Dish satellite location vs. HughesNet?

[satguyrlb]

I have currenlty have a Dish subscription and am able to get decent signal to 110 and 119 for all SD and HD channels. Where we are located (45385), we have crappy DSL interne and was investigating HughesNet. Can anyone tell me if the satellite pointing is similar between the two? I don't know what satellite(s) to look for for the info.

 

[JSheridan]

I have currenlty have a Dish subscription and am able to get decent signal to 110 and 119 for all SD and HD channels. Where we are located (45385), we have crappy DSL interne and was investigating HughesNet. Can anyone tell me if the satellite pointing is similar between the two? I don't know what satellite(s) to look for for the info.

Most of Hughesnet's Gen5 customers are pointed at Echostar 19 which is located at about 97deg W, so it's about 13 degrees east of 110 and several degrees higher in the sky.

And welcome to the forum.

 

[stardust3]

Hughes does enforce their fair access policy. With the low monthly data caps and high latency crappy dsl can look appealing. Investigate your options thoroughly.

 

[StanDarsh]

I think I would rather deal with crappy DSL (and I actually did, for like, 8 years) versus HughesNet or Viasat. I feel VERY lucky to have been able to know where there is a fiber drop, and because it was 1 mile from my house, I drew up my own sign-up sheet for the 1-mile area that stretches from my house to where the fiber is located...
because of this (2 years ago), we just now got a fiber internet connection. Dropped the crappy DSL...

But i'm the exception. Most people can't petition the local utilities board to run fiber to service to them..my scenario was very ...lucky. I was able to get about 22 people in a 1-mile stretch who signed up for service -- 2 of those are businesses. So...for the utilities board, it's a win-win.
But, for 11 years we dealt with 6mbps download, 0.5mbps upload DSL...
The latency alone on DSL is better than hughes or viasat could ever dream of being.

I now enjoy my 150mbps down, 150mbps up...

I'm actually getting way more than that speed right now because the guy forgot to put my modem in the firewall and I'm just getting unthrottled bandwidth. Not sure how long my luck will last..but it's nice to have around 600mbps/500mbps.

 

[satguyrlb]

Thank you all for the quick response. No chance on getting enough to get the extra cable run to the house. SO, I'll be sticking with DSL for the moment and augment with my mobile 4G hotspot. I get 30GB until that gets throttled down to 3G speed, so should keep me going for now. Cheers.

 

[dish network thieves]

DO NOT ever get satellite internet no matter what you do. I can't say enough awful things about it and the constant issues with it.

I dropped mine 3 months ago and use the $60 unlimited plan on Cricket to deal with my lack of internet options. It's annoying constantly setting up devices to connect through hotspot or using PDANet, but it's cheaper and far more reliable than Hughes.

 

[StanDarsh]

My neighbor tried it just before the fiber was dropped to us...
He complained the entire time until the day he got the return-shipment boxes to send the stuff back. He said it was the most horrible excuse for internet he'd ever seen... Then he moved just before the fiber got installed. But it works great...I can attest to that.

 

[StanDarsh]

BTW...I went from 6mbps download, 0.5mbps (or 512kbps) upload...to the speeds above.

 

[HipKat]

My neighbor tried it just before the fiber was dropped to us...
He complained the entire time until the day he got the return-shipment boxes to send the stuff back. He said it was the most horrible excuse for internet he'd ever seen... Then he moved just before the fiber got installed. But it works great...I can attest to that.

That upload speed is ridiculous. I have 1Gb Fiber, also and get comparable D/L speeds but my upload is usually around 250 or so

 

[bobvick]

BTW...I went from 6mbps download, 0.5mbps (or 512kbps) upload...to the speeds above.

Fiber is awesome isn't it. I had similar speeds last year, with CenturyLink DSL, 4.0Mbps down, 512Kbps up. Our local electric co-op offers fiber here now and over most of the county.

 

[EarDemon]

I'm still pointed at Echostar 15 at 107.1. My three years of HughesNet have been a roller coaster. Speeds started out decent, tanked, got better, tanked, upgraded to a Gen 5 plan and HT2000 modem, didn't see no difference, and now for the past few months things have been pretty decent. When ever I'm on it lately (like right now) I typically test around the rated 25/3. I think my better speeds may be due to subscribers being migrated over to Echostar 19. When E19 first launched people were hitting 50 Mbps down. Every area will be different, it depends on how full the beam that covers your geographic area is. I can't even get Viasat, the other satellite ISP, as the beam that covers my area for their service is full. The high latency of satellite will always make it feel slower when browsing the web and latency sensitive activities like gaming, VoIP, remote desktop will not be as smooth as they are over a lower latency connection.

It's the back up to my gigabit cable modem, so I don't really care so much, just as long as it works when needed.

I recently added HughesNet Voice, and it's pretty decent for what it is. It's a little echo-ey, but that is to be expected. I posted before, frequent power outages have got us to get a whole house natural gas generator, it gets installed next week. Area cable nodes aren't on back up power, so when we lose utility power, I have no internet or phone from Charter. In order to use a cell phone, I have to drive a mile north to get reception. It's kinda funny, I have a couple long range rugged portable phones work let me have when we did some upgrades. Range is good for about a mile without the outdoor antenna. I start to lose reception from the landline, about the same spot as I start to gain cell phone reception.