without charge due to being completely mis-informed by the repersentative and I was told no, I would need to pay the $400 cancellation fee. I am completely frustrated with the situation. I will be leaving this review on any site that I can to inform people of the awful service they are offering. If someone from Hughes Net would like to try and help me get out of my contract, it would be greatly appreciated.

  • Peri Mashburn

    What a truly horrible experience I have had with Hughes Net. I have probably been without service more than I have had service. The radio transmitter in the dish has been replaced twice in one year. There is a charge for them to come out and replace the transmitter of approximately $125. When I asked the second repairman the reason, he said the radio receivers are very susceptible to moisture which causes them to short circuit. I have satellite dish for my television and have never had any issues with it in over 6 years in that location and over 20 years in another location. Customer service is no help whatsoever. I also asked to be let out of my contract in view of their inability to maintain service. I too was told there was a huge cancellation fee. Of course, they also are unable to note on your account that you want it to terminate on the date the contract terminates. When I asked if I could see a copy of the contract, they could not supply one for me. They told me to look at the contract on their website, even though it has probably been revised since my “contract” began. DO NOT use this service.

  • NITTANYRAY

    The guy I talked to on the phone to set up my account was one of the best representatives I have ever dealt with purchasing phone, TV, or internet service and i have been doing this for at least 20 years. English was his first language and he spoke very clearly. The pricing was very good and he explained that simple use like checking e-mail and Facebook doesn’t use up your anytime data. He also told me that if I wanted to buy the equipment instead of leasing it would be best to lease for a month before buying because installation was free only on lease installations.

    We had Dish internet before and they never delivered the advertised speeds. Our Hughes service will be about $12/mo cheaper than Dish even after the $10 TV bundle discount. The guy at Hughes said that dish leases the hardware off of Hughes and it is an older generation. We also had to reset our Dish modem frequently because the signal would become very slow or completely stop. Hopefully Hughes doesn’t have this problem.
    I will report back in a month or two after we have had a chance to use Hughes’ service.

  • http://dev-reviewsorg.pantheon.io Scott T.

    Did you end up going with another satellite internet provider, or did you give up on getting internet at your cabin?

    • Anthony1234

      Thanks for responding Scott. I believe you’re missing the point. What I
      and most people filing complaints want is for Hugesnet to live up to
      their end of the contract. Telling people they’ll have enough bandwidth
      to stream and download files is disingenuous to say the least. As
      stated, Hugesnet has oversold the capacity of its satellites and
      consequently available bandwidth is being divided among the customer
      base – far more than Hugesnet can deliver and far less than what
      customers were promised. It’s only a matter of time before Hugesnet
      will suffer the consequences of these devious tactics.

      • Troy Heagy

        You didn’t answer his question: Did you go with a different Internet provider?

  • Michelle Crain

    HughsNet has been the worst Internet experience I have ever had to deal with. Seriously, save yourself the headache and go with someone else. Their Internet hardly works and when it does it’s slower then a snail. We tried to cancel the service because of how horrible it was, but they lock you into this two-year contract for a reason because they want their money. They don’t care that there are providing crap service. The customer service representative’s are a joke. They never have the answers to the questions that we ask and put us on hold for several minutes while they try to ” get answers from their managers”. I will never recommend Hughes net to anybody.

    • http://dev-reviewsorg.pantheon.io Scott T.

      Are you still using satellite internet? What are the options for internet in your area?

      • Michelle Crain

        No, we broke our contract with Hughes net because of how terrible it was. We are much happier with the decision to get rid of Hughes net and go with another company that provides us with excellent customer service and fast internet.

      • Anthony1234

        Thanks for responding Scott. I believe you’re missing the point. What I
        and most people filing complaints want is for Hugesnet to live up to
        their end of the contract. Telling people they’ll have enough bandwidth
        to stream and download files is disingenuous to say the least. As
        stated, Hugesnet has oversold the capacity of its satellites and
        consequently available bandwidth is being divided among the customer
        base – far more than Hugesnet can deliver and far less than what
        customers were promised. It’s only a matter of time before Hugesnet
        will suffer the consequences of these devious actions.

  • Taylor

    I would never recommend this internet service to anyone. My internet only works when I stand right next to the box. I called customer service and they were no help at all and pretty much told me I was a liar when I was trying to explain my internet wouldn’t pick up in my house they told me it showed that it was working on their end. Also, HughesNet sold me the router I currently have and it doesn’t work after having it for a year and they tried to tell me they didn’t sell me the router JCG when I have it on the receipt from when I got my internet hooked up. I wouldn’t even bother with this internet company it’s just a waste of money.

  • Donna Thames

    Hughes net is the worst service provider I have ever experienced. I had to disconnect my wifi and use my cellular data on my phone to download a small PDF file.
    After a month or so of depleted service, they offered an upgrade package to help with downloading. The only thing that upgraded was our bill.
    It is so slow I have never once been able to download a movie I purchase from ITunes or stream and watch anything from you tube.
    If you are expecting to download anything… good luck with that.

    You can just almost search the internet at best.

    Once we decided that we have had enough, we disconnected all service boxes, cables telephones, etc. that were linked to Hughes net. Then we called to cancel service and as we were being redirected through their automated system we were told that our service looks fine we should not have any problems. (EVERYTHING WAS UNPLUGGED!)

    My advice, don’t get yourself locked into their contact and be forced four years of terrible service or an astronomical cancellation fee.

    • http://dev-reviewsorg.pantheon.io/ Trevor Wheelwright

      Thanks for sharing with us Donna, sorry to hear that HughesNet didn’t address your problem at all—have you switched to another provider?

      • Anthony1234

        Trevor,

        The approach Hughsnet is using here – asking people if they tried another provider is not the right tactic. The question we all would like to ask is when will Hughsnet quit its unscrupulous marketing schemes and tell people upfront that streaming and downloading files is impossible because Hughsnet does not have the satellite capacity to fulfill its promises. As we now know a satellite only has a limited amount of capacity (bandwidth). We also understand that for a business to survive it needs to continually grow revenue. The problem Hughsnet has is it only has a few satellites but without added customers (revenue) it cannot sustain itself. So to get around this obstacle it must add customers and while doing so it must further divide an already limited amount of bandwidth. In technical terms its called throttling. When a cable company exceeds it bandwidth it can easily add additional capacity but a satellite company does not have the ready option of deploying another satellite without incurring a huge cost. That said, the approach your using telling customers if they don’t like the service to go elsewhere doesn’t address the question of how Hughssnet is going to remedy false advertisement claims? In other words, Hughsnet is essentially violating federal law by using confusing measurements to hide its throttling of data. This falls under the False Advertising clause of:

        Manipulation of measurement units and standards. This means:
        Manipulation of measurement units and standards can be described as a
        seller deceiving customers by informing them with facts that either are
        not true or are using a standard or standards that wouldn’t be widely
        used or understood which results in the customer being misinformed or
        confused. This is a violation of law.So Trevor, two questions:

        1. Will Hughsnet waive the $400 dollar early termination if the thousands of people complaining want to take you up on your offer to go elsewhere?
        or
        2. Will Hughsnet continue with its unlawful tactics under False Advertising and the FCC’s net neutrally law against throttling traffic?

        • http://dev-reviewsorg.pantheon.io/ Trevor Wheelwright

          Hey Anthony,
          Definitely appreciate your concern, however, we do not represent HughesNet.

          Our goal at Reviews.org is to help everyone find the service that’s right for them. We take our readers’ feedback into our considerations for every review, but there is no way we would address customer service issues on any company’s behalf—we’re simply seeing if we can steer someone in the right direction, or get additional feedback about their new service.

          Thanks again for your input!

  • Anthony1234

    You may get a high download speed when running a speed test but once you try to download a large file or stream video say hello to throttling. As such, forget about streaming unless you want to watch a program in less than standard definition. If you just browse websites the service works fine but in today’s world where most people stream video Hugesnet just can’t deliver. Even more frustrating is when you contact customer service. They always attempt to blame the lack of bandwidth for streaming on your equipment – router etc., stating everything is fine on their end. The bottom-line is they have over-sold the capacity of their satellites and use sophisticated throttling techniques to split the available bandwidth among their customer base, especially during prime time usage. This also explains the phenomenon of receiving acceptable speeds during testing, leaving you to believe you’re getting what you subscribed too. Keep in mind that a speed test takes about a minute so throttling won’t kick in, but when their equipment senses streaming or downloading – longer than a minute or so – the throttling slows the speed down based on how many people are using the system. The bottom-line is Hugesnet will continue to oversell its satellite capacity and use technological gimmicks to compensate.

    • http://dev-reviewsorg.pantheon.io/ Trevor Wheelwright

      We’re sorry to hear you had that experience Anthony. We’re assuming you’ve tried different devices or different routers and are still not getting the speeds you need. We’re curious if you’ve looked into another provider, if you have the option. Who else serves your area?

      • Anthony1234

        Thanks for responding Trevor. I believe you’re missing the point. What I
        and most people filing complaints want is for Hugesnet to live up to
        their end of the contract. Telling people they’ll have enough bandwidth
        to stream and download files is disingenuous to say the least. As stated, Hugesnet has oversold the capacity of its satellites and consequently available bandwidth is being divided among the customer base – far more than Hugesnet can deliver and far less than what customers were promised. It’s only a matter of time before Hugesnet will suffer the consequences of these devious tactics.

  • signed a very pissed off custo

    WORST service i have EVER had the customer service is ten times worse then the actual service. I will NEVER in my life refer anyone to this service, The management on the phone is absolutely no help i am disgusted in the way i was treated on the phone when i called to complain about the service that i was paying for and to top it all off when i called again to cancel the service because i was moving they refused to cancel the service. It took multiple phones calls for about a week for someone to finally cancel my service and when i received the boxes to return the items they sent me a list of items that didn’t even come with my plan that they were looking to be returned and told me i was gonna be charged $300 dollars if i didn’t return the equipment that i never received in the first place. so yet again it took 5 people to include 2 supervisors and a manager before someone was actually able to fix the problem which by the way still isn’t fix. I am so irate over this service its ridiculous i can not believe the way this company treats there customers and how awful their service is to top it all off.

    • http://dev-reviewsorg.pantheon.io/ Trevor Wheelwright

      We’re sorry to hear you had such a rough and confusing experience. Have you been able to find a provider you like better?

      • Anthony1234

        Trevor W.,

        The approach Hughsnet is using here – asking people if they tried another provider is not the right tactic. The question we all would like to ask is when will Hughsnet quit its unscrupulous marketing schemes and tell people upfront that streaming and downloading files is impossible because Hughsnet does not have the satellite capacity to fulfill its promises. As we now know a satellite only has a limited amount of capacity (bandwidth). We also understand that for a business to survive it needs to continually grow revenue. The problem Hughsnet has is it only has a few satellites but without added customers (revenue) it cannot sustain itself. So to get around this obstacle it must add customers and while doing so it must further divide an already limited amount of bandwidth. In technical terms its called
        throttling. When a cable company exceeds it bandwidth it can easily add additional capacity but a satellite company does not have the
        ready option of deploying another satellite without incurring a huge cost. That said, the approach your using telling customers if they don’t
        like the service to go elsewhere doesn’t address the question of how Hughssnet is going to remedy false advertisement claims? In other
        words, Hughsnet is essentially violating federal law by using confusing measurements to hide its throttling of data. This falls under the
        False Advertising clause of:

        Manipulation of measurement units and standards. This means:
        Manipulation of measurement units and standards can be described as a
        seller deceiving customers by informing them with facts that either are
        not true or are using a standard or standards that wouldn’t be widely
        used or understood which results in the customer being misinformed or
        confused. This is a violation of law.So Trevor, two questions:

        1. Will Hughsnet waive the $400 dollar early termination if the thousands of people complaining want to take you up on your offer to go

        elsewhere?
        or
        2. Will Hughsnet continue with its unlawful tactics under False Advertising and the FCC’s net neutrally law against throttling traffic?

  • Michael Huey

    I……wo….u…..ld… .L.iii……..k….e …t..o… s……a….y… m…….y…. s…e….r…..v..i….c..e is….. s.o…o.ooo..ooo..oo SL…..OO…WWW… but that would be an un……d…e.r…st…a..t…e..me…n.t……….

  • Alicia Knuppel

    Worse company ever. Want to charge me a $100 to have someone come out to take the radio transmitter that they installed for free. They put it in the middle of the roof! I don’t feel comfortable climbing up to get a little radio transmitter. But if I don’t return it then I get charged $200. What a trap. If I get hurt I will sue them. I hope no one signs up with this company slow service and horrible customer service. They don’t even know what they are talking about everytime I call.

  • John Barneson

    We are not HughesNet customers, and NEVER will be, as this company DOES NOT LISTEN TO US!
    SIX TIMES I HAVE CALLED IN TO TELL THEM NOT TO SEND ANY MORE SOLICITATIONS, AND THEY PERSIST.

    I AM ABOUT TO SEND BACK THE CURRENT ONE MARINATED IN SKUNK URINE, WRAPPED IN A DOG TURD AND ENCASED IN THE ROTTING GUTS OF A WHALE.

    WE HAVE NO DESIRE TO SEE ANOTHER FLYER, OFFER, SOLICITATION OR NOTICE OF ANY KIND WHATSOEVER FROM THIS INERT, UNRESPONSIVE AND INDIFFERENT “COMPANY”.

    OUTFITS THAT DON’T LISTEN TO THEIR CUSTOMERS DESERVE BANKRUPTCY–AND WORSE.

    THEY ARE AS BAD AS WELLS FARGO WITH ITS SO-CALLED “COMMITMENT” CAMPAIGN, ANOTHER P.R. BUTT NUGGET DESIGNED TO DEFLECT A LACK OF TRUE CUSTOMER SERVICE AS WELL AS A RIGIDITY AND LACK OF RESPONSIVENESS THAT IS BOTH DISGUSTING AND BREATHTAKING.

  • LPGZ

    We’ve experienced intermittent download speeds with HughesNet — with speeds as low as 200-300 kbps. We paid for the Ultra Plan but are very disappointed in the fact that often — especially in the evening hours — our connection speeds ramp down to below 1 Mbps!!!! VERY disappointed with the service!

  • Fanny

    AWFUL AWFUL AWFUL AWFUL!!
    Really, worst company I had to deal with.
    1st: They sold me a bad product even knowing it wouldn’t be good for me. I told them what I needed (connect to VPN and video game). Internet was really slow, bad connection, not the speed they promised and when I called they said they service was’t good for it. So far bad, but I’ve been lied before.

    Then the real struggle: cancel and get my money back!
    I had to cal 9 (NINE) TIMES to cancel the account and get my money back, and of course every time I called I got a new information that made my canceling/refund one step further.
    – “Oh, we don’t refund even if you have 30 days trial”
    – “Oh, you called to cancel one week ago, but we are just going to cancel 2 weeks from now”
    – “oh, you have to return the equipment before get the refund, but you also have to wait for US to send YOU the box so you can return it, and this is going to happen just when the account is canceled, two weeks from now”
    – “now that you got the box you have to get your huge ladder and go on your roof to fetch the equipment from there to return to get your refund”
    – “now that you already returned and we already got the equipment I need a prove that I already got the equipment”
    – “oh, remember that authorization that your husband gave us for you to manage the account? So, that doesn’t worth nothing, now I need him to give a NEW authorization to refund YOUR money in YOUR credit card”

    Really, not worth the price!! Headache cost me way more!!

  • Consumer

    Looking for recommendations–from what I’m reading Hughes Net is not the way to go. Anyone found the other systems better? thanks

    • http://dev-reviewsorg.pantheon.io Scott T.

      If you have other options for internet (DSL, Cable, etc.), go with that. We review satellite internet here for people who don’t have any other choice. HughesNet is really the best of satellite internet, but satellite internet has a lot to improve on (customer service, pricing, etc.).

    • Amanda Nemetz

      Dial-up is faster. We were never even able to get 2MB download with HughesNet. Our 4MB DSL is faster and way, way more dependable. Honestly… we did regular line speed tests with HughesNet… the speeds measured in Kb.

      Total waste of time, money and your breath. Their business model is to make false promises and collect their $400 cancellation fee from enough people to keep themselves in the black.

  • http://loriputnam.com Lori Putnam

    We are just waiting for our Hughes Net two year contract to run out. This is absolutely the worst service ever. Not only are the connection speeds slow, I am kicked off line dozens of times a day. I run a business out of my house, so this is totally unacceptable. The “free” bytes are even slower, of course. Don’t buy this service. After contacting the company with our complaints, we got absolutely no where, no resolution, pretty much just told us when our contract would end and that we are stuck until then. Counting the days.

  • chad castellanos

    This service is terrible! You run out of data within a couple weeks. They scam you into a 2 year contract and sell you the plan like you will never run out of data. They specifically said to us that if we didn’t game – we would be fine. We ran out of data within two weeks. We then upgraded to their most expensive premium service. Ran out of data again before the month was even over. Asked if we could upgrade to a higher plan and the said it wasn’t possible.

    They then told us that we would be fine if we fine tuned out electronics to stream netflix with low resolution, turn off devices and router when not used, etc. Our 30 day trial was up when we realized this service was not working for us. We ended up having to purchase another internet provider with unlimited data to compensate for the lousy service. We ended up moving and found a internet service provider that actually works. So we cancelled the service where hughesnet charged us a $200 fee to cancel. After being on the phone with them for over 2 hours, they refused to wave the cancellation charge. I would advise anyone to not use this service. You will likely run out of data no matter the plan, and you will regret having them come out and install their service. The 30 day trial isn’t enough time to know if their service works for you or not.

    • John

      They are Liars and false advertisers.
      Thats it. Bad service and no remedies.
      Lol

  • greg brown

    I made a bad mistake getting hughes net. I’m not getting what i paid for. When you use all of your data up the internet will slow down.They do not tell you this on tv.I will not tell anyone about hughes net. It is not worth paying for crapy service. i use the internet to look up things and now that my data is used up i get very poor service. I will be looking for a new internet company .They need to tell the truth on tv about when you use up all your data and they do not do that.So all I can say I’m one piss off customer.

  • Tak Cheng

    I installed it a month ago and right off the bat it didn’t work with my router and the tech tried to sell me a router for $100 cash. I’ve had my router for a year and it worked with verizon dsl and even with my verizon hot spot with a wireless to ethernet adapter. I declined it since I lose a $100 if it doesn’t work and I can’t find the guy ever again. I wanted to use this for my business thinking it will be faster and more reliable than my DSL (the sales rep assured me it’ll be better). work was busy and I didn’t have time to really test it. after a month I finally got time to test it. when I plug in one computer to speed test it, it takes 5 second to starts downloading. and the speed was same as my DSL! So there’s an initial lag when you starts using it. Also I remote connect to my work computer all the time to work from home, when I plug my computer to Hughes connection I could not remote connect. My DSL was more reliable and stable for the remote connect. Now that I just called to cancel the service, they want $800 termination fee. $800!!!! plus $300 something to make sure the equipment are in good condition. that’s $1100 to cancel!!!! people be aware!!! there’s no trial period. you either stay with the plan even if the connection is shit or fork out over a thousand dollar to cancel.

  • dth4237

    DO NOT USE THIS SERVICE! Data caps, expensive, and contracts! The only reason this company can stay afloat is due to people not having any other option due to their living location. This company is ripping customers off!

  • Lynnsey P

    I have NO IDEA why Hughes Net has high ratings on this site??? This company provides the absolute worst service I’ve ever had. Last month we ran out of data so fast and I called and complained many times, so they gave me a few extra GB and a discounted bill price. But it’s still NOT worth it!! Yesterday our data had reset for a new billing period. We had watched 2 episodes on Netflix and I barely used the internet on my iPad. I woke up this morning to check our data usage and it was already down to 77%. I have no idea how we could have used that much when we had no other devices hooked up to the wifi and we disconnect them from the wifi when we are finished using it. THIS COMPANY IS A JOKE! I don’t recommend this company to ANYONE. Hughesnet is a miserable service that charges too much, their service is slow, and the data gets magically used up faster than you can blink! Then you have to buy extra data if you need to use your wifi. This company is only out to get your money and is not interested in pleasing the customer. Stay away from them!

    • Troy Heagy

      > We had watched 2 episodes on Netflix

      If you watched in HD then you used 2 gigabytes right there.

  • TDF Public

    Complaints about their data caps are fully warranted. 8 hrs of standard def vid will consume 168 GB per month of data. No satellite service provider comes remotely close to providing a data allowance that is practical for internet service. Even cellular service providers have figured this out and most major providers have a solution. Both T-Mobile and Verizon have viable solutions to provide real world internet service. It is a long way from matching DSL and cable based internet. But it is miles better than what the losers at the Sat service providers are offering. It is way past time that customers and providers caught up to the 21st century. Most Americans do not depend on cable and satellite for their entertainment any more. While most people still pay for these services, they depend on the internet to deliver what they want to watch. Let’s face it, why pay $70+ per month for basic service package to watch TV that delivers content picked by someone else and on their schedule. When you can pay the same for high speed internet + an average of $10 per month for services like Netflix or Hulu and watch what you want on your schedule. The reality folks, is that we live in an age where we can easily exceed 3 TB (3 Trillion Bytes) of data every month. That seems unreal, but it is not. UHD video consumes 7 GB per hour. (7 GB x 16 hrs. x 30 days = 3.36 TB) UHD is not even the biggest data hog. Online gaming can consume up to 24.3 GB per hour. That means a serious gamer could use 11.66 TB of data every month. Since 2010 the US has been in desperate need of 1 Gbps fibre internet and 1 TB data allowance. Even this is a stop gap measure. To be future ready we need our nations infrastructure to meet a minimum of 100 Tbps (trillion bits per second) and 1 PB data allowance. (1 PB = 1 quadrillion bytes)

    • Gabe1972

      Hughesnet isn’t meant to be a replacement for landline or even cell based internet. It’s fits a niche market. They cannot offer the higher data amounts due to having a much more restricted throughput than those other services.

    • HTownMike

      They say explicitly it doesn’t work with gaming. 4k UHD is out if you’re using any data capped service. I have to rely on 80GB a month for my internet. i use a mobile hotspot. It’s enough to let me stream a decent amount movies in HD in a given month. I just can’t use on demand whenever I want, which is a real pain, but it’s manageable.

    • Troy Heagy

      > 8 hrs of standard def vid will consume 168 GB per month

      Who on earth is watching 8 hours of video every day? On Saturday & Sunday, yes, but the other five days people are working. A more realistic estimate:

      – I watch Amazon video. It’s 0.38 GB/hour
      – 8 hours on weekends (times four); 4 hours on weekdays (times 22 days)
      – 46 GB

      That fits very neatly inside Hughesnet maximum cap of 100 GB…. it would even fit under the minimum cap of 50 GB. (However it would NOT fit under my cellphone plan of just 20GB.)

    • Troy Heagy

      > Online gaming can consume up to 24.3 GB per hour

      Bull manure. World of Warcraft uses just 10 Mbyte per hour (average) and upto 100 Mbyte/hour if you’re in a battle with a team of players. That’s just 0.1 Gbyte per hour… much much lower than your ridiculous claim. If you game 16 hours on weekends and 4 hours on weekdays, you’re still only consuming

      just 15 GB of gaming data per month.

  • Sherry chapman

    This is the worst internet service I have ever had the nightmare of using. Now that I was finally able to cancel (their cancellation button was not working either) after over 1 year they are charging me 145.00 to cancel. Horrible business.

  • Sherry chapman

    The worst internet I have ever had the displeasure to use! Anyone who has had a good experience must be employed by them. Honestly, data runs out very quickly then they want you to use tokens (ridiculous) that’s not enough so they sell you a bigger plan,which they assure will cover everything. It doesn’t. I called to cancel today after being on hold forever only to be told that the cancellation button was not working (really, he said that), after 1 year and 6 mos. my cancellation fee is 145.00. I bundled this with DIRECTV. I was never able to use on demand movies because I could not get an internet connection. Shame on DIRECTV also.

  • Gabe1972

    The Early Termination Fee for home service is $400 for the first 90 days, then $15 less per month after that. The Early Termination Fee for a Business account ranges from $200 to $800.

  • Ka

    Hughes net absolutely sucks and is not worth it. 50 GB of data is not much and you really can’t stream much. Pricing total ripoff. You are better off going into Starbucks everyday or moving somewhere with internet lol.

  • Ka

    I wouldn’t get satellite internet under any circumstance unless you have zero other options.

    • Gabe1972

      That’s the reason most people end up getting satellite internet. It’s an ISP of last resort.

      • Ka

        I probably still wouldn’t get it. Too expensive for limited bandwidth. I would go to Starbucks if I really needed internet.

        • Mammie Louise

          not if the closest star bucks is 50 miles away?? Really ?

    • BeehiveRound

      That’s the reason people get it.

  • Gabe1972

    You definitely should try Gen5 if you have no land based alternative (cable, fiber, etc). It’s considerably better than Gen4, and miles above the legacy plan you are on now. This has been my experience, anyway. I started with a legacy plan, upgraded to Gen4 in Feb 2016 and Gen5 in March of this year.

  • cardboardharley

    Let me see. you got to pay 50.00 a month for 25 down and 3 up.
    And when you even get close to the data limit of 10 GB which is a joke. It slows you down.
    If you update your computer and a couple cell phones and use wifi calling. You would be in trouble pretty fast.
    Plus you have to rent the equiptment also.
    Is this also not the system that Dish uses.
    And you got to sign a contract or if you cancel in less than 90 days, there is a 400.00 Fee.
    It would take some people 90 Days to find out that they don’t like the service.
    Sorry but I have friends that had hughes net. They was very unhappy with the service and waiting on having the equiptment repained.

    • Troy Heagy

      >If you update your computer and a couple cell phones

      You should schedule those updates from 2am to 8am when the data is unlimited. That way you still have 10GB for daytime hours.

      >use wifi calling

      Stop doing that. Most phone plans today are unlimited calling, so just use the phone company directly

  • John T

    LOOK ELSEWHERE FOR INTERNET!!!!!!

    -Terrible service. The data plans are completely absurd. You get a 100gb plan and you find out that you can use 50GB during prime-time hours and the other 50GB during “off-peak” hours. Those off peak hours were from 2am-6am I believe.

    -The speeds never were what was promised.

    -The latency of the service is way to high for online gaming despite them adamantly telling me otherwise (Fast Mpbs download speed does not equate to fast internet).

    -They try to lock you into a 2 year contract and than charge you a $200+ cancellation fee.

    -When you do cancel they do not send a technician to help you uninstall the dish. Instead they require you to remove the entire installation, take it apart and send them the parts they want returned.

  • Karen conder

    From the Conder family. Satisfaction guarantee my fucking ass. I’m getting charged 125.00 for a tec coming out to tighten up the satellite that the wind moved. If the first tec would of tighten it up right it would of not moved. My dish satellite didn’t move in the 90 mph wind Tuesday.we had insurance for Hughes but we didn’t know it ran out. If we had the insurance it would have only been 29.99. We did not mess it up. Will not recommend to anyone. Very pissed off right now. We have had Hughes net 4 or 5 years.

  • HTownMike

    Where are you located? Have you tried streaming anything in HD yet? Or webex, skype, facetime etc.?

    • Gabe1972

      I’m in NY state, but Gen5 is available anywhere in the contiguous US (and I think in Alaska, as well). I don’t normally stream, but I did, just as a sort of test, stream with the Youtube app on my Smart TV and it worked in 1080 without issue. I know others have streamed in HD with Gen5, as well, and its worked fine. I’ve not done any webex, Skype or facetime with Gen5, but I imagine that at least Skype works with it as I had Skyped in Gen4 and it worked fine.

      BUT, streaming in HD will use a LOT of data (up to 3GB per hour with Netflix).

  • HTownMike

    Are you on Gen 5? I am surprised they are willing to give you any money back. Of course, if you expect anything, they will want their equipment back. However, terms state there is a $400 early termination for any reason… even if you don’t get 25mbps, which is why I haven’ts signed up.

  • HTownMike

    This is why I haven’t signed up. It seems like they don’t have enough confidence in their product to not allow for trial periods. The 700 refers to buying the equipment instead of leasing. it would be 400 if you leased it. But then you’re stuck leasing it if you want to keep it. Catch 22.

    • Gabe1972

      HTownMike, the $700 Rusty mentioned ETF refers to a business plan, not a residential plan. The ETF on a residential plan starts at $400, and it’s $400 for the first 90 days regardless of whether one leases or buys. If one buys instead of leases, I’m not really sure how the return or refund of the equipment is handled, nor if that’s even possible.

      • HTownMike

        They told me I’d be stuck with it if I bought it and could not return it or sell it to someone else.

        • Gabe1972

          Because I had a friend as me about this very thing, I asked about it on their boards, and this was the reply I got from the main rep on the boards….

          “Hi Gabe,

          Thanks for posting, good question. I don’t have all the details, but in short, yes, purchased equipment can be returned (within 30 days of activation) for partial credit.

          Thanks,
          Liz”

  • HTownMike

    Where are you located? Have you tried webex, skype or facetime?

  • HTownMike

    I think most of these reviews are misdirected and coming from those who lack an understanding of what the author is writing about. He’s specifically talking about Gen5, not Gen4, which has been the source of many warranted complaints in the past.

    That said, I would like to know of people’s experiences with Gen 5, specifically in NC. And also how does it work with webex or skype?

    I want to try this service, but they don’t offer any trial period. That’s a major red flag to me. You’re instantly locked into a $400 cancellation fee if you lease the equipment and it’s $750 if you buy it. If you lease it, you can’t buy it later if it actually does work well. Awful terms….

    • Gabe1972

      The ETF is $400 for the first 90 days regardless of whether a person buys or leases, then $15 less each month thereafter. If one buys, they can get a partial credit on the equipment if it’s sent back within 30 days.

  • https://wheeloforganizedchaos.wordpress.com/ Buff Hamstah

    I would have to concur with you and Ronnie in general. I am currently an Exede customer but need to do some household financial reevaluations due to some unfortunate circumstances. Since I am tech and internet savvy, I know what I am signing into, … I refuse to use “call centers” as a means for customer satisfaction, but when “forced” into using them, I “escalate” my issue until I get what I need.

    I have no other option available for internet access than satellite, and the phone, Smart TV and Satellite TV modem-DVRs require Internet access for all of their applications to work as advertised, … so shopping for a good Satellite ISP is what I have to do, … Exede used to be the best in speed and data amount, but now, …? I may have to go through the inconvenience of porting over the phone number and the (spam) email addresses. (I use Gmail as my main account, it’s free and works 10 times better than what the satellite ISPs use)

    Side Note: Why in the world would anyone choose Satellite when the have a perfectly good fiber or cable service available??? Sheesh, I WISH I had those options.

    • Shelly

      Buff,
      Did you end up switching to Gen5 from Exede? I’m with Exede now and considering making the switch. Any input would be appreciated.

      • Nicholas Monk

        I had exede – we stream lots of video and exede was far superior for that purpose. Hughes net is constant buffering, even on low resolution.

  • jvz

    how have you used gen 5 for 8 months when it didnt go online until march?

  • Selena Gardner

    I want to share my wonderful experience with hughesnet. I WILL NEVER USE OR RECOMMEND THIS COMPANY EVER. First I moved to the sticks and hughesnet was the only provider I could utilize. The first issue I had was the equipment kept automatically changing the password. I called hughesnet who said it was an equipment issue not a hughesnet issue. The equipment company stated it was a hughesnet problem. Finally got hughesnet to correct the problem. Then I moved. Hughesnet came out to the new location and said they could not provide me with service as they could not get a clear line to the satellite. I called to cancel and was informed I would be charged a termination fee because THEY could not provide me service. Three days later I finally speak to corporate and they agree to waive the fee and send out boxes to return equipment. TODAY they charged my account for the equipment but I have yet to receive the boxes. When I called corporate they said they sent the boxes to the old address and all I can do is wait again for the boxes and once I receive them and send the equipment back they will refund my money. Once again it is their fault but I get charged. I WILL NEVER USE OR RECOMMEND THIS COMPANY EVER.

  • Burtonz

    Just like the medical business in the US, we pay the most and get the least of any industrialized country. Internet isn’t a toy or a luxury. Other countries have online live video medical visits for people in rural areas. They consider internet as much of a utility as electricity and water. There are millions of us in rural areas who need the internet at least as much as the city dwellers. The time has come to kick our “legislators” in the butt and get them to recognize that almost half the population has had enough of being marginalized.

    • Troy Heagy

      The average speed for U.S. internet is the same as the average for the E.U. and +5 Mbit/s faster than the average in Canada, Russia, or Australia, and +15 Mbit/s faster than the average in China.

      We are not falling behind other countries that face the same challenges (wiring-up an entire continent-spanning union).

  • Benjamin Edelman

    The article warns about cancelation fees, don’t worry, I quit after one month of poor service, they did not pursue collection on my account. So go ahead and try the new satellite.

  • cjsbarb

    Worst customer service ever!!! I have not had a phone line for over 35 days. No internet for 16 days and had to repeat from the beginning on each phone call. A total of 5 calls on same issue. Hung up on 3 times during the 1st call to them. Still have no phone service and then they wanted $100 dollars to come out… It’s there equipment!

    Now I’m waiting again. I explain I had major surgery and could not get up and down. I was told to call back when I could follow their directions, they could not help me.

    Now, I have used Echo Star since 1996. This is by far the worst company of any kind I have ever used. They are right about one thing; if you are in a rural area, you are basically at there grace.

    Also when I asked for a break on my month services I did not have, she giggled, yes you saw that right and she giggled. Told me she would give me a $30 cut in a 3 month period. That’s $10 a month off my bill and I’m on the largest plan they have 50/50.

    I encourage you to look somewhere else as I am looking and do NOT use Hughesnet.

  • Troy Heagy

    > They mounted the dish I the side of my house and it caused thousands of dollars of damage that they refuse to fix.

    You should file a lawsuit.

  • Troy Heagy

    5 and 2.4 Gigahertz plans? No such thing.

    Your HP ENVY dv6 has Windows 8 which will run the Hughesnet software.

  • Troy Heagy

    > 5,000 hours of Internet a month

    There’s only 700 hours in a month. I think you don’t understand what you bought.

  • Troy Heagy

    >1 GB is supposed to allow you to watch about 10 to 15 episodes.

    That’s not even close to accurate. That would be only 0.08 GB or 80 megabyte per episode which is extremely poor quality (like watching Youtube at 144p). You should have realized your statement doesn’t make sense.

    When I watch Amazon Video they say “0.38 GB/hour” minimum. That equals 4 episodes per GB.

  • Gabe1972

    I know a lot about WWII, as well, but that doesn’t mean I fought in it.

  • Kathy Lee Cone

    I have had hughesnet for about 5 months now and I hate it. I live in a rual area and the wifi speed doesn’t come pair to the other companies I have had, like they say. I can’t go to another companies because they are to only ones out here. Took there guys 2 days to come out and hook it up. I sat the day of installation and no one never showed up. Then calls at 5 and says I can’t make and need to reschedule. Needless to say they were out first thing the next morning at 7am because I called b*******. They start at 8. Trust me if I could I would pay the $400 disconnect fee to get rid of them. Their customer service sucks completely. Told they guy it was the outside unit, the dish, and for 20 minutes he continue to trying to send a signal to my router. Then it took him another 10 minutes to book an appointment for somebody to come out here. To which I have to pay somebody $30 to tell me it’s the outside units and They’ll need to be replace. Not only that I can get the appointment for two days out I have to wait a total of five days before someone come and then call back that day I get the Internet to get reimbursed for The days I don’t have it. Said I want the first appt on that day at 8 am and I get from customer service person ” I’m writing that in the notes now ma’ma.” Not a good company and would not recommend to any one.

  • Madison Jones

    Hughesnet has the worst customer service of any company I have ever dealt with. The “highest supervisor”, as she calls herself, is Annely Trevino. She is completely unreasonable and will hold customers to their contract even when the service does not work as expected (or at all!).

  • Hal Chamberlin

    This would seem to be a common question but after reading the Hughes Gen5 review and comments for ~30 minutes, I haven’t seen it addressed.

    I moved to rural southwest Texas 7 months ago and rather promptly signed up for for the lowest level Hughes Gen4 service. Its worked pretty well for surfing, Amazon, and Internet calling (I use Kakao which is South Korea based). Occasional YouTube (weather Channel videos are addictive) which plays with short pauses 1-2 times/minute). File download is reliable if not particularly fast The latency is definitely felt, especially with voice calling and websites that repeatedly re-establish secure connections, but that is inherent with satellite. Certainly really beats driving 8 miles into town and parking outside the courthouse to use my laptop and wi-fi!

    Anyway my question deals with upgrading to Gen5. I’ve received numerous solicitations both mail and email and it looks compelling compared with Gen4. However they are always written for new customers and never address existing customers upgrading. My specific questions are:

    1. Since I am only 7 months into my 2-year contract, is there an early termination or upgrade fee in addition to the fees mentioned in the solicitations?

    2. Conversely is there any discount since I already have some of the infrastructure?

    3. Is a new dish required?

    4. How are existing account logins, Hughes net mailboxes and such affected?

    5. Is any of the PC-side software (such as the usage meter) affected? If so, will it still run on Windows XP?

    Si if you’ve upgraded I would love to hear about your experience.

    • Gabe1972

      1. With you being in a contract, I don’t know that you can take advantage of any of the deals being advertised, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t upgrade without paying an arm and a leg to do so. The best advice I can give is to call and ask. They may be able to work something out with you. I don’t think there would be any early termination fees as you would be staying with Hughesnet and just moving to a newer service.

      2. Regarding discounts, if you purchased the equipment, the only thing you would need to purchase is the modem, as Gen5 uses the same dish as a recently installed Gen4 system. They may need to reverse the polarity of the ODU on the dish to work with the new satellite, and they will have to repoint the dish, but they shouldn’t need to replace anything on it. I should say that is in most cases. In a few small areas of the country people can’t get service from the new satellite, so the repoint for them would be unnecessary, as they would still be using the same satellite as they did with Gen4. It would still be Gen5 service, though. Northern CA/southern Oregon, the southern tip of Florida and an area in the midwest is where they can’t get service from the new satellite.

      3. No, no new dish is required for anyone having had Gen4 installed only seven months ago. They both use the same dish.

      4. There shouldn’t be any issues with mail and logins.

      5. If the Usage Meter is presently running on XP it should work with Gen5, too. The same Usage Meter is used. On a separate note, keep in mind that XP is vastly outdated and doesn’t even receive critical Windows Updates anymore. A computer with Windows XP won’t be very secure for most, as there are now multiple security holes that have been exploited since support ended.

      My personal experience has been exemplary. My download speeds are in the high 40Mbps range, for the most part, and the upload speeds are in the 2Mbps to 3Mbps range. And, though I have never run out of data, myself, those who have done so on purpose (to test the speed) have gotten FAP speeds of about 1.5Mbps to 3Mbps.

      One negative of note. Some people have been noticing that Gen5 seems to be using a bit more data than Gen4. How much varies. It’s not that they are being “charged” for more data than they are actually using, but that Gen5 seems to not compress the data as well as Gen4, or something like that. I’m not really sure what it is. But, again, it’s not that Gen5 is “charging” more data than one is actually using, but just that it’s not as forgiving as Gen4. So, if you did very well with your Gen4 data you’d probably be okay with the same size plan, but if you often came close to using all of your Gen4 data, you’d be much better off getting the Gen5 plan that is the next step up, data wise, from your Gen4 plan.

      Hope this helps.

  • Assassin

    – Hughes is really taking a beating here, looks like about 10-1. Thats not good.
    – I’m considering buying a little place in South Texas more or less off the hardwire internet grid. I work online during the day, hit the sports sites, posting forums – plus usually watch 4-5 hours of video before I hit the rack. Any suggestions outside of Hughes?
    – There is a possible DSL provider but only 10 meg/1meg $54.95 plus equipment
    – also a line of sight broadband at 10meg down/1.5 meg up for $90.95 – I think my modem/router will work
    I’m on an uncapped 200/20 now in the city but they’re not setup to tell me what my total usuage is a month. Speeds are usually 40/50ish down to 15/20ish up

    • Gabe1972

      I can tell you that, with Netflix, five hours of video, depending on the definition it’s streamed, can use between 1.75GB for LD and 15GB for HD, and that’s each day, not per month, and that’s just an estimate. SD would be about 3.5GB, but again, that’s an estimate. You’ll need at least 3Mbps for SD and 5Mbps for HD (that’s download speed) to keep from buffering.

  • Concho Norroz

    Ok
    Got hooked up with Hughes net back in march So after 6 months of service
    I am not happy I hate to bitch but intermittent service is not working for me
    The router is not capable of reaching more than the next room
    Hughes Gen 5 sounded good but has not delivered oh when I did call customer service they told me that I had eleven devices hooked up to system so I counted and yes I did have eleven devices hooked up computer, laptop ,iPads ,iPhones, printers , cromecast and was told to unhook all these devices to get good service So I did try it no difference in the service I depend on service but Hughes net does not deliver really don’t care what the cost is but there 50MGBT
    Plan is no good if service is intermittent
    My goal here is not to discourage new customers but to encourage Hughes net to improve services rural users have few options. And we need good service
    Thank you
    J Norris

  • Leah

    The worst service provider ever!!! We cancelled within the first 30 days and they still authorized a 400 dollar termination fee!!! I wasn’t even able to stream it ran so slow. I do not recommend anyone use Hughes network!!!!! 👎I am taking online classes and does not work!!!!

  • Leah

    Horrible horrible horrible!!!!!

  • Leah

    And by the way, they cap your usage so if you have family of four it will not work and it literally leaves you with no choice but to pay 400 dollars to terminate and go with different company.

  • Klard

    Like may others commenting on this issue I had Hughesnet Gen 3 some years ago. It was quite a shock trying to become accustomed to using an ISP that operates on the premise of generating a profit, not providing Customer Service. You negotiate a Plan with Hughesnet for their service. It is incumbent on you to comprehend what that service provides. After a few years I dropped them and began using my TV service, Dishnet. Of course, I later learned they simply provided Hughesnet under the banner of Dish.

    Satellite Internet service should be your ISP of last resort. However, if you live in a rural area where you have no other options what choice do you have? None. Until your rural area is as populated as the Big City 40 miles down the highway no company will invest the capital to run lines down your road. The payback is not going to allow them to do that and remain solvent.

    If your lifestyle is streaming movies, TV, games, or videos and you use ANY satellite service it is very likely you will consume all the data your plan will allow; rather quickly. Even after all these years using satellite, I run out of data and they throttle my bandwidth to the point of sheer madness. In today’s world you likely have two computers (or more) that remain on 24 hours a day. All your software sniffs continually to see if you need an Update. If you do, it will download massive updates and install it automatically. You and three others in your household have cell phones that do the same. That is a l-o-t of data every day.

    Did I mention that Satellite Internet is the last resort? But, alas, for people like me it is the only resort.

  • Diane

    Everyone keeps saying is you can get DSL, don’t do satellite, but my DSL downloads at 1.5mbps. I can watch Netflix on it, though it may re-load and most times the picture quality is awful. This seemed like a no-brainer, since after using my allotment, my speed would go down to what I already have, but some of these reviews are quite scary. I’m not so much worried about my monthly data limit as I am about the customers that have lousy speeds from the get-go. Maybe it’s due to the install; the dish not being aimed right? Seems kind of weird that some get the fast speed and others don’t. Any other thoughts anyone?

    • Gabe1972

      Though there are presently issues concerning a couple of beams, most people with Gen5 get at least the advertised up to speed of 25Mbps and decent FAP speeds. Keep in mind that the reason you mostly see negative comments/complaints is that people are much more likely to post when there’s a problem than when there isn’t when it concerns unsolicited posts. If everyone were required to comment about their service (though that would be a little odd), I’m sure the pendulum would be swinging in the other direction. I personally know a half dozen people on Hughesnet (three Gen4 and three Gen5) and none of them are having issues. Two of them are also in a different area of the country than I.

  • Matt White

    I am a web developer who works at home on occasion, so I need decent internet, not necessarily fast, but responsive. I thought our only choice had Hughes Net, as ATT wouldn’t give us DSL as the telephone line wasn’t upgraded to fiber optic, and Charter didn’t have a cable to the house we are renting. Charter quoted us $10,000 to bring the cable about 100′ more. so we got Dish, and they only had Hughes Net satellite internet.

    Hughes Net was so bad we canceled. speed was under 1Mb/s, and latency often exceeded 1 MINUTE. When calling their customer service, I was told to restart the modem and my computer. and that was their only suggestion. That didn’t work. Over the span of more than a month, I tried that, but had to time my accesses to low use times. Obviously, their satellite was overloaded. and this was for their new Gen 5 service.

    I then found a internet company with a wireless tower about 5 miles from our house, Etheric, which was double the price at about $140. However, the speed is over 50Mb/s and latency is under 1 second. We are happy with that for sure.

    Hughes Net had NO guarantee of speed or service, basically they could charge me and give me no service. On top of that, they have a $400 disconnect fee, as well as $300 deposit on their equipment, which I had to go to the roof to recover and return. I found Hughes Net to be deceptive and a total rip off. They are criminal. Their service is unusable.

    • Gabe1972

      Matt, right now they’re having some acknowledged beam issues. It’s not that they’re overloaded, though it appears that the problem is affecting throughput, which is causing issues that mimic the beams/gateways/satellite being overloaded. It’s unfortunate that they didn’t let you out of your contract without an ETF. They should have. Hopefully the issues will be fixed soon.

      • Deplorable Incisor

        DO NOT PURCHASE THIS SERVICE. And if you do, DO NOT LET THE INSTALLATION TECHNICIAN LEAVE UNTIL YOU ARE SURE IT WORKS AS ADVERTISED!!!

        Had this service installed four days ago and the installer had to leave for another appointment prior to making sure we could stream video. Big mistake letting him leave. We have 1-1.5 MB download and less than 1 MB upload speeds. Not something I am going to pay $80/month for, needless to say. Have contacted HughesNet for an RMA to return their equipment before the 30 day trial is up and all I get is canned “No Reply” emails promising a call-back that never comes. Try to call and get put on HOLD for 30-45 minutes and when you finally get someone on the phone all they do is tell you to restart the modem. My system works just fine on a cellular hotspot but they can’t (won’t) admit that the problem is on their end.
        If they are having problems, then maybe they should tell people that “UP FRONT”?
        Just my two cents.

        • Ardis Englebert

          I agree with 1000%. I hate Hughnet ” Buffer, Buffer. Buffer”! When my contract is up they are GONE!!!!!

          • Debbie Martin

            I hope you can get out of your contract. We hate HughesNet. It absolutely does not work! I can’t wait to get out of our contract.

    • Neihl Williamson

      I 100% whole heartedly agree with Matt. Hughes is horrible. The speeds are no where near 25 mbps and they tell me I use data as if I were streaming Netflix 24/7 which is definitely inaccurate and fraudulent on their part. There needs to be a class action lawsuit against them.

      • kazu Uechi

        I had a exactly same experience and I agreed with you everything. This company is so bad. Service never work and had to call many times and finally when I ask cancel the service, they asked me &400 for cancellation. For WHAT? Sucks!

      • Ana Laura Ibarra

        YES!! My Mom and Dad should get their money back!

        • Frank Lehner

          That’s awesome, they won’t give me my money back or let me out of the 2 year contract they make you sign up for. There service sucks, internet and phone.Can anyone give me some advise, I need out. Thanks

      • Robyn Gravely

        There does need to be a lawsuit! You should not be able to just flat out lie to people and then charge $400 for them to get out of contact!

    • Chae Singleton

      I completely agree Matt!! Hopefully this company will get shut down!!!!

  • N22TANGO

    Having Hughesnet a couple of years ago, I was so disgusted in the lack of customer support, terrible speeds, being penalized if I went BARELY over my allotted amount of upload/download, I don’t care if they launch a Gen 6 satellite next month and double the allotment.

    The analogy here is nearly like you are driving down a long and lonely country highway and you are starving then suddenly see what looks like the restaurant of your dreams just up the road. You pull in, eat and then soon are afflicted with salmonella poisoning. That’s what pretty much happened to a lot of us who were “enticed” by Hugesnet’s slick advertising a few years ago. After being on their gawdawful highest speed plan for two months, I opted to pay out of my contract and throw their equipment into a scrap metal recycling facility.

    We have two ranches here in Texas 40 miles apart and what is working much better (vastly better) is an unlimited plan we bought through AT&T. It came with a small Netgear device that runs fast, is about the size of a pack of cards and we can take the Netgear (go anywhere) device with us even when we are on vacation and have a secure WiFi. Plus, our iPhones now (his and hers) can act as a hotspot. Plus PLUS, we get DirectTV. This totally blows Hughesnet out of the water.

    Yep, if you get snake-bit once, you won’t go back to snakes nor to restaurants where you received TERRIBLE customer service and received “internet-poisioning” at the same time. Hey, Hughesnet (and even worse Wildblue, we had that one too)… “Hasta la vista, baby.”

  • Jennifer

    While I’ll agree with you that for those of us in rural areas, it’s probably the best (meaning only) option, there’s no need to gild the lily.
    “Reasonable data caps.”
    No, definitely not. I live in a household with just 2 people-myself and my husband. We go through the 50 gig in 3 days, and that is being conservative with our browsing and not actually doing what we want when we are on the internet. Then we are throttled until we give in and buy the data tokens, which are more expensive than the prices you’ve listed. Maybe we are on a different plan than the one you are talking about, but it’s $10 for 1 gig. ONE. We end up spending hundreds of dollars to just do the bare minimum on the internet each month. And the fastest download speed we have is 3 mbps, but usually it’s 2. And that’s before we are throttled! We usually end up driving 20 miles to Starbucks to use their wifi every week because at least then we can actually enjoy the internet.

    Let’s face it, this plan sucks. Plain and simple. If you live in a rural area, look into a hotspot instead.

  • Jennifer

    Nope, because I do exactly this. With the extra data tokens I have to purchase each month after being throttled, driving 20 miles to Starbucks is actually much cheaper.

    • Cori

      Still. NOT. Secure.

  • jmanrunner

    I understand what AAllen is saying but disagree. The online education system for higher learning is a joke. I earned my MBA the same way and fought their terrible web applications. Because the online learning system is geared towards multiple people writing posts and comments at the same time everything you do requires page refresh after page refresh. It was the worst experience I had trying to find a mobile provider that could give me enough bandwidth while traveling to be able to do my school work. I ran out of mobile hotspot data and cellular phone data plans did not work either. These school programs require traditional high speed and low latency data service that has very low latency and has consistent bandwidth. Cellular and satellite services need not apply because the bandwidth requirements are too high. You go to a news website or favorite entertainment website and it loads once and maybe refreshes every couple minutes. The school websites refresh every 20 seconds as you scroll through other students comments and expand new discussion areas which is when the latency issue hits. Comcast is about 100 milliseconds latency to websites or better where Hughesnet is never better than 600 milliseconds latency because of the satellite distance. The only thing that really stands out is that satellite is not for every use case but the bandwidth and reliability are very good.

    I have Hughesnet and Comcast. I tried AT&T first. Both AT&T and Comcast offer such disappointing service in my suburban neighborhood I had to have a backup plan. Hughesnet gives me the peace of mind I need for my home alarm system and home automation devices. These services keep telling my the Comcast network is unavailable because of the packet loss. Hughesnet just works and it always works. I use it for general web surfing, banking, file downloads, and streaming apps. Packet latency is not the greatest but it is optimal for satellite. AT&T drops 50% of traffic in my area and Comcast drops 30%. They are unusable at times and if you read about Comcast they have multiple outages a week month after month. Hughesnet never fails me. It won’t work very well for higher education/Blackboard services but that is because the people writing the software today do not know how to test Internet access properly. The current state of Blackboard and others are a mess. Hughesnet has near zero packet loss. The highest I have ever seen is 0.7%, less than 1%. Hughesnet is the Steady Eddie of the Internet. It works and is extremely reliable. I am a network architecture consultant and have never worked for a cable or satellite provider. I am super happy with Hughesnet and am not disallusioned that it is more than it claims to be. It’s a luxury to have two providers at the moment but I would have very few reservations ditching Comcast. It’s true the latency is better on Comcast but the service and consistency and bandwidth from Hughesnet Gen 5 is superb. If Hughesnet could give me a 1 TB (or unlimited) data plan I would cancel Comcast in a heartbeat.

  • john Smith

    That’s exactly what makes Hughes a really bad choice. I am surprised if you are still employed with Hughes. I suggest you start looking for something else to earn your living….

  • Bobby Walker

    Terrible service, terrible customer service, lied to about service before installation. I was told would be same as cable modem, lie. With just one person in house was slow but ok, with two service crawled and locked up. Customer service in the Philippines told me only one device could be run at a time. I was on the phone 6 hours repeating me same story over and over going through same diagnostics to no avail. I told them since I was lied to they were in breach of contract, i guess since in Philippines and they were reading their scripts they did not understand. I would not recommend to my worst enemy.

  • Bobby Walker

    They SUCK

  • Michelle Bell

    Please do not purchase this service. We were very specific about how we use our wifi when we called Hughesnet about their services. We told the representative that we have 2 laptops, 2 iphones and stream our TV from Amazon Firestick and Chrome. She assured me that the 20GB would be more than enough to meet our needs. I would say my husband and I use less data than the average customer. We don’t do any gaming and we both work during the day. What they failed to tell us before we agreed to a 2-year contract was that Chrome and Amazon Firestick will pretty much exhaust our data in the first week. We have had the service since August of this year and have used up all of the 20GB of data by the middle of the month, leaving us with super slow internet for the remainder of the month as opposed to the really slow internet we have when we have data to use. Hughesnet customer service has been less then accommodating in making this right. They gave us incorrect information to begin with and now we have discovered we can get something like 250GB with AT&T for exactly the same price as what we are paying fpr 20GB with Hughesnet. We use 2GB per day just using our phones and computers in the evenings. We cannot watch Netflix or any other streaming service as it will use up too much of our data. 2GB per day for a 30 day billing cycle is 60GB. How can Hughesnet say that 20GB will cover the average customer? When I explained to the customer support person (after calling every month) that we were not told about how much data the Firestick and Chromecast would use and were assured that 20GB would be enough data, they gave us 1GB of data to make up for the mistake. I honestly thought the guy was joking when he offered me an additional 1GB of data. He acted like he had just offered me a million dollars. What a joke!!!! Now we are left with paying a $400 fee for cancelling our contract early, even though I don’t believe they held up their end of the agreement. I just hope I can keep anyone else from making this mistake.

  • Amy

    The area in which my house is located, Verizon DSL was the only option I had for internet service. To those who say, use DSL over HughesNet, the Verizon DSL service was poor at best. I’m so happy to be cancelling my service with them. We could not get internet without paying for a landline which we have not used for many, many years. HughesNet will be a tremendous savings, eliminate an unnecessary expense of the landline and already I’m liking the much faster speed of the internet. So, don’t claim that DSL is better unless you’re 100% sure of that claim.

  • Scott Rogers

    I had 2 college kids come to my house working for grandmaw that is a dealer in my local area to get internet. The kids put a 2″x8″ wide gash in the sheet rock over my entertainment and a 4ftx 4ft hole in the ceiling in 2 hrs. The 2 hours the only thing done was damage to my home. I missed 2hrs of work this morning waiting on someone to repair the sheetrock which the guy was 3 hrs late. I have been on the phone with hughes net for 3 hrs trying to figure this out and they want to send the same local dealer out to install the internet. Not having this no one is trying to help me the customer service is horrible I will never recemond hughes net They had no problem taking my money Friday.

  • Jeremy

    So your argument that Hughes Net is good is that people only complain because they are used to better and that they shouldn’t use the service and get outdoors and smell the roses? Way to sell it! In my opinion, no one should ever pay for internet service based on usage. You will get screwed every time no matter how good the service actually is.

  • Jen Dias

    My experience with Hughsnet was not pleasant. There service was awful and the customer service was worse. I hate to have to say this but I am very happy my contract is up, now I have to pay $100 to get their equipment removed from my house. Very sad how people conduct business today. They have not heard the last of me

  • Logan

    This Internet is like the Ronnie said a “Last Resort” internet if you need internet. Its speed is not as you expect. The posted speeds are probably just if your getting 100% out of the power and location of your place. You are more then likely to have high latency issues or high ping as others call it, but the download speeds is there. So the purpose of this internet is for browsing the internet for information, maybe social media stuff, but not for “GAMING”. People don’t realize the issue that they have with this internet is that it’s for the people who live out in the boonies with nothing electronically that can entertain them. Examples of its wrong uses are playing online games, some game may work but not to the high quality new generation games. Streaming videos/movies uses up a lot of data and so you’ll only have data for about a couple hours then have to wait a til your next payment is do to get data again. You do get free 50gb of data at a certain time of night but it’s really unlikely you’ll be up. This internet is for real old folks who are probably retired and use the internet rarely but still have access to it when they want. Example of that is if I was an retired old man living in the boonies with no television but wanna keep up with sports. I’ll have this internet for informational use cause I don’t want to live in town with all those cars, companies, and neighbors making so much noise. I don’t discredit people who had bad experiences with them as I do as well, but you also have to understand their primary uses.
    I dislike their representatives. My experience was that I was calling to cancel this service with them because my parents haven’t been using their service for a while since I got it for and now they got cell phones. I don’t live with them but they have unplugged the modem and the computer doesn’t work anymore. So now they can’t use the internet. As I called to see if I can refund unused data or cancel with them. The employee insisted that there was still data usage and that kinda pissed me off because the computer was dead and the modem was unplugged. How can any data be consumed? He did it for the business I’m sure but that’s fucked up. The contract was done so I didn’t have to pay the cancellation fee but they stopped using it already 5 months ago. I rather of paid the cancellation fee then of been charged those 5 months. I was just not at all satisfied with what they were trying to do to me but I just said whatever and was trying to get it off my monthly payment charges. If whoever is in the same situation don’t wave it off like me if you can fight it. Because I’m pretty sure a lot of people have been fucked over like this before. I’m just to busy to care for a minor issues like that but this might be an bigger issue for someone else.

  • Todd

    So I’m stepping up on my soap box.

    Just a word to the wise,never I repeat never use HughesNet for internet. They say that it is good high speed internet. It sucks! All it does is buffer and is slower the molasses in the middle of winter. Their customer service thinks it’s a joke that it doesn’t work then laughs at you then when you ask to speak to a supervisor they put you on indefinite hold. I think I’d rather have dial up internet…. It would be faster. Worst experience with a company ever. It has been a horrible experience,so to my friends and family if the thought ever crosses your mind don’t do-it it’s not worth the migraine that it will give you.

  • Lynnsey P

    I have had Hughes Net for a year and I can honestly say it has been the most miserable internet service I have ever experienced. The wifi will stop working several times throughout the day. This is a serious problem because I am trying trying to finish my Bachelors degree online and had to retake a handful of tests because I have an AWFUL internet provider. My husband and I are going to buy out our contract after the new year because Hughes Net is truly that terrible. I am sure it is going to be a hassle trying to return the equipment and Hughes Net will make every obstacle harder to jump through, but as long as we don’t have to have this awful internet and never have to deal with their miserable customer service again, it will be worth it!

  • theresa

    I live out in a rural area and I was told this would absolutely work for me since I have to bring work home I needed access to the internet. I had high hopes with everything they promised me. WRONG! The pages take about 10 minutes or so to load if they even decide to load. I have to constantly exit and reopen the 1 page I have open. Even now I am sure this will take about 30 minutes to submit. Also, the “sales person” I spoke to guaranteed me 30 days or my money back but she did warn me it would be $400 to cancel if I decided to stay and would be locked in to a 24 month contract. I said great I will give it a try and see how it goes. Well turns out after speaking to the cancellation dept. they don’t even offer a “30 day money back”. My fault. I should have looked into it more but I was honestly excited to have my internet back. (moved back to my hometown from the city) So less than 2 weeks later and I am having to fork over $400 to cancel. Which honestly that makes tons of sense now. The service charges a big cancellation fee because they know people will either be forced to stay or pay the whopping $400 to cancel. It’s a win win situation either way.

  • Duke Reno

    There is nothing good about Hughes net.
    Service & support are both horrible!
    I live in the foothills of the Sierra’s in northern California. Internet options are few. Hughesnet was pasting the airwaves and
    filling our mailbox with flyers touting their new Gen 5 system. Since we were on the ailing AT&T DSL
    system with a consistent, but maximum speed of 2 Mbps, we decided to give
    Hughesnet a shot. Our intention was to
    get faster speeds so we could watch movies on demand and just get more out of
    browsing the internet, music, youtube, etc.

    I am good friends with a Hughesnet installer so he made arrangements to
    be one of the first in my area to get the Gen 5 install. On initial install the speed was only about
    9Mbps. Which seemed lightning fast compared
    to a decade of 2 Mbps with DSL. The
    problems with Hughesnet Gen 5 began about the time the installer left the
    driveway.

    Symptoms: Internet speeds varied
    considerably. Even with a new Gen 5 satellite,
    and less than 100 residents on our ‘beam’ it slowed to a crawl at peak times, weekends
    and holidays. Peak times are from 9am to 10 pm PST.

    If there is a hint of a cloud in the sky your speeds drop off. If it is sunny, your speed will drop. If it is foggy, a full moon, winds, or
    migrating birds, your speeds will drop.

    Service: The speeds vary so
    wildly you cannot get anything accomplished on the internet. You will completely lose internet service for
    a minute, then it will go back to 2 Mbps.
    Trying to complete an application on a website that will time-out is
    impossible. Government websites are the
    worst. Trying to watch a video (with the
    lowest resolution set) is frustrating since it is constantly interrupted and
    endlessly buffering. Music downloads are
    next to impossible. Even installing
    updates is difficult because of the sudden loss of signal. During peak hours our speeds are in the kilo-bits
    per second which is worse than our previous DSL service.

    Customer Service: Customer
    Service is atrocious! I spent 3 months following the install on the phone
    with Hughesnet trying to figure out why my speed was in the Kbps. If you are lucky, you will get customer
    service in Texas during that states normal business hours. After that, your customer service call goes
    to the Phillipines. Most of the time the
    telephone connection is low volume or with static. Customer service acts concerned until you
    have a record of calling. Once your
    account is recognized as high maintenance, they transfer you into the black
    hole. They put you through the same drill every
    time. Restart the modem, restart your computer,
    delete your browsing history, close all other windows, turn off all other devices
    utilizing the Wi-Fi connection. They
    will have you do speed test, after speed test.
    I actually used all of my first months data in 5 days doing speed tests,
    because after all, you are using data.

    Customer Service will blame their slow speed on the weather, peak
    times, your computer, too many devices using wi-fi (I had no other devices), that
    you are past your data limit (in my case 20 Gb) which reduces your speed to a
    max 1 Mbps. They would blame your overage
    before even looking at your data balance.
    Aside from the first month of service, I cannot use my allotted data of
    just 20 Gb because the speed is not consistently fast enough to download enough
    data to exceed the cap.

    I kept weeks worth of speed tests that clearly indicated when the
    service speed dropped off. Every single
    customer service rep said it didn’t matter.

    The most concerning part of the Customer Service is that they hang up
    on you at the 20, or 30 minute mark and don’t call back. They hang up whether your issue is addressed
    or not. It has something to do with the
    time they have allotted per phone call.
    It is maddening. Customer Service
    says they take notes about the issue, and you can hear them typing, but if you
    call back in a day, a week, or a month, there is no record they even spoke with
    you. About three months into my service,
    the customer service rep said there was a problem but they were not able to
    figure it out and that I would have to call back another time. On one occasion, after I was disconnected
    after my allotted 20 minutes, the customer service rep answered the phone
    trying to sound like a computer recorded message saying their system was down
    and to call back the next day.

    Currently the only way out of our contract, which we never signed, and
    we never saw until service started, is to pay $400 and return the
    equipment. There are horror stories about
    other customers returning their equipment, and still being charged for it with
    the claim that Hughesnet didn’t receive it.

    Do yourself a favor and do not even consider this service. RUN!
    And run without looking back.

  • Douglas Hsia

    We are a household of 3 people over 50s in the Sacramento River Delta. It means that none of do gaming or streaming movie. When I watched the Hughes Net ad on CNN, it showed people use the WiFi freely and happily. After 2 months into using Hughes Net, I found myself becoming the tyrant of the house, constantly agonized over using too much data. My girlfriend used to listed to music with the I pad and I had to take it away from her. The problem is Hughes Net kept telling me I used up my data of 20 GB. Everyday I have cautiously to turn off the phone, I pad, laptops and the printer which is a night mare because it sometimes take me a long time to connect which to my devices. It is making my life miserable. I asked to cancel the service and they slapped me with a prohibitively charges.

    We have done data depletion test 2 times and they found everything normal. I had to keep track of my using of data everyday, sometimes I used 4 GB in one day. How can I survive with their plan. Mere 2 GB a day is translated to 60 GB a day. The biggest plan they offer is 50 GB. I say it again, I don’t do gaming, streaming movie nor music. Hughes Net totally mis-represent us when they say unlimited data usage when it actually means, when you use up the allotted data, one still has the connection but it is so excruciatingly slow, one might as well resort to mercy killing.

  • Patrick Jackson

    HughesNet Gen 5 is the slowest and worst internet service I’ve ever used even more the customer service is terrible no one is American and they don’t care about American people and keeping customers there for they probably will not have jobs Long and this company will probably go out of business

  • Patrick Jackson

    HughesNet is the worst internet service you could ever get I’ve got the Gen 5 for the last 7 months and have called continuously every month complaining that I can upload or download stuff for work I’m going to lose my job so I have to get new internet service and I call monthly to try and get it fixed but the Philippines and Middle Eastern people do not understand how to treat customers

  • Patrick Jackson

    , I am a HughesNet Gen 5 customer and have never had such terrible internet and terrible customer service the Middle Eastern and Philippine people I call and talk to do not take care of me I called a week ago and they said they would contact me back within 24 to 72 hours to fix my internet and they have not I am going to lose my job so here for I have to cancel the internet and will not pay their termination fees I’ve called several times over the past 5 months trying to get my internet resolved but the Middle Eastern people just do not under any understand English

  • Holly Johnson

    We’re 1 month into have HughesNet and we’re really disappointed. Our service bogs down while watching Netflix (it buffers and we were told by HughesNet this wouldn’t happen) and checking email at the same time. I’ve tried to contact HughesNet by email but no response. I would not recommend!

  • Darry Dalbec

    Do not allow Hughes access to your credit cards. I had service at my home that a previous room mate set up. It has been a nightmare. First, they wouldn’t let me close out the account on my property. After about a year and a half of problems they would not address because it ‘was not my account’—I said I would no longer pay for an account that was not mine. The representative said he would close out that account and open a new one for me and that would solve the problem. (yes, they previously refused to do it) but they had no other recourse to get money out of me. They removed all old equipment and installed all new equipment. I called when I started getting excessive amounts charged. They always had a reason—then I forgot about it. 6 months later, I noticed two charges on the same bill. They had been charging me for the old account and the new account for 6 months. ($600 +) extra (double). I called thinking they would either refund the money or credit me. They admitted they were doing that and said there would be no way my money would be returned! Yes, they actually told me that several times. I blocked access to my credit card.That’s when the nightmare really began! They started sending threatening pop ups saying I was delinquent sending in my payment starting the day of the new billing cycle….before I ever received a bill. At one point, they even blocked me from accessing any news agency in the country! (I have it on film) Why? Right before, I was researching investigative news reporting. Then they cut off my service two weeks before my due date–for non payment.

    Basically, they control the service you receive. I told them I was having streaming problems during the day and every night–but not at 3 o4 in the morning. That night was the first night of streaming problems at 4 in the morning. Then after 4 more hours dealing with this, they insisted on sending a service man 4 days later. I had perfect service for those 4 days. I did not cancel the service call because I knew what was going on. He came out. I told him he would find nothing wrong—he was amazed at what good speed I had, which didn’t surprise me. He left. An hour or two later it was back to crappy service–even at 3 AM.

    This is what Trump supports. Internet companies are now–or will be allowed to do whatever they want. They can spy and monitor all of your internet uses. Big Brother is now a reality!

    • Consumer Advocate

      Ditto on what Darry stated…. Unbelievable what this company does. Strips the Hi Def part of your HD stream from Netflix off so you can ” save data” What a deal.. My Hi-Def television is now worthless.
      I have not been able to cancel the service unless I agree to the termination fees. I told them I want a refund because they can only provide 1.8Mps upload speed of the advertised 3 Mps. They told me if you look at their legal piece on their website that 60% of the advertised 3MB is acceptable.
      I told them I would pay 60% of my bill then as that is in my legal. WOW what a farce company.
      DO NOT… DO NOT spend you money with this Scam company. I called my bank to cancel my automatic deduction and they asked why… I informed them of the 4 dropped calls as I tried to cancel my service and they waved the fees for me. Hopefully this works. How do corporations get this kind of laws setup?? I found a GREAT consumer advocacy website…. http://www.elliot.org that provide additional customer support emails at the executive level.. I have been emailing Hughes Net executives in hopes that they will get annoyed with my emails.. THANK YOU ELLIOT!!!!

      • Gabe1972

        Why is your Hi-Def television worthless? Disable the Video Data Saver if you want to watch Netflix in HD. Keep in mind, though, that Netflix in HD uses about 3GB of data per hour of streaming. That HughesNet includes an optional tool to make Netflix stream in SD to save data should be looked on favorably. If you don’t want the Video Data Saver to throttle your streaming speed to that which is amenable to streaming in SD disable it.

  • Holly Dungan

    We only have DSL at 1.5mbps speed available. From comments, sounds like this is still favorable as compared to a 20mbps plan by Hughes.net – is that correct assumption ? Curious what causes the congestion? Is it purely # of clients to a satellite? If so, presumably service will improve with Gen5, and then decline as more folks get onboarded.

  • Ian Hufnagle

    This is the worst WiFi I have ever had! I’ve had it for two months now and only been able to use it maybe two week! And every time I trhy to call them to ask to get it fixed I wait on hold tell my phone dies, and never get to even talk to anyone! I wouldn’t recommend this crap to anyone!!! It’s a waste of $80 a month even tho I got the $40 plan but some how it’s $80!

  • Dawn

    In August 2016 I suspended my service because I moved Your customer service rep said he would call me in 2 months to see if I wanted to reconnect after I finished my move. I never received a call and I hadn’t called because I was still in between places. In February 2017, I noticed that Hughesnet had been charging me for service since October 2016 for service I never asked for. I called customer service and disconnected my service permanently for that reason. At the very least, when I did have an active account I would receive a monthly invoice via email, what a sneaky way of doing business. I messaged one of their customer service reps because I have been a receiving a collection notice for 325.00. I was told that it would be looked into and get back with me. A couple of months passed and nothing. I assumed the problem was taken care of but no – another collection notice came. Poor customer service. Avoid using Hughes Net.

  • BeehiveRound

    Consistently fails to provide advertised speeds, or speeds even close to advertised. Data cap maxes it out at 50GB which is ridiculously tiny for this day and age; after 50GB they exploit you to the tune of $3 a GB if you want 25GB more be prepared to pay $75. Once you breach your data cap internet speeds are so slow that it becomes practically futile to try and use the internet anyway.

  • BeehiveRound

    Consistently fails to provide advertised speeds, or speeds even close to advertised. Data cap maxes it out at 50GB which is ridiculously tiny for this day and age; after 50GB they rape you to the tune of $3 a GB if you want 25GB more be prepared to pay $75. Once you breach your data cap internet speeds are so slow that it becomes practically futile to try and use the internet anyway.

  • BeehiveRound

    Consistently fails to provide advertised speeds, or speeds even close to advertised.

  • George Mead

    An hour long call with their tech support netted an admission that their test of my speed was at about ONE PERCENT of their advertised speed of 25mbps. Still, they insisted that everything was working correctly.

  • Dave

    I wish what you said was true AAlen, but I switched fron Gen4 to Gen5 on Oct 19, 2017 & have been totally sorry for the downgrade since then. Over 61% of the time my download speed is 5,000 kbps or less, 26% of my test have been 15,000 kbps or more, which I have been told during my numerousc alls to customer service, is the bottom threshhold for the advertised 25mbps. my download speed have been in the 200-300 kbps range, I about 1/3 of the time my upload speed is faster than download & their advertised upload speed of up to 3mbps is closer to accurate.

    It would be so nice to have an alternative, you that have cell availability, count it as a blessing, you are not realy rural even if you have DSL. Can’t even download a software purchase of 4 GB, time out from the lack of speed.

    So frustrating when promised engineers are working on a fix, got a new modem & the receiver on the dish today & no change. Truely vapor ware. Gen 4 was better, it delivered about half of advertised speed more consistently.

  • Charlotte Juarez

    I’ve spent the last year trying to separate myself from Hughes net. I’ve been turned into collection agencies several times for money I do not owe. Spent hours on the phone repeating the same information, being told it’s taken care of and receiving collection notices again 4 to 6 months later. Absolute nightmare. Just received another notice this week. Just spent 45 min on the phone being told that oh yeah you don’t owe anything but you’ll have to call this other number Monday morning. Really don’t know what to do anymore…

  • Debbie Martin

    I have lived in the city my entire life…and never had an internet problem until my husband decided to switch from AT&T to HughesNet! It sucks. It rarely works. I work from home and the internet goes in and out all day. We can’t watch Netflix or Hulu unless we want to sit every few minutes and watch it buffering and buffering. We finally gave up and cancelled those services until we can get rid of you! Your company came out and told us how great they were and how much better they were than AT&T. That was a joke! You are deceptive liars and thieves representing yourselves and a reputable viable internet option…and for the record, you are an idiot! Maybe it’s the trickle down effect! You all suck!

  • Joe Swingle

    Stay away from HughesNet! I live in the country with limited access to internet. I do video conferencing from home for work. I was using DSL previously but my telephone company could only give me 10mg down 1mg up so I looked into Hughesnet. I explained to the salesperson exactly what I do and he guaranteed that I would be able to do that with them. I didn’t know that with some types of internet services you can’t do video conferencing no matter how fast your bandwidth. After I spent all the money for the installation and everything I started having issues. When I contacted them, their tech guy explained to me that satellite internet does not support things like video conferencing and video camera security systems and he’s had numerous customers who’ve told him that their sales person guaranteed them that it would work. So if the tech ppl know it won’t, I’m sure the sales ppl know it won’t or even if they don’t, they shouldn’t “guarantee” it will like he did for me. Then on top of everything, they wanted me to pay them $500 to uninstall the satellite and terminate the services. STAY AWAY FROM HUGHESNET!!! Their salespeople lie!

  • Judy Compton

    I have Hughes Net and I hate it, I might it service one week out of the month, so I might as well be without service, now I need to get out of this contract, $77.00 is too high for this

  • Larry Wilder

    This is the worst company ever. I had another internet company before that was ok but data was limited so I went to DSL. Then decided to try HUGHES. Customer service was terrible. 20-30 minutes on hold the 3-4 times I called. 6 hours to download a movie. Could not view utube video without buffering every 20 seconds. DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY. Once you sign contract you do not have an out. It would takes 10-20 seconds to get to main google screen. bad service with phone and laptop both.

  • Greg Williams

    OK…so, I have had HughesNet for just 3 days. I was with comcast, where my internet speed was 100 speed, BUT, my 2 year contract was over,,,my bill for cable, internet, and phone went from 225 to 285…I called,,,after going to DISH for cable TV (100 bucks) and they told me I could not get their “double Play” at 60 dollars (65 speed) and phone…They wanted to charge me 160…so, I went to hughes…installation was great…tested download speed..it was 33…The only problem so far is the modem had to be put in a closet on one side of the house, so the wireless is limited…It has 3 wired ports, really 4, but one is for the phone…so my whole house is covered with “other” hotspots…I just ordered the Hughes wifi booster (99 bucks) to cover the whole house and will update then…So far…this thing is fast enough for what I do…Netflix is not a problem..have watched a couple of hours and still have 99 percent of my 10gig left to play with…This is by no means a cable cutting alternative…They tell you that up front…I am still playing with it, and even though they say there is no 30 cancel window,,,if this don’t work to my expectations…we shall see if they really don’t have that option..but,,so far…the system works. My bill for phone/internet is 83 bucks…10 gig…If I could get comcast ..the deal would be 60 bucks,,plus 20 dollars rental fee for modem.

  • Camrie Doyen

    DO NOT SIGN A CONTRACT WITH HUGHES NET. – read to the end please!
    I am writing this review to dissuade anyone thinking about getting Hughes Net. Do not listen to anyone who has had a ” good experience” with Hughes Net. I made that mistake and now i feel as if Hughes Net has stolen money from me.

    At first everyone you talk to at the sales department is really friendly and they promise that you will have no issues accessing the internet. They say if you ever have any issues they will come out and help you get it straightened out. They say that if you get the higher data plan you will be fine with streaming and gaming. They make a lot of promises and it is 100% a scam.

    The first WEEK we had Hughes Net it stopped working. I couldn’t load Pinterest or Netflix or anything. I called in to customer service and they said it was because there were clouds in Arizona and it was blocking the Satellite dish… I asked her if there were any clouds ever if that was going to keep me from using the internet because they didn’t go over this on our sales talk. She said she would look into it. I hung up and got charged $1.00 for my call to customer service. Still no internet.

    After that it was spotty. We could load Facebook or our online bills for about 10 min a day. Nothing more. After months of paying $85.00 and not having internet I finally called customer service again. The first guy told me to monitor when we didn’t have internet. I just monitored when we did. I was charged another $1.00 for the call. I called in again and said we are still not having any luck being able to access the internet. All they told me was that it looked fine from their end. When I asked why I didn’t have internet if everything looked fine they gave me some dumb response to beat around the bush and get me off the phone. I was constantly tossed from one rep to another being told my internet was fine even though I couldn’t load the Hughes net website. I was charged $1.00 for every call. I froze my account. At some point I got on the phone AGAIN, and got a sales rep. He said I shouldn’t be having any of the issues I was having and that customer service should have sent out a technician to help me. I got transferred back to customer service and they said they would have to trouble shoot first. Where was the offer to trouble shoot months ago? They looked up my account and said that because it was on hold they wouldn’t be able to troubleshoot for 72 hours. Such a joke. When I told them I was done with the crappy customer service and wanted to cancel they all of a sudden were able to troubleshoot. I just told them to put it back on hold and hung up. And yes, I was charged another $1.00 for the call. I called my bank and canceled the card I had on file with them.

    In order to cancel your contract with Hughes Net you are charged a $400.00 termination fee. I was not going to pay that for something I was never given or never worked in the first place. They sent me a box to send back their equipment. That box was the nicest thing Hughes Net ever did for me. I am now facing collections for not paying the early termination fee. Okay I get that from not paying but IT NEVER WORKED. And you want to steal more of my money? You already got $85.00 a month and didn’t even give me internet in return.

    Honestly, Our Verizon hot spot and jet pack were they only way i was able to get internet where I live. Now and when we had Hughes Net.

    Please do not get Hughes Net. It says in their contract that they don’t warranty anything. The service is the worst I’ve ever experienced. They charge $195 to send someone out to look at your equipment. Their contract also says that they don’t guarantee that the internet with actually give you the speeds and data they offer. I thought, ” it can’t be that bad,” but it was. Get Dish Network or Direct TV or get a good data plan on your phone with access to a hot spot. If you really want to go for Hughes Net after this then at least read the terms and conditions VERY carefully and realize you wont get help from any one at Hughes Net for any issues you face.

  • Jason Jupe

    NEVER USE HUGHESNET!!! This company is a complete rip-off. I only had their service for two months. Both months they failed to provide the services they promised me from the beginning. When I called the first time to complain, their only solution was to charge me more money. After I found another provider, that is giving me better service for less money. I called to cancel my services with HughesNet. They now want to charge me $500.00 for cancelation and removing the equipment from my house. This company has lied to me from the beginning and now they are trying to steal my hard earned money. Whatever you do, find another provider. Do not trust them, they will rip you off in the end!

  • Tracy

    I had Hughes net for years… What a waste of money!! We got better reception on our Verizon phones than with satellite internet from Hughes net! I called to cancel 6 months ago and today I got a past due bill, they suspended my account instead of cancelling like I asked them to. Luckily I have since switched debit cards so they can’t keep taking money out of my account!!

    When you do need customer service you get a call center in a foreign country and people that you can’t understand!!!! The company is a joke and a bunch of liars!! Don’t trust them with your bank account info!!!

  • MamaKai

    I’ve had nothing but issues with Hughes net. It does not work on mobile devices or computers. Over the year we had their service, we called and complained numerous times. Each time they told me that the problem was somehow my fault. For example, the router – which we bought from them, but they could fix it with a better router that’s only another $100. Another time – it’s the LAN cable. Replaced the LAN cable and still nothing. We finally purchased a WeBoost and use our phones as hot spots for internet.

    When I called to cancel, I got the run-around that all of my problems would go away if I just pay more for something else they offer! Yeah, sure, let me get right on that. I argued with a tech to waive the cancellation fee, which went nowhere. So I’m paying for them to cancel a service that they never provided in the first place, after paying a monthly fee, installation fee, and buying a router from them for internet that does not work. I’m not talking about slow internet (I grew up with dialup). I’m talking about an error message that I’m connected with no internet every single day.

    If you have ANY other option, take it. They’ll expect you to pay outrageous amounts for a service they will not provide.

  • bill e

    HughesNet assured me they had a 30 day money back. They did not explains the 10 gig data download limit for my plan, thus when I found out, I canceled. I had to ask for supervisor, complain, demand my installation $ back. In the end and knowing it is not the end yet, they canceled my service and refunded installation. Going to send me a post paid box for equipment (wonder how this will work with the dish !). So will see if they actually come through on what they promised and I see my money back. Of course dealt with someone in Philippines. Bunch of losers.

  • Erich Turner

    Live in the mts and researching alternatives to my Verizon “internet”. It works great, it’s just friggin’ pricey.
    Alternatives here are FRONTIER and HUGHES. Frontier is capped out and, according to locals who use it, pretty crappy.
    I used HUGHES back around 2008 (something like that). I lived in the country with wide open spaces, figured, hey, DTV works great, this is the answer to no DSL, no cable. I am NOT a streamer (don’t think it was available back then), or heavy user. Just a simple email, internet person.
    Talk about crappy.
    I spent more time on the phone with “Customer Service” than I did online (a lot of that was asking them to please repeat what they said because, apparently, in India, they can’t speak “Amurican”).
    The service was so bad I actually began to keep records of down times, slow speeds, time spent on the phone trying to interpret the aforementioned reps, etc.
    After several months of enduring all this and repeatedly calling, trying to connect with someone higher up the food chain, I actually, finally, spoke with a Vice President at some main office somewhere.
    After the usual explanation, as given to many CS reps previous, and listening to his attempt to salve my complaints, he said, “If you are that dissatisfied with the service, we will waive the ETF. You can keep the gear, do with it as you please”. Basically, just please leave me alone and go away.
    So I did.
    Even sold the gear.
    In considering my alternatives here in the mts., I am glad I found these reviews.
    I wish HUGHES all the best.
    And good luck to those who use it.

  • kazu Uechi

    Hey Highesnet people!
    I hope you guys read those bad review about your company! And shame on you!!!!

  • Angela T.

    Do not sign up with HughesNet!! I never got the service I paid for! I rarely ever had service and when I finally called to complain I miraculously got service for a day or two then nothing! But accidentally stream one video and “boom” all your data allowance disappears. The worst part is when you call to cancel your service you learn the contract fine print. It costs $400 your first 90 days to cancel and each month after ninety days only subtracts $15. So if you get fed up after 6 months and try to cancel it will cost you $355, after a year $265, etc…also when you call to cancel they try to get you to hang up by putting you on hold for 10 mins at a time. “Oh, you want to cancel service? Hold on one minute while I check the computer” .. ten mins later “ I am going to talk to a manager to see if we can lower that cancellation fee, hold please”… 10 mins later “ the manager says you are bound by the terms of Your contract. It will cost $400 to terminate. How about I discount your service by $10 a month. Hold please and I will see what I can do for you”… ten mins later. I am just waiting for someone to sue so I can join a class action law suit. I know I got ripped off. Don’t make the same mistake.

  • Rachel O’Connell

    Awful, awful, awful. Please dont go with them. Get Verizon and we have a Mifi device. We also sometimes use our phones for hotspot to. This is my first review of a company and I use to work for big corporations and we all know what they can do with a click of a button now adays. I had mine installed on 3/10/18, charged me the first months bill (+taxes) $61.87 we would increase if it worked, called for 7 days straight, even had a technician come back out to check, spent hours on phone doing checks and running tests, I was at 522KBPS 97% less than the us average haha. They canceled my services and said i wouldnt be charged the $400 (by some comments that doesnt sound like thats true but we shall see). I have had a internet using satilite in texas and they were so much better even for small local company. It was called total communications or totalcomm something like that and we had great service. Anyways, customer service guy was rude and just obnoxious. Very disappointed.

  • burgie

    Hughes Net is a complete disaster. They sold us a bill of goods, guaranteeing that the service would be 25down no less than 3.5up and never came close to those numbers. They folks installing the equipment were professional. At first there was drop offs and Hughes net sent out the service tech who ended up pointing the sat dish at another bird, admitting to me that Hughes net over sold the service resulting the severe restriction of download/upload speeds. He stated that his service calls were nearly all related to the system being over subscribed. After the dish was on the other satellite, there was only mediocre increase in service, however the upload was intermittent and limited to no more than 50k/sec. The drop off precluded the use for RDP or any remote work. A technician was again sent out to attempt a fix but after looking through the system, checking the signal he apologized and said he could get any better than “bad” upload download speeds he tested. He also stated that the system was over subscribed and his time was mostly the same problems observed with our hookup. In short, Hughes Net may had been a good service at one time, but the system is totally over subscribed resulting in inferior connection speeds which combined with the drop offs make the service essentially useless.

  • John Salvatore

    Hughesnet is DECEPTIVE!!! they tout the 25 MB for families. you can watch 4 movies on Netflix for 24 MB. thats for the WHOLE MONTH, WITH NOTHING ELSE!!! they say you stay online after time runs out but it ois at 1.2MB!!! Can’t do anything with that! HUGHESNET STINKS!!! DO NOT SIGN UP!!!

  • Cori

    You need to understand that HughesNet doesn’t actually check the bandwidth you actually use, but evidently the bandwidth they THINK you MIGHT use.

    We got charged for mega Gigabytes when we were on vacation, not even home, with NO ONE else having access to our wifi or password.

    They are crooks, plain and simple.

  • Cori

    I realize I’m late to the party, but if you are still considering Gen 5, don’t bother.

    We are in rural Tennessee, and when we switched to Gen 5, our service went down, not up. We have LESS connectivity now than before we “upgraded.” Beware.

  • Cori

    Lie, lie and more lie.
    Your speeds have NEVER even approached the advertised speeds.. Not once.

  • Thebes42

    They CLAIM to now have 50gb of night-time “high speed” data.
    BUT they’re capping my torrent download at JUST 15KB/s. At THIS pathetically slow rate my 8gb download will take OVER A WEEK of time between 2am and 8am.
    Their traffic shaping is even happening during my daytime hours when I’m not FAP’d, sometimes even on tumblr and other websites.
    Their traffic shaping WAS NOT THIS BAD before the White house ended Net Neutrality. But it’s gotten pretty bad since. Youtube, still fine of course…
    Avoid them if you have another option. Sorry I signed their contract, at least I’m renting the equipment, if I have another option I’ll probably break the contract and let them try explaining their severe restrictions on giving me what I signed up for!

  • Howard Sprengeler

    Look around, check service providers like T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon. You can get unlimited wifi through them for a lot less. I pay $5 per month for 3G and it runs at 2.5mbps. Plenty for streaming tv shows, Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube and many video sites. Have it connected to my android box and stream movies and live tv w/o problems. Look to ebay for services, people always selling plans. Picked up AT&T unlimited 4G LTE no cap, no throttle, 38mbps down, 17mbps up for $30 per month. Works great! We live in the country where no cable or DSL is available but would never use satellite. Used to work for DISH and felt sorry for the customers who paid for that garbage.

  • Ana Laura Ibarra

    HughesNet is the WORST!!!! My parents had it for 1 month before a housefire destroyed their home. When they rebuilt, Hughes came to re-install and did a horrible job! They didnt have the needed cables so my brother had to give them some so they can finish the job. They finished very late at night because they couldnt take the “hold” off the account, so no one got to see the installation of the satelite till the next morning. They left the upload at 0.21 mbps- no where close to the 3.0 my parents are paying for. My parents rely on Vonage for phone service and its just not compatible with such incompetent internet. They want to charge my parents $125 to send a technician out there. I would NEVER recommend this internet to ANYONE.

  • Ana Laura Ibarra

    Why didnt i see these comments earlier???? 😢😢😢😢😢

  • Gary

    Watching Netflix uses about 1 GB of data per hour for each stream of standard definition video, and up to 3 GB per hour for each stream of HD video

  • Chris Hennessy

    I had it for 2 months and my average speed was between 1-2 mbps. With it dropping below 1 regularly. They kept wanting to troubleshoot and restart my modem and computer. I was on the phone with them for an hour talking crazy to everyone that I talked to before I got them to cancel and not charge me a cancellation fee. I wouldn’t recommend HughesNet to my worst enemy.

  • Dayton Leah

    I have had hughes net for several yrs and it only gets worse as time goes on help service by phone?? forget that.. No one can do anything and will not call you back even if they say so. There is a disclaimer on the bottom of thier comercials look closly! speeds vary! which means very bad unless it is maybe 9:00 am on a tues if you are lucky it may bounce back good from a cloud.internet help is much better but they are still imited with crappy tech. So if you have no choice like us you are stuck with slow crappy interrnet but pay full price regardless… if u can find Anything!!else do it!!!

  • Ashley Jo Pruitt

    Hughes net is absolutely horrible we live in the Bluffs and when they came to install our Internet they installed the modem on a firewall in our basement in the concrete part of our house no where close to the rooms we use internet so we never have service even direct tv guy came out and asked who installed the internet making a comment about how poorly they did and they would lose their jobs if they did the work Hughes net did. Hughes net refuses to come out I have talked to over a dozen team members unless we fork out 300 bucks they aren’t coming or they said maybe we aren’t the company for them and told us to back out of the contract once again which costs hundreds of dollars they are dishonest and no trustworthy. I totally agree with the class action lawsuit they need to be out of business.

    • Gabe1972

      I recommend posting of the issue on the HughesNet Support Community. There are corporate reps on that site, unlike the phone reps. It’d be worth a try. You may be pleasantly surprised.

  • Gabe1972

    Not everyone can get a decent cell signal. Satellite internet is an internet of last resort.

  • Christine Tate

    I was referred to Hughes net by my cable company Directv. I’ve been in contract with HughesNet for over 2 years & when i initially signed up for Gen 4 my plan costed more. I would constantly call due to slow internet/buffering internet or goes off when it “SLIGHTLY” rains. About a year ago i made my monthly call due to crappy internet- the rep informed me of Gen 5-better speeds, lower price etc.. He said he would “guarantee” that My plan would then be $46/month until my contract would end!!!! well since then every 2 months or so my plan would suddenly increase to $57 one month, $60ish the next, & $50, $80 etc.. this had been occurring since I updated to the GEN5!! i had case #’s but one day rep say they’ll honor it/fix it then bam next month im back at $60+ month. I just spoke with the “supervisor” today named Kevin! He did not care about my case # nor wanted to make this right. He said, “sorry but you were misinformed of the price!”” At this time im ticked!! so you mean to tell me my plan has been fluctuating on & off for past 2 years & you as the “SUPERVISOR” cant tell me why!!??? AND YOUR EMPLOYEE GUARANTEES ME A PRICE SO IM LYING!!??? Then he said the best he could do was offer a $30 credit, but not put my plan back like it was in the 1st place although he admitted his REP MESSED UP!! THIS PLACE IS HORRIBLLLLEEEEE!! SERVICE IS HORRIBLE, CUSTOMER SERVICE IS HORRIBLE!! INTERNET IS HORRIBLE TOO!!! Then they send third party techs who are high, not professional & CLUELESS! I told them to not send the tech back to my house & they did! I TOLD THE SUPERVISOR TO GO THRU MY PREVIOUS CALLS SINCE THEY RECORD THEM BUT HE DID NOT-NOR DID HE WANT TO-HE KEPT BLOWING ME OFF & SAID HE WOULD BE MORE THAN HAPPY TO CANCEL MY SERVICE!! SERIOUSLY!!???? HOW CAN 1 REP STATE THEY ASSURE U OF 1 PRICE THEN THE NEXT 20 REPS ALL TELL U DIFFER THINGS!!???? PLZ AVOID THIS COMPANY AT ALL COSTS!!

  • Chandler Kozlowski

    Are you willing to explain how you’ve gotten these plans to me?

  • Nick marcum

    This is the worst p.o.s. IP ever. What a joke and a shame, but hey people are getting screwed and robbed every day, hey someone has to do it.

  • Monica Mumford

    ….And still is very slow. Not to mention the customer service.SUCKS! I don’t know why Comcast is not in our area or Nationwide? I would explore pre-paid internet options or just use your local library.

  • Shannon Rodecap

    HughesNet services suck including their customer service. Never got service to work at our house and no one ever helped us out. Just continued to pass the blame. Would tell us that they fixed it and if we still have a problem then we can get out of our contract for free but the lied. Now they are trying to ruin our credit. I wouldn’t recommend HughesNet to my worst enemy!!!!

  • Stace

    TOTAL SCAM! We’ve had HughesNet for about a year and have always had issues. Calling customer service is a waste of time. Hughes tech support said we went through 12GB in 6 hours when we weren’t even home… No device’s we’re on but Tech support told me that even though the devices are not being used or connected to the net or even PLUGGED in, they are still using date… SCAM!

  • Chris Kretvix

    Buyers beware. This service is a last resort. Do not expect to stream lots of video or do any kind of gaming. Video streaming uses 1GB – 3GB an hour so you will run out fast. The latency (as in how long it takes to send and receive packets of data) is long, so if you try to game, it will be “laggy”. Gaming doesn’t use a lot of data per say, but the response speed is not fast enough. I suggest just using your phone as a hotspot if you want to game because the latency is much better and since it doesn’t use much data you’ll be ok even if you have run out of hotspot data.

    What I have ended up having to do to get around the lack of internet service providers where I live is to use my unlimited Verizon plan and mirror the phone screen using cheap cables from amazon to the TV. That way I have unlimited data and can stream as much as I want to my TV, but it only works with YouTube. No Amazon prime or Netflix unfortunately.

  • Jeff C

    We live out in the boonies in Northern CA. Been reading the reviews about Hughesnet for it is available here but will not do it. Too expensive and the data caps are obscene for the money. What we have done is get Verizon unlimited on our phones (2) and have a hot spot as well Verizon is the only company that works up here bad on you AT&T and T’Mobile/Sprint.So we get 66gbs of data before things slow down. We upped the speed on our hotspot so even after the data cap we can still stream Netflix. So for under $200.00 we have cell service, phones and wifi streaming. Something to think about.

  • fasterhorses

    I’m not a technical person, so I can’t address that aspect of anything. But I’m a long-time satellite internet user. I started out with Starband in 2000 and then when they went out of the ISP business, changed over to Hughesnet — at that time the *only* option for me (way out in the boonies).

    I get it that I can’t expect blinding speeds, but I do expect (and rarely get) advertised speeds (I’ve got Gen5 service). Hughesnet gets slower and slower until I can’t take it anymore, at which time I call, get put on hold forever, if I”m *lucky* I get to speak to someone I can understand, and then miraculously my speed goes up again.

    It is so insulting and so time consuming to be told to restart the modem (duh, like I hadn’t done that already several times — and told the tech so) and restart my computer. It is so crazy-making to be held to a contract when they aren’t meeting their own obligations. I can’t watch videos. I can’t stream. I sometimes can’t load webpages because they time out. I often can’t even watch a 10 second clip on Facebook usually, because my service is so slow.

    So expensive for so little! I can’t wait till this contract runs out so I can give Viasat (formerly Exede) a try. They’ve just extended coverage to my area.

  • fasterhorses

    I don’t even know why anyone would have the nerve to say that throttled speed would be enough to support SD streaming on a couple devices when even non-throttled speed doesn’t support streaming.

  • LaTierria Kitchens

    The worst internet ever it stops working after 12am and it’s doesnt start back until around 11/12pm and even when it works it still go very slow !!and we pay $90 a month DO NOT GET THIS

  • Mammie Louise

    I agree with Ronnie. Have had issues but live in the boonies so no other options. In texas they even had our electrical company have a system that didn’t work out here in the boonies. They went through all the customers out here and took the service out. It wasn’t working as they thought it would. Im glad I didn’t change to them. Hurricane harvey we had Good service throughout the storm. After the storm they came out to move the system because of the roof damage to Our home. Now Our system goes out at a drop of rain , calling them gets Nowhere. Its a script they read from the monitor in front of them when you call to explain whats wrong. Paying $100 a month is Not cheap when system goes out with a drop of rain. But they also know we have no choice. I need my service for work also. Glad that Ronnie posted and made me feel Not alone. Thanks

  • Mammie Louise

    Hey, consider I’ve been with Hughes for a Very Long time. I’ve heard you speak your mind and now its my turn. I live in the country, Love the country, appreciate my unreliable hughesnet service, knowing where I live for the past 18 years.
    They hire Installers that take the course to install the systems from everywhere. Customers who call in to ask questions Before getting service, customer care Lies to them making it sound so good and Fast, Mind you Gen5 was the Bestest fast service as told , No one else can or will spend the money like Our company to keep our customers happy.. They lie and Teach the customer service reps to Lie and read the Lying script, same scenario when you call every time. The Truth would set them free from complaints. Probably would set them up for going out of business too.

  • Travis Simon

    We built a home and got Hughes net along the way. We decided to sell our home when we got the final tab. Sold it in a few days and then called to cancel Hughes net because we moved somewhere that internet was included. Hughes Net told me it’d be $400 to cancel early, can you freaking believe that??? $400!? I’ve been robbed. I told them that they’d lose future customers over robbing me of my hard earned 4 bills and they went through a ton of corporate nonsense. I told them the sales rep specifically told me there were no contracts, and they told me that by accepting service I was opting into a two year agreement. I signed nothing along those lines. They are a filthy, dishonest company that doesn’t deserve your dollars. Please do you and me both a favor and avoid them. Ps – their internet sucks anyway. It’s like the old cell data plans before 4g became a thing. Terrible service, and worse policies. Boycott Hughes net.

  • Robyn Gravely

    Horrible!!!!!!! And the first 20 days are not capped so seems good that’s also the timeframe to complain (which you won’t because it’s fast as long as you have your 20g) as soon as we started using the data we blew through it in 5 Days speeds reduced to .54 we called they told us to remove everything except what we were currently using on WiFi????? Who does that!!?? We are stuck in contract, no one who originally set up will answer, when I asked what if I want to cancel the response was “it’s so fast why would you ever want to cancel” wow!! They are liars and so expensive and you are stuck for 2 years!!!!!!!!!! We can’t watch a movie on demand we can’t view Instagram, we can’t do any work online with schooling.. we had to up our phones to unlimited data just to function! Please do not fall victim to these people!!! AT&T dsl is a better choice and that is sad!

  • Megan Elizabeth

    Hughsnet is the ABSOLUTE WORST. The service is slow, and shuts off a lot depending on what kind of weather you have. I cancelled after a week, and they tried charging me a $400 cancellation fee, which I refused because I hadn’t even made it to the first billing cycle since the service was SO BAD.
    Then I sent them their equipment back, and they charge me $215 because I didn’t send the TRANSMITTER OFF THE SATELLITE! First of all, most companies will not let you touch that kind of equipment. I was under the impression they were taking the ENTIRE satellite, so why would I get up on my roof and mess with all that??? I mean, the box they sent me was barely big enough for the other equipment- it certainly would not have fit the transmitter.
    2 weeks later and I’m still ringing them up for a refund, after sending in this stupid fucking transmitter.
    Also, no matter how nice you are, 90% of the employees are rude as shit, including the supervisors. So many people hung up on me once I requested a refund.

  • GI Gator

    Worse Internet service in the country – well, the ones I am aware of. We can watch on-demand programming because Hughes is too damn slow. My son does much of his college assignments on-line: he has to drive to a friend’s houseto doo them because Hughes is too slow or just stops working. Plus, forget it if it’s cloudy.

    Ay this time, we have access to no other provider, which is crazy. There’s all the big name cable companies all around us, within 500 yards, but, we’re right on the boundaries that separate the territories assigned to the various providers. WTH? Just like health insurance, they have sentenced some of us to subpar products, solely based on our location. Open it up and make them compete. Dish Network and Hughes would die on the vine because no one would buy their sorry product.

  • Julie McGee

    If you are reading this, do NOT get Hughes net unless you really liked dial up from 1999. This is the worst internet service I have ever had in the past 20 years. The only reason I got it, in the first place, Direct TV was offering it as a bundle package. I was told satellite service was the fastest available, wrong! I called within the first 30 days to cancel it and was told it would cost $400.00! Seriously, within the first 30 days, what kind of service is that? To watch one movie on Netflix it would take 4 hours of constant buffering. We could only use screen mirroring on our TV with our cell phones. Our family could not take it anymore, I called to cancel and had to scream at the person to cancel it as they would not listen to me. It cost me $250.00 and I went back to cable. I may have to make 10 payments on my credit card to pay off that money but we can actually watch a movie in 1 hour and 46 minutes, my kids can play video games, and I can actually use my lap top again. I wish I had read the reviews before I ever agreed to the Direct TV package with Hughes net. You might as well take a few $1,000 and throw it out the window because that’s how good your money would be worth for this piece of crap.

  • Julie Conrad

    I agree with the comments about Hughes Net, it was horrible. I used up most of my data within 2 weeks just trying to surf Netflix, it was so horribly slow. For the cost of it I expected it to be a lot quicker. When I called to complain about it, I could not understand any of the customer service Reps, which frustrated me even more. The only one I could under stand was a guy that was so rude, I asked to talk to a manager and he told me he was not going to let me. I asked him several time and he just kept telling me that they wont tell me anything different than what he is telling me. I finally hung up and called back to get someone else. Worse customer service and was also told that the installer hooked up the internet to existing wire instead of creating his own.
    Today 2 weeks later I had to call again because I never received a return label to send the equipment back.
    I was told that it was being shipped! (REALLY) two weeks.Now she said I should receive in the next 4 to five business days. I would never recommend them to anyone, and would not ever use them again if they were the last internet provider.

  • Ken

    I would like to start off by saying if you have no high speed internet options in your area, Hughes Net isn’t the absolute worst service you can get. However, their customer service is. I recently moved to an area where Spectrum, AT&T and Verizon didn’t currently service. As far as the service goes, it was decent. The connection wasn’t the most reliable, but when it comes to satellite internet, it comes with the territory. The speed was as advertised, although we did experience many issues with trying to watch things such as Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video etc. My biggest complaint was the customer service.

    When Spectrum did show up at our newly purchased home less than 30 days after we moved in, (after they told us we had to wait until May 2020 to get high speed internet in our area), I called Hughes Net to cancel my service. I explained to them that we only went with them because we didn’t have a high speed internet provider in the area, and that now Spectrum offered to buy us out of the contract, we wanted to cancel. We are still well within the 30 days of starting the service. I asked about the stuff on their website in regards to cancelling within the first 30 days of service and the guy I spoke with was very rude. Not only did he try using scare tactics to keep me using their service (threatening to charge us the early termination fee even though it says they won’t, and telling me I would be on the hook for an additional $400), but he also tried to trick me into staying with them for another month, which would put me outside of the 30 day grace period. After I explained to him repeatedly that I wasn’t interested, he continued pushing me to stay with them, trying to confuse me about the terms of the cancellation etc. It wasn’t until I demanded he tell me what the policy was regarding cancelling within the first 30 days, that he told me to go to the website and read it for myself. I reminded him that I was a customer, and as a customer service representative he should be able to tell me what the policy was. After going back and fourth with him, he finally put me on hold for about 2 minutes while he read it for himself (I suspect for the first time), and then told me I was right. I have to believe he as well as other representatives have misrepresented the situation to other customers who have tried to cancel just so they can charge the $400 plus the early termination fees. When I requested a supervisor to discuss how he handled the situation, he transferred me to another representative who said they were the supervisor who basically read word for word what it said on the site. She offered no apology for the strong arm tactics or for the way the previous representative misrepresented the situation. The service itself, I would rate 7/10 (Compared to other satellite services I’ve used), customer service 1/10. If you prefer honesty, don’t go with this company.

  • Alisha westbrook

    It’s false aversitment going on right now with Hughesnet, on their website and on tv saying there is not an installation fee. We called to get it hooked up and they called it a “fee for being in a managed place” which was an installation fee. They also have a random “processing fee” that’s wasn’t talked about until it was time to pay. I don’t know how good the internet is since we just got it today. Just letting others know there’re hidin fees that are not talked about.

  • disqus_BXycN8Mmxb

    I’m in same situation as you. In NW PA and Gen 3 is very reliable, but not fast. Netflix dvds only. Did you upgrade and if so with what results? Where are you located in the country (generally)?

  • Patti van Swelm

    I just canceled my services with Hughesnet. We were spending so much on tokens and kept running out of Data. We were spending well over $200 a month and would run out of data after 10 days! We are switching over to Viasat. I do hope that they are at least a little better since we can’t get normal internet.