Does anyone out there have real life experience with Hughesnet or Dishnet? I would be interested in RV or home usage. Are these reliable and as fast as advertised? We do not have access to cable at home and the phone company is super slow.

We used Hughes for the first five years we had our current motorhome which has a Motosat dish on the top. The service in our motorhome worked but was slow and expensive. The reason I stopped using it was Verizon cell phone wifi got so good almost everywhere that it was better for RV travel than sat dish. On the other hand sat internet at a fixed location should work fine, but it will always have a latency issue vs land based systems. This is another word for reaction time.

Hughesnet postVerizon coverage is so good now, unless you're camping in a canyon I don't see why you'd need this.

We we moved into our current house about 9 years ago, there was no internet available. Over the phone lines or cable systems were non existent as our home was in a small pocketed area in Madison County, Indiana, where AT&T and other providers and such cannot not come into because of monopoly laws. We didn't realize this until after we purchased the hosue. So we decided to try HugnesNet. First, it cost over $100 a month (just for internet only). Second, there was too much lag time in the responses. For example, playing on-line games, our responses were always behind, and to put it simply, we were blown out of the game.Because of the lag response time, we looked for any other alternative, which we found in our area that uses a line of sight from cell tower to cell tower, not microwave, but something like that. Worked very well, and have been using it ever since.Meanwhile, canceling the HughesNet account and getting our money back and their equipment returned took months and months. They billed us for equipment we returned, because the returned equipment got lost (which they eventually found after more months that went by). Not to mention how horrible their phone service was, going through, Push this number for this and push that number for that, and spending hours (yes... HOURS... waiting to talk to a real person). Sign up was very easy, canceling was the worst night mare we ever experienced!But finally, we got everything straightened out. And we've been much happier with our line-of-site system now, plus, it's much, much cheaper and works much better.Bottom line, if you do not do "gaming" but pretty much things like on-line banking, and checking emails, it will work pretty good for you. But if you do streaming videos or anything that demands "real time", the lag with your response will drive you nuts. Maybe they've improved in the last 9 years, I don't know. All I know is, I'll NEVER use HughesNet again. Never!We also use our cell phone hot spots, not at home, but when camping! This works MUCH MUCH better than Hughes Net ever did!

2oldman wrote:Hughesnet postVerizon coverage is so good now, unless you're camping in a canyon I don't see why you'd need this.I find this funny. I live in the east side of Anchorage and can't get through on either of our Verizon phones half of the time. Then when I do, 50% of the calls are dropped. Internet on the phones is very slow.Just recently did the east coast of the States and Verizon didn't work near as well as they do out West. AT&T was somewhat better, but still poor. You couldn't walk around while talking and if you tried your mail, you should have a book in the other hand to read. Very disappointed in both carriers back east.Having said that, I think they'll be better than a satellite connection.Bill

2oldman wrote:Hughesnet postVerizon coverage is so good now, unless you're camping in a canyon I don't see why you'd need this.We live in CT where people say it's a city from NY to Boston. There is no Verizon here and one bar sometimes on AT&T. We live in the country but my mom lives the next town over near the center of town, she doesn't have Verizon or AT&T.Cell service has a long way to go in my opinion.

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Bill_Satellite
Explorer II
Sep 05, 2017
Excede satellites are NOT in low Earth orbit. Their satellite is stationary. Not sure what service you are referring to that is.
wa8yxm
Explorer III
Sep 05, 2017
Not sure if Dishnet is even satellite or not.

Hughes net has several plans. And two entirely different systems

For RV use the Hughes 7000 If you get a good Sat assigned you can, once trained, access from dang near anywhere. BUT the lag time is bad (Pings typically over 1/2 second) and speeds at best mid range DSL Of course you can pay more and get faster speeds. but you can't improve the ping times, no good for competitive gaming.

Next Gen. I'm not sure about but suspect it is like Excede Since the sats are in LOW Earth Orbit instead of Geo-Sync the ping is less and again, if you pay enough you can get some SERIOUS bandwidth.

Google; HAM NATION When Bob Heil is at home in the Ozarks he uses Excede, he has an incoming video stream (At least one, likely 2 or 3) and an outgoing stream. He also answers E-mails. NOTE he is not always in the show and not always at home.. But you can go back a ways and find him. Or you can go to the 2016 Dayton Hamvention episodes. Exceed set him up a semi-portable at the Arena. NOTE The hardware is the old . Arrg forgot the name) Service dish sold.. Wild Blue that's it Wild Blue.

NOT suitable for RV use due to LEO sats.
Dutch_12078
Explorer II
Sep 05, 2017
2oldman wrote:
Where'd the OP go?

He signed up for AT&T's "Connected Car" $20 unlimited 4G/LTE service and lived happily ever after streaming all the video he wanted... ;)
2oldman
Explorer II
Sep 05, 2017
Where'd the OP go?
Goostoff
Explorer
Sep 05, 2017
Bill.Satellite wrote:
Goostoff,
Are you moving from location to location with your Excede service ?

No this is a dish bolted to the side of our house. I think my reply may have been a bit misleading after I just read it again. The tailgater is the only part of our system that is mobile. We just all use our phones for internet when we are camping.
Bill_Satellite
Explorer II
Sep 04, 2017
Goostoff,
Are you moving from location to location with your Excede service ?
Goostoff
Explorer
Sep 04, 2017
We have been using Excede through Dish for about 5 years. When it is working properly it works good and is really fast compared to the only other option I have which is dialup. That being said, it sucks. Most of the time it just decides to cut you off and you have to go unplug the modem to reset it. This happens at least 5 or 6 times a day. The data limit of 10 GB is a joke. My data resets on the 15th of every month and by the 17th the kids have used it up already ands after that you are clocked back to what they claim is 300k download speed from the 12MB that they claim it normally is.

It is expensive as hell too, and of corse if you want more data they will happily give it to you FOR A FEE. My dish bill is already nearly $200 a month and there is no way in hell they are getting another dime out of my pocket. We have a pretty basic package with no pay channels. Our system is the original Hopper system with 1 Joey, and I have my Tailgater on the plan as well, with the excede internet. There is no reason for my bill to be that high.
Bill_Satellite
Explorer II
Sep 04, 2017
wanderingaimlessly wrote:
I have exede at home. Their prices are dropping and service is improving. But expect data limits. 12 gb for $49 up to 150 gb for $99(this is new) these are with 12 meg download.
Within the next month or two they will be bringing a new sat online, and services will improve more and cost likely drop.
If you can wait, I would, plans will improve.

The only problem is you can't use your Excede service on the road so unless the OP was not asking an RV related question no matter how good it is, it would be useless to him.
NEOK
Explorer
Sep 04, 2017
We had Hughesnet for a few years and changed to Dishnet (Exceed) We found Dishnet to be more reliable and had decent speed. The major caveat with Dishnet is the data limitations. They are supposed to be increasing the limit a d offering higher speeds in some areas but as of early 2017 the higher data and speed was not available where we live in NE Oklahoma. All that said it worked well for us for a few years. We only used this at home, not while traveling.
northshore
Explorer
Sep 04, 2017
We have tons of experience with dish net, my advice is DO NOT do it! It was the worst most horrible experience we have ever had.
1. To know the frustration of their costumer service, just give Dish network a call and ask any thing, you will be pulling your hair out. Dish Net is only worse.
2. They restrict your usage, if you want to watch youtube, or a netflix movie or do any thing on line where you are using data, you will not like it. Our phone has larger data allocation than what Dishnet allows.
3. It is expensive
4. You will have to deal with the equipment, which may be a factor or may not bother you.

We had it for a couple of years, we lived rural and had no other choice, but when another service became available we jumped for it.

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