Hughes.net ........grrrrrrrr

[DonandBonnie]

Over the past couple of months our Hughes high speed access to the internet and email has slowed down considerably and finally quit all together. When I ran some diagnostics, it pointed to a conflict between our firewall and Hughes. I took the computer to a local computer repair guru who made some minor adjustments but could find no problem with the firewall. When I brought the computer home and reconnected to Hughes, the same problem persisted. I connected my work laptop computer to Hughes and experienced the same problem. Then I took my personal computer to work and connected to the internet there and everything worked fine. That told me that Hughes was the problem.

I pulled up the Hughes trouble shooting program again. It says to jump through all kinds of hoops to solve your own problem before attempting to contact them. Having done all that and still getting the conflict between the firewall and Hughes, I decided it was time to call their help desk. The computer voice on the other end told me that my call was important and that they would be with me in about 38 minutes. I don't have time to sit on hold for that length of time. The second call the following day was up to 45 minutes. I decided to get up at 6 am on Saturday morning. I only had to wait 10 minutes.

The Hughes.net tech guy checked a few things and got some readings on the satellite and said that my firewall was blocking things. When I told him what I related above he began to check further. After an hour and a half on the phone, he said he couldn't help me and transferred me to the advanced tech guru. After telling him all of the same thing that I told the first guy and doing all of the same tests, it only took him one hour to tell me that he couldn't help me. They would have to send someone to my home to find the problem. Since it was Saturday, they could not contact anyone until Monday. They would have someone call then to set up an appointment.

Wednesday the installer arrives and takes a half an hour to go thru the same gyrations on the computer as the tech guy and the advanced tech guy did. He, piece by piece, replaces every piece of equipment that Hughes has installed except the cable that runs from the dish to the modem. He finishes two and one half hours later by telling me that while my internet access and email now works, my speed will only be slightly faster than dial up. For some reason that he couldn't explain, my signal strength will not allow for high speed reception.

The moral of this story is that as soon as my commitment to Hughes ends, Verizon will have a new air card customer.

[Hemlockusa]

I believe that if they ""HUGHES"" can not provide the service as advertised your commitment and contract are void. You should have no problem cancelling that contract and switching to VERIZON ASAP.... Call them up and cancel, you have every right!!!!!!!! John

[bigmurf]

Love my Hughesnet. You may want to go to DATASTORM.COM and look at the users forums, they have a lot of good info there. If you talk to Hughes be sure you put a towel on you head to understand the version on English they use.

[Mrs. CountryGuy]

Hate Hughes, hate direcway, always have, and they are leaving this domicile in about 2 weeks, new roof, good bye dish. Last time we left home for 4 months, suspended service, took Al over 5 hours on the phone to get the thing to work when we got home. This time we have been gone 14 days and he has been loading something or other for over 45 minutes, but the home page will not load.

We have recently gone to Sprint aircard (sorry Verizon, you should moved to Lenawee).

bye bye hughes/direcway/creeps!

Think if it works for you, you will love it, if it does not, you will be full of angst.

[trukdoc]

I think that the air card service from the cell phone providers are going to put the sat providers out of business especially with that type of customer service.

[simonsrf]

Well, I have had Hughes.net for 9 months. I believe it is properly setup...I do the setup. I have not had one single problem. I especially like it out in the boondocks where the air cards can't reach a tower! There are trade-offs, but for me, I like my high speed internet connection where I am at the time. It takes me about 15 minutes from start of setup to being online.

I do know that Hughes will slow down your speed if you are using to much bandwidth.

[HamRad]

We love ours and wouldn't be without it. We've had a couple of times when we had trouble hitting the bird for one reason or another. Mostly we were hitting trees or buildings. Once we get that understood there was no problem. The only other trouble we had was a cable connection. Or more precisely the pass-thru connections. We started using the barrel connections and that fixed that problem. Only "Hughes" problem is weather related. And that is not really their problem.

If you are going to camp where there will always be a good cell connection then go with the air cards....... they are not quite as fast as Hughes but close and much easier to setup and use. But if you are going to camp in more rural areas then Satellite is the only way to go. An excellent example of the situation was our recent trip to Mt. Shasta. We had great cell connection and because of all the trees we were having trouble hitting the bird so we just plugged in the card. Good signal strength of 4 bars! But NO SERVICE! Long story short.... they do not have the DATA part of their system setup in this location. We finally got the sat and all was good with the world. It should be noted that others with different cards did have data service. It was slow but at least they had some service.

HamRad

[richfaa]

He, piece by piece, replaces every piece of equipment that Hughes has installed except the cable that runs from the dish to the modem."

So replace the cable???

Then I took my personal computer to work and connected to the internet there and everything worked fine." You may be connected through a netwok at work so that may or may not prove anything.. You can of course turn the firewall off.