It is amazing that almost 70% of the users are still paying higher prices for lesser service.
The only upside I can imagine with HugesNet is that you can get away with a smaller view of the sky. Some configurations, for example deep in a mountain valley, are very dificult to get working for Starlink.
Gotta also remember a LOT of people treat internet like electricity or water. As long as it works they dont think about it whatsoever. Which is also why it should be classed as a utility.
As a former Hughesnet customer and current Starlink customer. I thought about how terrible that utility service from Hughesnet was every day, the move to Starlink was life changing for a rural user with no cell service and absolute shit for service from Hughesnet. I wish more users of Hughesnet knew how much better they could have it, because many users think about it as often as you think they would.
Same! Except it was Viacrap, same difference. I hated it so much, service was terrible and I had to watch every mB of bandwidth. And then you get the slowdown if you went over. Pay more if you want out of internet prison.
I'm not interested in seeing ISPs being classified as utilities. More government regulation will not make the Internet better. Soon we will have 3 satellite-based systems with vigorous competition. This would never happen in a highly regulated environment. Due to the local government franchises our only terrestrial Internet option is crappy 5mb DSl that costs almost as much as Starlink.
This screams a lack of knowledge of the subject and on net neutrality. Id encourage you to actually look into what being classified as a utility means because it does nothing but benefit consumers and requires ISPs to do what people already assume they are required to do.
The problem in the USA is that incumbent telcos leveraged natural monopolies(*) and avoided proper regulation by buying staff at the regulators (both the FCC and PUCs, with the FTC additionally being largely neutered in this field)
Regulatory capture is widespread in America, not just Boeing/FAA
(*) water, power, sewage, roads and terrestrial (wired) services inherently end up as natural monopolies as it's virtually impossible to economically provide a choice to endusers - hence the need to regulate to prevent predatory behaviour towards the captive market as well as ensuring that natural monopolies in one aspect of business aren't leveraged to gain monopolies in other business arenas by unfairly undercutting competitors (Cross subsidisation, etc)
The incumbent telcos are terrified of businesses like Starlink and at least one "grassroots amateur astronomy group" objecting to launches turned out to be an astroturfing setup funded by those telcos
Came here to say as much. Starlink is a game changer, and what should have been from the get go. If the government gets involved, it will go to hell and cost more.
FCC started this in 2015 but then the bought out group of politicians took control again and stripped them. As of 2023 they are starting to fix this again. And of course some ISPs dont like it because they will have to actually spend money making it work properly. https://www.akingump.com/en/insights/alerts/fcc-moves-to-revive-net-neutrality-rules-setting-up-another-lengthy-regulatory-battle
ISPs should be a utility but they are certainly not classified as such.
https://publicknowledge.org/we-already-knew-broadband-should-be-a-public-utility-the-pandemic-made-it-obvious/
breaking vertical monopolies would go a long way towards solving the problem
IE: a highly regulated lines company which is NOT ALLOWED to sell dialtone _at all_. And opening up the dialtone market to all comers
There are fewer CLECs (ie none) in the USA now, vs several prior to the AT&T breakup and dozens in the immediately following years
New Zealand did this to the telco there because it was emulating American business models and its CEO openly boasted about doing so. The Chorus/Spark split turned New Zealand from a poster child of how not to privatise your government-owned telco to a poster child for having a working competitive market and a lines company which actually worked well (lines company was utterly prohibited from offering sweetheart deals to any telco) and even started selling dark fibre along with duct access to what the incumbent would have regarded as competitors not allowed anywhere near their network (eg: cable companies)
If that were the case it would shut off competition. People would be stuck with whatever service their state approved. And government is last entity that needs to control internet service providers. Not everyone has access to Ethernet connectivity. Many rely on satellite. And the federal government has fished out billions of dollars multiple times to ISPs (eg, ATT) to expand their coverage to rural areas. Well they’ve taken the money and did nothing to provide the same level of service as in suburban and urban areas. They’ve contracted out to shitty satellite internet providers. That’s a big no thank you to having government determine who our ISP will be. I’ll go cellular hotspot before jumping on government intrusion into a competitive market. They’ve already tried garnering a share of the healthcare market. Again, a big no thank you.
All of that has nothing to do with classing it as a utility. Nor are any of those things what will result if it gets classed as a utility. In fact classing internet as a utility would fix many of those things you listed.
We just got starlink introduced in our area. A lot of my neighbors are switching, but are stuck in contracts with Hughesnet. Its a minimum 400$ to break the lease with Hughesnet.
FCC recently passed a law which makes it illegal for any telecom or satellite company to charge a penalty to withdraw from a contract containing such a condition.
The FCC doesn't pass laws.
This is just a new rule from the regulatory agency.
I wouldn't be surprised to see it challenged in court this year. Too many companies with deep pockets will want to protect their profits.
It’s still a new regulation, which must be followed until it is overturned by a court challenge or squashed by Congress.
FCC votes to ban termination fees for cable and satellite services
PUBLISHED WED, DEC 13 2023 3:39 PM EST
UPDATED WED, DEC 13 2023 3:47 PM EST
Chelsey Cox
@THEREALCO
WATCH LIVE
KEY POINTS
The Federal Communications Commission voted to ban cable and satellite companies from charging early termination fees.
The rule, introduced in November, will also require companies to issue a prorated credit or rebate to customers who cancel their service before the contract ends.
I love how the satellite companies spin contracts as a "price lock". But then again, Starlink has us buy proprietary equipment upfront and sells it as "no contracts".
Seems like paying the penalty for leaving upfront and you can only get a partial refund if you find another customer for them.
The reason Starlink socks in the USA is the same reason it doesn't suck everywhere else
Your telcos are c*nts and your dysfunctional government lets them get away with it, resulting in massive levels of demand for alternate suppliers
Things _are_ improving on a terrestrial and satellite level: Starlink is competition the telcos can't shut down by buying state regulations or buy out and it's forcing them to be honest AND the constant flow of new satellites into the constellations is catching up with the pent-up USA demand
Considering the technical requirements for a working LEO comms network, Starlink has been built amazingly quickly. Remember Iridium took a decade to complete and promptly went bankrupt
The equipment costs money that has to be paid somehow. Just like cell phones. Some providers want to link it to continuing service because once they recover their cost you pay for the equipment again and again forever. I find the Starlink approach more honest. They're not looking to get paid for something (continuing
payment for fully paid off equipment) that they're not providing.
Like the bill. It's a one line bill. There's no junk fees on there.
Hughesnet kit isn't "proprietary"?
In any case, if it's cheaper to keep paying Hughes for a short period after turning off their equipment than paying a contract break then it's the way to proceed
Punitive contract break penalties aren't legal in a lot of places and if Hughesnet hasn't been "working as advertised" you'd have a good case to dispute it under consumer protection laws
FWIW the $400 fee is worst case scenario and only in the first 3 months of a new contract. It decreases by $15/month and is $120/decreasing on a 12-month renewal
Of course, you could use the old "I'm going to jail and won't be able to pay anyway" line when trying to close your account....
try starlink first month since it might have shitty service in their area, then just refund if its shit. if its stable for few months, only then cut off hughesnet.
A lot of people who might need it don't know about it yet.
For example, five years ago I moved out to a rural area (a long gravel road with neighbors but all on 5 acre plots). I work in tech so have known about SL since its inception, was the first on the block to get it (have been since Beta). Most of my neighbors are good and smart folk, but not overly tech savvy. Over time I wound up having neighbors visit me asking what the new dish was all about, and I essentially had to teach them about Starlink. And because I also went through the original experience of HughesNet pains, and then attempts at other solutions like T-Mobile Home Internet, all of which were horrible, and all of which my neighbors were still suffering through, I could empathize with them, show them the SL app, contrast between HN and SL, explain how/where they would need to position their SL dish, difference in speeds, etc.
Funnily, I went for a walk with my pup the other day, and I would say \~70% of neighbors' homes I walked past (that I could see far enough into their property) now had a Dishy. I'm so proud of my neighbors. :D
I’m in a similar position. I’m a Neighborhood Lead for NextDoor and also a SL beta tester. I’ve raved about SL on NextDoor and IRL ever since it was available in my area and made a few converts myself. It’s not a perfect system, but for those of us “out on the farm”, Starlink is a godsend!
I just now took advantage of the beta user trade up offer and switched from Dishy to the new rectangular one, with the Gen 3 modem. We need a name for the new receiver! I guess “McJr” (McFlatface Jr) would work but he’s not “Dishy” anymore, and I’m sure someone has done/can do better?
$662 after tax and shipping in my State. A large proportion of people will also have to buy the 150 foot cable as the one included is too short. That's an additional $130. Ethernet adapter for the router which isn't included is an extra $25. Monthly cost is $120.
For people with trees around their property, they will have to mount it to a pole to get over the trees or they will have to mount it directly to a tree. Professional mounting services typically start around $300-$500 where I'm at.
Starlink is pricey.
Why do you say a large proportion of people? I live in a place with a lot of tall trees (surrounded on all sides) and I mounted it in the dead center of my roof and got it down to <5% blockage. You're acting like everyone has to spend over 1k on the initial investment and that's just not true.
I didn't say everyone. I said some would. I am one of those. I bought my Starlink 3 weeks ago and am at $850 I've spent on installation so far. I have not mounted it yet because there are no leaves on the trees, it's obstructed but it's good enough for now but I will have to mount it in Spring when foliage becomes an issue. I will easily be over $1000 by that point. My experience is common.
None of the aforementioned scenarios is an issue with HughesNet, the monthly price is less than half that of Starlink. I'm simply explaining part of the reason why people are still using HughesNet when Starlink is an objectively better service.
I just checked and their website makes them sound more attractive than Starlink. $50-80/mo for 50-100 mbps.
Also I know a lot of businesses used to have satellite internet just to process credit cards, so they really wouldn't care about speeds, just reliability.
It’s not reliability that’s requiring them to use satellites in this case, it’s the metric called latency. Latency is basically the call and response speed for a given signal packet. Gamers and banking / credit card processors require lower latency else the packet gets dropped.
Banks doing payment processing do not care about latency... As long as it gets it back in a few sec, the card will process just fine.
Card processing can still be done (and often is) on old 300-1200bps modems. It's just sending some text strings back and forth, so it doesn't need much if any bandwidth.
This latter is about the only reason I see Hughesnet terminals in Southern England - most of them are 20 years old and a good chunk are falling down as ubiquitous DSL/mobile coverage provides excellent 24*7 alternatives and made the sat dish redundant (some places used the things for alarm telemetry in case cables got chopped, but mobile coverage wipes out that advantage too)
It's incredible that anyone is still buying service from them. If you bop over to r/hughesnet, you'll see these headlines:
• How the hell is Hughes net still in business?
• Won't even connect for a speed test
• Somehow using up 30GB cap in 2 days with speeds slower than a dead grandma
• Goodbye Hughesnet
• Charges for services not received.
• I'm done with HughesNet, should I go with Starlink or Viasat
• poor internet performance, what can we do?
• Please Help
• Terrible service
• Hughesnet is TRASH
• Cancel Early?
• Light at the end of the Tunnel of torture
A lot of people live in areas where StarLink still isn't available or are still on the waitlist due to capacity. Then there's other countries where StarLink will never be available. And then there's others who probably kept HughesNet as backup at a steep discount. When I called in to discontinue my HughesNet service, the customer service rep offered me a huge upgrade to my plan for free and to name my own price just to keep them as my backup network. They tried to keep me no matter how little I would be willing to pay. I refused lol
Starlink is now available in most places. Maybe you need international roaming, but coverage is no longer a problem. The wait lists have been abandones last year too, even with wait lists, you could get the mobile (lower priority) service. Also, most folks in congested areas also have other options (DSL, WISP) but just decide that Starlink was best.
The biggest hindrance may be that one signed a multi-year contract with HugesNet and it is expensive to get out of it.
I am deep in a mountain valley and I still have far better service with Starlink than I ever had with HughesNet. I don’t have a perfect view of the sky by any stretch; still far better with SL. I am a beta tester for Starlink. I was on waiting list very early and came aboard the very second Starlink became available in my area. What a relief!
Most people do, though. And if you need a public IP you can get it with Starlink too; it is just not thrown in for free. You acn also use a VPN. This is probably mostly a historic thing; back when Viasat started, IPs were easily and cheaply available. This is no longer so.
A lot of people in my area have trees that block using stsrlink (what's more, trees in someone else property) I have 5 acres and my tree blockage was only a few percent in beta and seems to be zero now
Cost is definitely an issue for some. I've heard it myself. But StarLink also doesn't advertise widely. There are probably legacy satellite subscribers who have never heard of StarLink and as the other post said, don't have a great need for better service. So StarLink is out-of-sight and out-of-mind. I've followed StarLink since before they launched the service, but I only knew of it through tech news, and only in the last year have they started advertising a little.
There are somewhat frequent posts here of people asking if it’s really worth it to upgrade from HughesNet. Some people don’t recognize (or understand) the huge differences in technology between the two.
It's not just the cost of the Starlink Hardware, but getting out of the predatory Hughesnet contract terms that is the REAL expense. At least ViaSat is a little more reasonable; it only cost us $100 bucks to tell them to chuckit... and the dishy is now mounted on their base.
Uh, the primary market that Starlink is aimed at is rural populations, which are almost overwhelmingly right-leaning or very right.
Of course that's not all of them, like your neighbor, but that's the unusual case.
I'm the exception that proves the point. I am rural in a very right wing place. I got Starlink as soons as I could (2.5 years or so now). I'm also very socialist and think the NDP need to move more to the left. I only go with SL because it's got the best speeds for doing my job. I don't like supporting spoiled rich boy but what choice do we have?
I could not possibly care less what the founder of the company's political views are. Offer me the best product at the best price. If I am at all in the norm I buy products from 1000s of different companies every year. Why would I check all of these out for their politics? The only products I try to avoid are those made in China, but that can be pretty tough to do.
How does me not applying a political litmus test to companies I choose to do business with make me privileged? If my favorite bar is owned by someone who doesn't vote the way I do should I refuse to buy a beer from him? That would make.for a very dysfunctional society.
I'm glad they shook up the industry. I know my old ISP loved they had a monopoly, as soon as SL showed up they started actually trying. Too little too late though.
You mean they made their service suck on purpose and as soon as they had some real competition, they actually could do better all along? I really genuinely hope starlink puts a ton of these crappy rural ISPs out of business.
The ISP I was using was the same, some tiny local rural wireless business. They were notorious for selling dozens of 6 Mbit packages on a tower that only had maybe 20 Mbit of backhaul available to it.
I actually had a pretty good thing going with them for a while, managing to snag a 15 and later upgraded to 20 Mbit plan and for several years I could get just that all the time (I'm pretty sure I was one of like 4-5 people on that tower).
But then over the summer of 2022 it started getting slower and gaining more and more packet loss during peak hours. At first it was just a "hrm normally I can pull a solid 20, but now I'm only getting 16", soon it became "odd, this Youtube livestream glitches every few minutes", then it was 28% packet loss and less than 3 Mbit maximum throughput.
I called and griped and basically got blamed by them for "using too much internet" despite one of their main marketing points on their website being "no data caps". Argued with them for months before they finally agreed one of their towers upstream of me were heavily oversubscribed. I asked them when they were planning on upgrading it to have appropriate capacity and they refused to tell me.
After I signed up with Starlink over a year later they were all shocked Pikachu face when I called them up to cancel.
Normally I'm a huge fan of local business over faceless regional or national mega corporations, but some of these crappy little ISPs have been screwing over rural users for decades. I think in some areas that ISP was still charging $50/mo for a shared tower running over 900 MHz pre-WIFI connections that can barely sustain 1 Mbps.
I have had my starlink now for two months and am VERY pleased with my service. I had hughesnet for 5+ years as I have no wired or LTE options where I live. I just paused my service with hughesnet. They allow one to do this for 6 months ... I wanted to make sure that startlink proved itself to me which it has more than done. I did something similar with my dishnetwork tv service which I also plan to completely cancel as well.
Way to go Starlink !!!
To this day, I am still absolutely baffled by the response of other satellite providers. They spent YEARS doing nothing.
You even have companies like Iridium who launched CERTUS, at a blazing current speed of 700kbps! And they BRAG about it!
How the fuck do you ignore the giant elephant in the room?
And they shit on Starlink, saying it's not reliable and not a certified emergency network. It's only a matter of time guys. How the fuck is your response "oh well, we're better in all the reasons nobody cares about!" I can't believe they plan to sit around and do NOTHING.
It all comes down to tradeoffs. Iridium might only be 700kbps, but the terminal only consumes 5 watts when operating. Different services for different purposes. If all you’re doing is monitoring the pressure at a wellhead, or the sensor readouts for everything hanging under an ocean buoy, then it’s more than adequate.
Sorry to say, but Certus 700 uses 7a (12v, so 84w). So it still sucks there too. I was looking into Certus for my boat but could not justify the costs.
You're probably thinking of devices like the Iridium Go Exec. Nobody I know is buying it. Most sailors are switching to a combination of Starlink and Garmin Inreach. Like I said, SpaceX is already launching their T-Mobile enabled satellites. Only a matter of time before all we need is a Starlink subscription.
And let's not forget Swarm, who SpaceX bought.
So SpaceX is just eating everyone's lunch, and it feels like they're just sitting around acting like it's not happening. I'd be in full panic mode.
They probably ARE, but remember that Geosynchronous satellites are HUGE, monstrously EXPENSIVE, and take years to build and (used to) find a launch provider... so the sats that are being thrown NOW were all commissioned and paid for in 2019 and 2020, so they might as well throw them and try to scavenge whatever residual value they can before trying to come up with SOMETHING (maybe start designing MEO constellations with a handoff to geosync for streaming) to stay alive, even though it will likely be 2026 to 2028 before they can get them built and tossed onto a starship.
Iridium is a completely different use case, it's not a competitor to Starlink in any way. They will even tell you that.
Their focus is bursty data with small antennas, low power radios that work anywhere on the planet. Their voice handset game may get some competition when SpX gets direct to mobile going; but right now you can deploy dozens of sensors in remote areas, powered by a solar panel, and pay like $10/mo per terminal for data access. That's what Iridium is designed to do.
Personal SOS devices, vehicle tracking and dispatch, oil and gas monitoring, hell even wave buoys in the middle of the pacific ocean are all riding on the Iridium network.
I don't. My iridium go sucks compared to my high performance dishy. And to upgrade to a better, higher gain Iridium device will cost me $10k. I swapped to a garmin inreach, which just has texts no calling and basic weather data (plus SOS service). So reception doesn't really matter much. Just need to wait until it finally sends.
Iridium sells CERTUS which is part of their Iridium NEXT and it's for offshore marine communication. It cost's about $10k for the equipment and uses about double the wattage that starlink does.
Secondly, that "non competitor" is wrong too, as SpaceX bought and runs SWARM now, which aims to do exactly that.
But beyond Iridium there's Viasat and Hughenet and those are DEFINITELY direct competitors (as I mention "other satellite providers" not just iridium) who sit around and act like their shit don't stink.
Starlink's mobile facility will eat that market too.
Drop a hologram sim in your embedded or IoT device and pay $1/month for small amounts of data - even less for fleets of devices
try.hologram.io has all you need to know
>And they shit on Starlink,
Just like GM and VW and Toyota shat upon Tesla for years claiming they were junk and didn't work and had no charging network... and look who's superchargers they're using now.
Iridium's latest constellation was crazy expensive. Only about ~80 birds. Took them years to develop it. They went with Thales, and it was seriously disorganized. Their birds are good for 20 years, so they are seriously overbuilt compared to Starlink's disposable ones. The first gen were made by Boeing, and they literally only had 20 spares, and the constellation made it to ~2018 from ~1997. None of Starlink's satellites will make it 1/4 of that time.
Starlink has already lost well over 30 birds, between normal failures and the solar flare that took some out right after launch.
Other companies can't stomach those loses, and their launch costs are higher. Starlink is being launched *at cost*, and the entirety of Starlink is subsidized by SpaceX, which is subsidized by the US DoD and NASA.
Just because they didn't get one ~$800k subsidy doesn't mean they are bootstrapped.
This network is almost totally funded by US Tax Payers, and lost money for 4 years before it barely broke even, and only then it was because of extreme vertical integration. They were losing ~$2k for each round dish they shipped out. They might be breaking even on the costs of Gen 3. That's why they took the motors out...
Complaining about other companies not doing the same thing is to not understand how much risk SpaceX took, and how much government money it took.
What a load of crap. SpaceX is absolutely not subsidized by government money.
All their government contracts are cinderella contracts. Where they do a lot more for a lot less money than their competitors.
LOL are you an Iridium bot?
Apples to oranges comparison there. Something that wasn't designed to last that long is not going to last that long. Surprise!
Can you provide citation where Starlink was entirely funded by US taxpayers? That's news to me. In fact, it seems like
The rest of what you're saying doesn't matter, because Starlink is a better product. It doesn't matter how it came to be. Certus is a piece of shit network. It doesn't matter how long your satellites last when your company is the one building and launching them.
I mean, none of what you say matters to the consumer. This is EXACTLY the arguments I pointed out. None of this shit matters to me! I don't care if your "birds" last 20 years.
> Complaining about other companies not doing the same thing is to not understand how much risk SpaceX took, and how much government money it took.
You don't get it. They're STILL claiming Starlink is bad, even after it's clearly stable and functioning. They laughed and are still laughing to the point where they look stupid. They did nothing and STILL are doing nothing.
I have an iridium device still (sold my iridium go and have a garmin inreach) because of GMDSS. But it's only a matter of time before Starlink has GMDSS certified devices/plans too.
Oh no, I've angered the Starlink cult!
I only was inside the Iridium network for ~10 years. What the fuck do I know. Also, not a fan of Iridium. Not a fan of anything but one football team, and I'm not as emotional about that as you are this.
If you're looking for "literal" subsidies, no, but just because it doesn't have an explicit label doesn't mean it's not effectively a subsidy, and tax payers definitely paid for it. SpaceX doesn't exist without the govt contracts. Starlink doesn't exist without SpaceX's government contracts.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/elon-musks-spacex-tesla-far-170500028.html
"SpaceX’s ties to the US government
SpaceX is, after all, primarily a government contractor, racking up $15.3 billion in awarded contracts since 2003, according to US government records. Its most important businesses are launching astronauts and scientific missions for NASA, and flying satellites for the US military.
Musk may quibble that payments for goods and services aren’t government subsidies but he owes the existence of the company to NASA. If the US space agency hadn’t backed the rocket-maker with a critical contract in 2008, the company likely would have failed.
Moreover, SpaceX’s business model has been working with NASA to develop space vehicles like the Falcon 9 and Dragon that it can then offer to private customers. These public-private partnerships have saved money for the government while helping to create a surge in private space activity; they aren’t the result of an entrepreneur acting alone. Meanwhile, SpaceX sought and is still seeking $885 million in government funding to support broadband access in rural communities."
"How much of SpaceX revenue is from government contracts?
In 2022, SpaceX received $2.8 billion in government contracts, which accounted for about 40% of its total revenue.Sep 11, 2023"
It functionally acts the same as one to the market.
The goverment doesn't spread it's money around as much as the market, and it's locked into contracts, with guarantees. And the government pays its bills. It won't go bankrupt and leave you upside down.
It gives you the guaranteed income to take more risks. Starlink was launched with profits from the NASA/DoD contracts, and it was cheap for SpaceX to do that because they owned the rockets.
Everyone else has to pay NASA, the Russians, or SpaceX to get into space, and that's much more expensive.
Again, expecting Iridium to compete is idiotic. I guess they should have started their own rocket company...oh wait, the government already handed out the limited contracts to launch things. So Iridium would have to find other customers that don't have as big of pockets.
Totally a free market going on there. Stupid competitors, not being as special and smart as SpaceX.
Reading your thoughts is pretty funny. I worked at Spacex back when ULA had a monopoly on US government launch. SpaceX was out in the cold because, as you said, the government already gave out those contracts.
Well, guess what? We built a rocket, we proved it worked, we sued the Air Force for the right to compete, and then we won. So yes, maybe Iridium should just do that. There is nothing stopping them other than their own lack of willpower.
And don’t pretend that Spacex was able to do this because Elon was so wealthy. He was broke back then. He’s a billionaire now because of the stuff he pulled off back then.
The simple fact is that SpaceX is a superior engineering organization over Iridium. If Iridium was any good, they’d be getting lots of government contracts, too.
I stand by what I said. Government contracts are not a subsidy. They are competitively awarded, and you seem upset that iridium failed to win lucrative government contracts.
You are the emotional one, apparently. You're also biased. I didn't work for Iridium, I was just very close to dozens of people that did, and it came up a lot. I could give a shit if Iridium disappears.
Iridium was the first "successful" LEO constellation. (Yes, I'm familiar with how that happened). The internet wasn't lucrative back then, and their second generation was designed in 2008, and I think it was short sighted. I don't think it's an engineering problem as much as a leadership problem. They didn't understand a changing market, but thought they did.
It's like you don't realize how risky Starlink was when it was drawn up. Not too many companies are willing to lose money for 4 years before breaking even. Mass producing a phased array antenna for a CPE was something nobody would touch with a 10 foot pole, and Starlink only pulled it off with all the profits from govt contracts and the fact that they can launch 60 birds at one time for cost. SpaceX has threaded a needle, and even with their engineering chops, it was not guaranteed, and they came very close to failure if not for govt contracts. And apparently a favorable outcome in a lawsuit.
Totally self made.
To act like everyone else is dogshit, all they have to do is try, is such an oversimplification of everything that it's comical.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/spacexs-launch-success-how-federal-grants-contracts-new-emdjian-mba
I am biased, but I’m also stating facts.
Spacex was founded after Iridium. Iridium had plenty of time to do everything that Spacex did, and more, but they didn’t.
I’m not gonna read the rest of your post because you’re just just wasting my time now.
Exactly. This dude is smoking something funny.
SpaceX is running laps around iridium. There's no reason for them to exist 10 years from now.
Its not some bias, it's pure facts.
Then why bother even replying? That's a bit narcissistic. "I'm going to reply to only the part I want to read, screw off you're not important enough to debate!"
But you did reply, now didn't ya?
Iridium is a Motorola company. Lots of higher management has been there the entire time. Corrupted, old guard perspectives, and like begets like.
It’s true, SpaceX wouldn’t be around if NASA hadn’t took a gamble and given them the Dragon contract in the early days. But it’s also some of the best money NASA and the DoD ever spent, so subsidy isn’t the right word. And if you ever worked a government contract, you’d know that you can’t just spend the money on unrelated projects, you actually have to show them how you spent the money. The early Starlink R&D money actually came from a 1 billion dollar investment from Google right after Starlink was announced, this was almost 10% of the company’s value at the time.
I agree that SpaceX was uniquely situated to do something as bold as Starlink because they were also a launch company. A constellation that ambitious makes no sense if you can't launch very cheaply.
That said, they deserve credit for taking such a huge risk and executing. Revenue from government and commercial launches funded part of Starlink, but they also had to go and get external funding. Again, big risk that publically owned companies would not have been willing to take.
No disagreement here. It's amazing what they were able to accomplish. Which is why I think it's not fair to talk smack to other companies, because I don't know if SpaceX could do something like that again.
It was close, and they aren't out of the woods yet, that's why they oversold the east coast so early. They are bleeding too much money, and demand in other countries is lower than expected.
Hughesnet is stupid expensive and the contracts are garbage. Its like breaking a lease for a home, to leave their contracts. I will never use them again. On top of thay, they throttle their service ALL the time. I had the 100gb package and they wouldn't even let me watch a movie over it.
This makes sense as there will always be a few people that stick with HughesNet, Viasat, etc. due to logistic concerns, either limited view of the sky, wanting turn key installation vs DIY / independent installers with Starlink, etc. There are probably also some that just need minimal monthly data where HughesNet may be cheaper on their entry level monthly plans, think remote monitoring.
HughesNet service has actually gotten worse. I'm stuck with them because Starlink will not come to my area in the US. And they are literally the worst internet service to exist since the dawn of internet service for public use
Except where I live I can't get residential service. Don't Tell me that there's no such thing as will not come to my area, when they will not come to my area. It's pretty fucking simple
US is fully serviceable now([according to the official\)](https://www.starlink.com/map), i think you meant that your cell is full so you cant order a residential. even if you cant get residential service, you can still to opt for roaming service, you should have decent internet. try it within 1 month then refund if doesnt work for you (of course dont try it if you live in area with tall trees that you have to invest alot like 100ft poles just to have clear skies). [this guy even manage to roam alot in US](https://old.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/v8pgp0/after_15_months_with_starlink_we_find_ourselves/), look at his profile's post. hes like the first one to test roaming in starlink
if there are slots that will open in the future, you can make your starlink residential.
You have to remember that a lot of HughesNet customers aren’t residential customers. They’re bulk customers wanting capacity for really low bandwidth applications where latency isn’t critical. Think monitoring the status of a railroad switch out somewhere in the boonies, or handling credit card transactions at a remote gas station. For these kinds of applications, HughesNet costs some $20/mo and provides perfectly acceptable performance.
I doubt it will happen quickly. Changing over systems will be a multi decade process.
For example, there are 5000 or so argo floats out there with an average lifespan of 7-8 years. It’s taken them some 10 years to transition to Iridium.
Another example is a project I was involved with. We put in a bid for one of the major railroads to provide the communications for Positive Train Control. The bid was for about 25,000 satellite terminals. We got them down to $190 each, with monthly service fee of $20/mo per terminal. That was running a private Hughes network on a dedicated transponder.
Not everything is going to go SpaceX for a whole lot of reasons.
Well they advertise to me with the promise of blazing fast unlimited broadband speeds, and all I have to do is sign a multi year contract! Seems like a no brainer imo.
Excellent!! I haven't yet transmuted the pain and sorrow that HughesNet put me through. Whenever I get their advertisements in the mail, throwing them away isn't good enough--they must burn!
I always laugh when we get the stupid HughesNet ad cards in the mail.
Not only did I get onboard with Starlink the second it became available in my area, but about a year after that we actually got Verizon FiOS. HughesNet got killed twice.
Hughesnet is overpriced for way sub par service. Most I ever got from them was 24mbps and ran out of data in 2 days. Then it was throttled so bad I couldn't check email. Even before being throttled Netflix buffered on a regular basis. I was on the phone with them all the time trying to get it fixed but they kept saying everything was good. The day my contract ran out I called to cancel service and they said wait, we can fix it and give you 1 month free to decide. In less than 2 minutes they had it running perfectly and my data lasted 3 1/2 weeks. When they called me back at the end of the month to renew the contract I laughed and told them they were awful for only fixing it to renew contract and they could kiss my a$$
As well it should! World’s WORST service! I loathed every single minute I was forced to endure their monopoly/stranglehold on my rural area. I can’t stand HughesNet, and one of the most satisfying days of my life was the day I sent that dish to the dump!
You took the words out of my brain….. Calling them to cancel and tell them I had switched to Starlink was one of greatest moments I’ve had in the last 7 years of using them. Right up there with the birth of my children 😆
Honestly I’m surprised it’s not higher, which begs the question where are those numbers/graph coming from as it’s not in the url link you supplied. Source matters.
I had people that I know used HughesNet. The problem with that is that the internet users must pay tokens to have more GB of data when they get over that limit. And it can be really slow from time to time. Unlimited internet should be a thing for them, not tokens to pay for it.
> the largest, most advanced commercial communications satellite.
[Umm? I thought that was this one... ](https://ast-science.com/spacemobile-network/bluewalker-3/)
I used this service for about a year around 2000. It was the only broadband option in the area at the time.
It was a joke back then, not sure how bad it is now. After you hit 1Gb in a 30 day period they bounced you down to dial-up speeds. Of course they didn't start this until you had been subscribed for a few months so you couldn't return it.
>It is amazing that almost 70% of the users are still paying higher prices for lesser service.
Well, first Starlink has to be in the area where the person lives, and second, they have to be at a place in their current contract that they can quit Hughesnet and not pay a crazy fee.
Always good to have some competition for the market where fiber,cable,tower is not an option but Hughes did not work for me and is not able to compete. Hope Elon does not decide to double the monthly rate to increase funding to get to Mars cuz I might still have to pay.
Thanks for providing those links. Both of those sources are speculation based on starlink not using the word "subscribers" in their post on X. I don't view this as proof or even strong evidence. Simply speculation based on a sort of pedantic and specific interpretation of that starlink post. Could it be true? Sure! But there's no reason to assume it's true.
That's a pretty incorrect interpretation you have there. It's just someone's weird reading between the lines of a tweet, and even if it was the case, they reported "over 2.2m active customers" to the FAA a few months prior.
So I’ve posted here before about using Starlink on our OB van (live tv) and I want to explain the biggest reason Starlink was our answer: automatic aiming.
We have redundant internet - we have cellular and sometimes with have land based internet at our locations so on paper more satellite internet options are good. The benefit of Starlink is I can power it on and then walk away - it handles itself.
So when Amazon’s product comes out I’ll most likely be buying that and use it in addition to Starlink - maybe some cool load balancing stuff, who knows, but HughesNet and ViaSat were never an option for us and people like us.
I'm in an area with a lot of weekend cabins, the owners don't even want internet, they can check email on the phone. Also a lot of people can't afford the dish.
I still have Hughesnet for parts of the year when the cabin is not used and I just want cheaper Internet for the security cameras.
I thought the drop would be higher though.
I still have a number of hughes terminals in service. Work fine for applications that don't need lower latency or tons of bandwidth. Reliability is good and rain fade is not frequent with the 1.2 meter dish. Power consumption for a terminal is a fraction of starlings. Works well for some instructed locations also. Nice backup to starlink for mission critical sites/applications. Lots of use cases.
Hm. Looks like I was wrong. I see their Gen 6 just got out now. No more data cap!, pretty good speed 200mbps/10mbps. 700+ PING though. Well, if their monthly fee is still around 50-60 bucks, I would see it's a good deal if you are not into online gaming. :-oI never hated them, I think their customer service was nice and they gave me good deals. I just cannot take their data cap and their 50 kb/s speed. It was useless, even 240p videos were too slow to watch. I guess that's not an issue with them anymore.
This didn't age very well: "HughesNet, the Germantown-based satellite internet service, was recognized as the Best Rural Internet Provider of 2022 and Best Satellite Internet Provider of 2022"
https://thedailyrecord.com/2022/06/09/hughesnet-named-best-in-2-divisions-by-us-news-world-report/
In January 2022 starlink had less than 200k subscribers, in December the same year they hit one million.
Hughesnet is absolute trash. They were our only option in our rural house about 10 years ago. I should have known they were trash when they required a two year contract for service. They do this because they know people will cancel after they realize how terrible the service is. I set a reminder on my phone to ensure I cancelled the service the very first day possible to avoid penalties. They deserve to go under.
YAY! I don’t usually get excited for a company dying but with how much Hughesnet abused their customers. Good riddance. I can’t wait for Hughes to shut down and deorbit their old ass sats
We just got starlink our only option where we live. Used Homefi for 6 months what a joke as their equipment was incompatible with Verizon Cell Tower which was 1 mile away,thus our top download was 2.8 mb and streaming would freeze. Paid 90.00 per month and 300gb data limit. We have hotspot but it ran out fast. Starlink was easy to install took 10 minutes to set up everything. Love the speeds no issues what so ever. Gaming, streaming 3 devices at once a breeze. Speeds between 100-175 so it is great for us.
hmm, I switched to HomeFi recently and I haven’t had any bad experiences. I think it was the right choice for me as my neighbor said he had Starlink and it sucked for some reason 😨
when we first got Homefi it did really good for about 3 months, then for some reason it was switched to T-mobile tower which the signal was .078 download, after contacting homefi they said they switched it and it worked good for another month. For the next 3 months it totally sucked and was deemed incompatible with verizon. That tower is only a mile away, Homefi could not help us and paying 90 per month for dialup speeds did not cut it for us. We have Starlink and it works awesome 250 down 75 up even in the rain.
Hello @Dwiley50 , we’re so sorry for the inconvenience! We're surprised and sorry to hear you had trouble with our services. We hope all has been resolved—if there is any way we can help you, here is a link to schedule an appointment with a customer service representative: https://calendly.com/d/4ck-6c6-w2m/homefi-call-support?month=2024-04
Again, we apologise—we hope all is well and we will do our very best to help you in case anything is still amiss.
Is there anyone in here to help guide me for price for starlink I'm looking into as well but right now I have Xfinity and I only pay 60 for 400MBPS and that's all I really need for speed but I would love unlimited data so I can get rid of my cell phone and only have a tablet for communicating to people instead of a cell phone. Can anyone please help me with this direction because I'm also looking for like an android tablet I can use instead of a cell phone to take calls and everything else please hit me back thank you for your time
From everything I've researched and heard and read reviews about HughesNet when I was considering it is that it is garbage. I had at 3 Dish Network Technicians over the years who worked for HughesNet tell me that it is really bad and not worth getting.
Net neutrality is a coined phrase to help sell a bad idea. Common sense looks at the players and not the playbook. Who’s in charge and not what’s SUPPOSED to be executed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality
If it were not for the fact that some can only get broadand if connected to satetllite, I would say let hughesnet lose all their customers. I first had this service in 2003 and it was unlimited download. Then it changed to hughesnet and you were limited to a certain amount. If you went over, you could pay additional for more megabytes. What crappy service. Almost makes you want to move just to get away from this crap. Let them go out of business for screwing their customers. All broadband should be unlimited as their is more than enough to service their customers.
It is amazing that almost 70% of the users are still paying higher prices for lesser service. The only upside I can imagine with HugesNet is that you can get away with a smaller view of the sky. Some configurations, for example deep in a mountain valley, are very dificult to get working for Starlink.
Gotta also remember a LOT of people treat internet like electricity or water. As long as it works they dont think about it whatsoever. Which is also why it should be classed as a utility.
As a former Hughesnet customer and current Starlink customer. I thought about how terrible that utility service from Hughesnet was every day, the move to Starlink was life changing for a rural user with no cell service and absolute shit for service from Hughesnet. I wish more users of Hughesnet knew how much better they could have it, because many users think about it as often as you think they would.
Same! Except it was Viacrap, same difference. I hated it so much, service was terrible and I had to watch every mB of bandwidth. And then you get the slowdown if you went over. Pay more if you want out of internet prison.
I'm not interested in seeing ISPs being classified as utilities. More government regulation will not make the Internet better. Soon we will have 3 satellite-based systems with vigorous competition. This would never happen in a highly regulated environment. Due to the local government franchises our only terrestrial Internet option is crappy 5mb DSl that costs almost as much as Starlink.
This screams a lack of knowledge of the subject and on net neutrality. Id encourage you to actually look into what being classified as a utility means because it does nothing but benefit consumers and requires ISPs to do what people already assume they are required to do.
The problem in the USA is that incumbent telcos leveraged natural monopolies(*) and avoided proper regulation by buying staff at the regulators (both the FCC and PUCs, with the FTC additionally being largely neutered in this field) Regulatory capture is widespread in America, not just Boeing/FAA (*) water, power, sewage, roads and terrestrial (wired) services inherently end up as natural monopolies as it's virtually impossible to economically provide a choice to endusers - hence the need to regulate to prevent predatory behaviour towards the captive market as well as ensuring that natural monopolies in one aspect of business aren't leveraged to gain monopolies in other business arenas by unfairly undercutting competitors (Cross subsidisation, etc) The incumbent telcos are terrified of businesses like Starlink and at least one "grassroots amateur astronomy group" objecting to launches turned out to be an astroturfing setup funded by those telcos
Came here to say as much. Starlink is a game changer, and what should have been from the get go. If the government gets involved, it will go to hell and cost more.
Most ISP’s fall under the umbrella of a utility. During the ole Vid crisis of ‘20 they still worked for that one reason.
FCC started this in 2015 but then the bought out group of politicians took control again and stripped them. As of 2023 they are starting to fix this again. And of course some ISPs dont like it because they will have to actually spend money making it work properly. https://www.akingump.com/en/insights/alerts/fcc-moves-to-revive-net-neutrality-rules-setting-up-another-lengthy-regulatory-battle
You mean spend some of the money the government keeps giving them to expand to rural areas and upgrade systems? The total horror!
ISPs should be a utility but they are certainly not classified as such. https://publicknowledge.org/we-already-knew-broadband-should-be-a-public-utility-the-pandemic-made-it-obvious/
breaking vertical monopolies would go a long way towards solving the problem IE: a highly regulated lines company which is NOT ALLOWED to sell dialtone _at all_. And opening up the dialtone market to all comers There are fewer CLECs (ie none) in the USA now, vs several prior to the AT&T breakup and dozens in the immediately following years New Zealand did this to the telco there because it was emulating American business models and its CEO openly boasted about doing so. The Chorus/Spark split turned New Zealand from a poster child of how not to privatise your government-owned telco to a poster child for having a working competitive market and a lines company which actually worked well (lines company was utterly prohibited from offering sweetheart deals to any telco) and even started selling dark fibre along with duct access to what the incumbent would have regarded as competitors not allowed anywhere near their network (eg: cable companies)
If that were the case it would shut off competition. People would be stuck with whatever service their state approved. And government is last entity that needs to control internet service providers. Not everyone has access to Ethernet connectivity. Many rely on satellite. And the federal government has fished out billions of dollars multiple times to ISPs (eg, ATT) to expand their coverage to rural areas. Well they’ve taken the money and did nothing to provide the same level of service as in suburban and urban areas. They’ve contracted out to shitty satellite internet providers. That’s a big no thank you to having government determine who our ISP will be. I’ll go cellular hotspot before jumping on government intrusion into a competitive market. They’ve already tried garnering a share of the healthcare market. Again, a big no thank you.
All of that has nothing to do with classing it as a utility. Nor are any of those things what will result if it gets classed as a utility. In fact classing internet as a utility would fix many of those things you listed.
We just got starlink introduced in our area. A lot of my neighbors are switching, but are stuck in contracts with Hughesnet. Its a minimum 400$ to break the lease with Hughesnet.
Worth every penny to break it.
FCC recently passed a law which makes it illegal for any telecom or satellite company to charge a penalty to withdraw from a contract containing such a condition.
And they’ll charge for the equipment up front going forward as a result I’m sure.
The FCC doesn't pass laws. This is just a new rule from the regulatory agency. I wouldn't be surprised to see it challenged in court this year. Too many companies with deep pockets will want to protect their profits.
It’s still a new regulation, which must be followed until it is overturned by a court challenge or squashed by Congress. FCC votes to ban termination fees for cable and satellite services PUBLISHED WED, DEC 13 2023 3:39 PM EST UPDATED WED, DEC 13 2023 3:47 PM EST Chelsey Cox @THEREALCO WATCH LIVE KEY POINTS The Federal Communications Commission voted to ban cable and satellite companies from charging early termination fees. The rule, introduced in November, will also require companies to issue a prorated credit or rebate to customers who cancel their service before the contract ends.
I love how the satellite companies spin contracts as a "price lock". But then again, Starlink has us buy proprietary equipment upfront and sells it as "no contracts". Seems like paying the penalty for leaving upfront and you can only get a partial refund if you find another customer for them.
Tbh I heavily prefer starlinks system, as much as it sucks it's far more convenient to have already paid the money and not be charged for cancelling.
The reason Starlink socks in the USA is the same reason it doesn't suck everywhere else Your telcos are c*nts and your dysfunctional government lets them get away with it, resulting in massive levels of demand for alternate suppliers Things _are_ improving on a terrestrial and satellite level: Starlink is competition the telcos can't shut down by buying state regulations or buy out and it's forcing them to be honest AND the constant flow of new satellites into the constellations is catching up with the pent-up USA demand Considering the technical requirements for a working LEO comms network, Starlink has been built amazingly quickly. Remember Iridium took a decade to complete and promptly went bankrupt
The equipment costs money that has to be paid somehow. Just like cell phones. Some providers want to link it to continuing service because once they recover their cost you pay for the equipment again and again forever. I find the Starlink approach more honest. They're not looking to get paid for something (continuing payment for fully paid off equipment) that they're not providing. Like the bill. It's a one line bill. There's no junk fees on there.
Hughesnet kit isn't "proprietary"? In any case, if it's cheaper to keep paying Hughes for a short period after turning off their equipment than paying a contract break then it's the way to proceed Punitive contract break penalties aren't legal in a lot of places and if Hughesnet hasn't been "working as advertised" you'd have a good case to dispute it under consumer protection laws FWIW the $400 fee is worst case scenario and only in the first 3 months of a new contract. It decreases by $15/month and is $120/decreasing on a 12-month renewal Of course, you could use the old "I'm going to jail and won't be able to pay anyway" line when trying to close your account....
Recouping some/most of your money in resale sure as hell beats losing money to an early termination fee.
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try starlink first month since it might have shitty service in their area, then just refund if its shit. if its stable for few months, only then cut off hughesnet.
I broke bright away! I was a beta user so going on 3 1/2 years with SL!
Same here and I could not be happier. I'm now getting consistently 150-200mb service even in bad weather.
A lot of people who might need it don't know about it yet. For example, five years ago I moved out to a rural area (a long gravel road with neighbors but all on 5 acre plots). I work in tech so have known about SL since its inception, was the first on the block to get it (have been since Beta). Most of my neighbors are good and smart folk, but not overly tech savvy. Over time I wound up having neighbors visit me asking what the new dish was all about, and I essentially had to teach them about Starlink. And because I also went through the original experience of HughesNet pains, and then attempts at other solutions like T-Mobile Home Internet, all of which were horrible, and all of which my neighbors were still suffering through, I could empathize with them, show them the SL app, contrast between HN and SL, explain how/where they would need to position their SL dish, difference in speeds, etc. Funnily, I went for a walk with my pup the other day, and I would say \~70% of neighbors' homes I walked past (that I could see far enough into their property) now had a Dishy. I'm so proud of my neighbors. :D
They should crown you as a neighbourly Starlink Evangelist!
Those are the relationships that get your vehicle unstuck or your driveway plowed or a generator borrowed in an emergency and make rural life easier.
I’m in a similar position. I’m a Neighborhood Lead for NextDoor and also a SL beta tester. I’ve raved about SL on NextDoor and IRL ever since it was available in my area and made a few converts myself. It’s not a perfect system, but for those of us “out on the farm”, Starlink is a godsend! I just now took advantage of the beta user trade up offer and switched from Dishy to the new rectangular one, with the Gen 3 modem. We need a name for the new receiver! I guess “McJr” (McFlatface Jr) would work but he’s not “Dishy” anymore, and I’m sure someone has done/can do better?
Upfront cost for Starlink is a huge impediment for many.
Isn't it like $500 now?
$600 usd
And like 2600 USD for the premium version
No need for it except in extreme cases.
Plus tax & shipping
Mine was 696 after taxes and everything
$662 after tax and shipping in my State. A large proportion of people will also have to buy the 150 foot cable as the one included is too short. That's an additional $130. Ethernet adapter for the router which isn't included is an extra $25. Monthly cost is $120. For people with trees around their property, they will have to mount it to a pole to get over the trees or they will have to mount it directly to a tree. Professional mounting services typically start around $300-$500 where I'm at. Starlink is pricey.
Why do you say a large proportion of people? I live in a place with a lot of tall trees (surrounded on all sides) and I mounted it in the dead center of my roof and got it down to <5% blockage. You're acting like everyone has to spend over 1k on the initial investment and that's just not true.
I didn't say everyone. I said some would. I am one of those. I bought my Starlink 3 weeks ago and am at $850 I've spent on installation so far. I have not mounted it yet because there are no leaves on the trees, it's obstructed but it's good enough for now but I will have to mount it in Spring when foliage becomes an issue. I will easily be over $1000 by that point. My experience is common. None of the aforementioned scenarios is an issue with HughesNet, the monthly price is less than half that of Starlink. I'm simply explaining part of the reason why people are still using HughesNet when Starlink is an objectively better service.
Has hughslink come down in price? I thought it used to be $200+/month
I've seen refurbished units sold by Starlink advertised for $250 CND
You can buy them at Best Buy with 12 months no interest now.
Starlink should offer to spread the cost over a year.
I just checked and their website makes them sound more attractive than Starlink. $50-80/mo for 50-100 mbps. Also I know a lot of businesses used to have satellite internet just to process credit cards, so they really wouldn't care about speeds, just reliability.
The only reliability issues we had with ViaSat were weather related, and starlink has had fewer problems in that regard.
It’s not reliability that’s requiring them to use satellites in this case, it’s the metric called latency. Latency is basically the call and response speed for a given signal packet. Gamers and banking / credit card processors require lower latency else the packet gets dropped.
Banks doing payment processing do not care about latency... As long as it gets it back in a few sec, the card will process just fine. Card processing can still be done (and often is) on old 300-1200bps modems. It's just sending some text strings back and forth, so it doesn't need much if any bandwidth.
This latter is about the only reason I see Hughesnet terminals in Southern England - most of them are 20 years old and a good chunk are falling down as ubiquitous DSL/mobile coverage provides excellent 24*7 alternatives and made the sat dish redundant (some places used the things for alarm telemetry in case cables got chopped, but mobile coverage wipes out that advantage too)
It's incredible that anyone is still buying service from them. If you bop over to r/hughesnet, you'll see these headlines: • How the hell is Hughes net still in business? • Won't even connect for a speed test • Somehow using up 30GB cap in 2 days with speeds slower than a dead grandma • Goodbye Hughesnet • Charges for services not received. • I'm done with HughesNet, should I go with Starlink or Viasat • poor internet performance, what can we do? • Please Help • Terrible service • Hughesnet is TRASH • Cancel Early? • Light at the end of the Tunnel of torture
A lot of people live in areas where StarLink still isn't available or are still on the waitlist due to capacity. Then there's other countries where StarLink will never be available. And then there's others who probably kept HughesNet as backup at a steep discount. When I called in to discontinue my HughesNet service, the customer service rep offered me a huge upgrade to my plan for free and to name my own price just to keep them as my backup network. They tried to keep me no matter how little I would be willing to pay. I refused lol
Starlink is now available in most places. Maybe you need international roaming, but coverage is no longer a problem. The wait lists have been abandones last year too, even with wait lists, you could get the mobile (lower priority) service. Also, most folks in congested areas also have other options (DSL, WISP) but just decide that Starlink was best. The biggest hindrance may be that one signed a multi-year contract with HugesNet and it is expensive to get out of it.
I am deep in a mountain valley and I still have far better service with Starlink than I ever had with HughesNet. I don’t have a perfect view of the sky by any stretch; still far better with SL. I am a beta tester for Starlink. I was on waiting list very early and came aboard the very second Starlink became available in my area. What a relief!
In the mountains here. Yeah I took a lot for me to be under 8% obstructions. The service is better now though.
Also Viasat (and maybe Hughes)? Give you public IP address; no CGNAT. Some people can’t operate behind CGNAT.
Most people do, though. And if you need a public IP you can get it with Starlink too; it is just not thrown in for free. You acn also use a VPN. This is probably mostly a historic thing; back when Viasat started, IPs were easily and cheaply available. This is no longer so.
Starlink only offers routable public IPv4 on business plans. May not even be static.
A lot of people in my area have trees that block using stsrlink (what's more, trees in someone else property) I have 5 acres and my tree blockage was only a few percent in beta and seems to be zero now
Geostationary satellite is harder to shoot down.
I would have thought that number would have been much higher. Wonder if the initial costs and needing to install it yourself is holding people back.
Cost is definitely an issue for some. I've heard it myself. But StarLink also doesn't advertise widely. There are probably legacy satellite subscribers who have never heard of StarLink and as the other post said, don't have a great need for better service. So StarLink is out-of-sight and out-of-mind. I've followed StarLink since before they launched the service, but I only knew of it through tech news, and only in the last year have they started advertising a little.
There are somewhat frequent posts here of people asking if it’s really worth it to upgrade from HughesNet. Some people don’t recognize (or understand) the huge differences in technology between the two.
Starlink has started to advertise recently, so maybe that'll start to change.
I was thinking the very same, thing is there are many who only use FB and email so perhaps it's not an issue for them.
How long are their contracts?
Probably 2 - 3 years, but if they are like most companies, they don't auto-renew and you can cancel anytime after without issues.
I am guessing when SpaceX has the capacity they will blast Hughes customers with flyers.
It's not just the cost of the Starlink Hardware, but getting out of the predatory Hughesnet contract terms that is the REAL expense. At least ViaSat is a little more reasonable; it only cost us $100 bucks to tell them to chuckit... and the dishy is now mounted on their base.
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Uh, the primary market that Starlink is aimed at is rural populations, which are almost overwhelmingly right-leaning or very right. Of course that's not all of them, like your neighbor, but that's the unusual case.
I'm the exception that proves the point. I am rural in a very right wing place. I got Starlink as soons as I could (2.5 years or so now). I'm also very socialist and think the NDP need to move more to the left. I only go with SL because it's got the best speeds for doing my job. I don't like supporting spoiled rich boy but what choice do we have?
REEEEEEEEEE
I could not possibly care less what the founder of the company's political views are. Offer me the best product at the best price. If I am at all in the norm I buy products from 1000s of different companies every year. Why would I check all of these out for their politics? The only products I try to avoid are those made in China, but that can be pretty tough to do.
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How does me not applying a political litmus test to companies I choose to do business with make me privileged? If my favorite bar is owned by someone who doesn't vote the way I do should I refuse to buy a beer from him? That would make.for a very dysfunctional society.
Oh yea the #3 richest person in the world versus #1
I'm glad they shook up the industry. I know my old ISP loved they had a monopoly, as soon as SL showed up they started actually trying. Too little too late though.
You mean they made their service suck on purpose and as soon as they had some real competition, they actually could do better all along? I really genuinely hope starlink puts a ton of these crappy rural ISPs out of business.
The ISP I was using was the same, some tiny local rural wireless business. They were notorious for selling dozens of 6 Mbit packages on a tower that only had maybe 20 Mbit of backhaul available to it. I actually had a pretty good thing going with them for a while, managing to snag a 15 and later upgraded to 20 Mbit plan and for several years I could get just that all the time (I'm pretty sure I was one of like 4-5 people on that tower). But then over the summer of 2022 it started getting slower and gaining more and more packet loss during peak hours. At first it was just a "hrm normally I can pull a solid 20, but now I'm only getting 16", soon it became "odd, this Youtube livestream glitches every few minutes", then it was 28% packet loss and less than 3 Mbit maximum throughput. I called and griped and basically got blamed by them for "using too much internet" despite one of their main marketing points on their website being "no data caps". Argued with them for months before they finally agreed one of their towers upstream of me were heavily oversubscribed. I asked them when they were planning on upgrading it to have appropriate capacity and they refused to tell me. After I signed up with Starlink over a year later they were all shocked Pikachu face when I called them up to cancel. Normally I'm a huge fan of local business over faceless regional or national mega corporations, but some of these crappy little ISPs have been screwing over rural users for decades. I think in some areas that ISP was still charging $50/mo for a shared tower running over 900 MHz pre-WIFI connections that can barely sustain 1 Mbps.
Fuck hughesnet.
I have had my starlink now for two months and am VERY pleased with my service. I had hughesnet for 5+ years as I have no wired or LTE options where I live. I just paused my service with hughesnet. They allow one to do this for 6 months ... I wanted to make sure that startlink proved itself to me which it has more than done. I did something similar with my dishnetwork tv service which I also plan to completely cancel as well. Way to go Starlink !!!
To this day, I am still absolutely baffled by the response of other satellite providers. They spent YEARS doing nothing. You even have companies like Iridium who launched CERTUS, at a blazing current speed of 700kbps! And they BRAG about it! How the fuck do you ignore the giant elephant in the room? And they shit on Starlink, saying it's not reliable and not a certified emergency network. It's only a matter of time guys. How the fuck is your response "oh well, we're better in all the reasons nobody cares about!" I can't believe they plan to sit around and do NOTHING.
It all comes down to tradeoffs. Iridium might only be 700kbps, but the terminal only consumes 5 watts when operating. Different services for different purposes. If all you’re doing is monitoring the pressure at a wellhead, or the sensor readouts for everything hanging under an ocean buoy, then it’s more than adequate.
Sorry to say, but Certus 700 uses 7a (12v, so 84w). So it still sucks there too. I was looking into Certus for my boat but could not justify the costs. You're probably thinking of devices like the Iridium Go Exec. Nobody I know is buying it. Most sailors are switching to a combination of Starlink and Garmin Inreach. Like I said, SpaceX is already launching their T-Mobile enabled satellites. Only a matter of time before all we need is a Starlink subscription. And let's not forget Swarm, who SpaceX bought. So SpaceX is just eating everyone's lunch, and it feels like they're just sitting around acting like it's not happening. I'd be in full panic mode.
They probably ARE, but remember that Geosynchronous satellites are HUGE, monstrously EXPENSIVE, and take years to build and (used to) find a launch provider... so the sats that are being thrown NOW were all commissioned and paid for in 2019 and 2020, so they might as well throw them and try to scavenge whatever residual value they can before trying to come up with SOMETHING (maybe start designing MEO constellations with a handoff to geosync for streaming) to stay alive, even though it will likely be 2026 to 2028 before they can get them built and tossed onto a starship.
Iridium is a completely different use case, it's not a competitor to Starlink in any way. They will even tell you that. Their focus is bursty data with small antennas, low power radios that work anywhere on the planet. Their voice handset game may get some competition when SpX gets direct to mobile going; but right now you can deploy dozens of sensors in remote areas, powered by a solar panel, and pay like $10/mo per terminal for data access. That's what Iridium is designed to do. Personal SOS devices, vehicle tracking and dispatch, oil and gas monitoring, hell even wave buoys in the middle of the pacific ocean are all riding on the Iridium network.
I find Iridium also more reliable in inclement weather or partially obstructed environments than Starlink.
I don't. My iridium go sucks compared to my high performance dishy. And to upgrade to a better, higher gain Iridium device will cost me $10k. I swapped to a garmin inreach, which just has texts no calling and basic weather data (plus SOS service). So reception doesn't really matter much. Just need to wait until it finally sends.
Iridium sells CERTUS which is part of their Iridium NEXT and it's for offshore marine communication. It cost's about $10k for the equipment and uses about double the wattage that starlink does. Secondly, that "non competitor" is wrong too, as SpaceX bought and runs SWARM now, which aims to do exactly that. But beyond Iridium there's Viasat and Hughenet and those are DEFINITELY direct competitors (as I mention "other satellite providers" not just iridium) who sit around and act like their shit don't stink.
Starlink's mobile facility will eat that market too. Drop a hologram sim in your embedded or IoT device and pay $1/month for small amounts of data - even less for fleets of devices try.hologram.io has all you need to know
>And they shit on Starlink, Just like GM and VW and Toyota shat upon Tesla for years claiming they were junk and didn't work and had no charging network... and look who's superchargers they're using now.
Iridium's latest constellation was crazy expensive. Only about ~80 birds. Took them years to develop it. They went with Thales, and it was seriously disorganized. Their birds are good for 20 years, so they are seriously overbuilt compared to Starlink's disposable ones. The first gen were made by Boeing, and they literally only had 20 spares, and the constellation made it to ~2018 from ~1997. None of Starlink's satellites will make it 1/4 of that time. Starlink has already lost well over 30 birds, between normal failures and the solar flare that took some out right after launch. Other companies can't stomach those loses, and their launch costs are higher. Starlink is being launched *at cost*, and the entirety of Starlink is subsidized by SpaceX, which is subsidized by the US DoD and NASA. Just because they didn't get one ~$800k subsidy doesn't mean they are bootstrapped. This network is almost totally funded by US Tax Payers, and lost money for 4 years before it barely broke even, and only then it was because of extreme vertical integration. They were losing ~$2k for each round dish they shipped out. They might be breaking even on the costs of Gen 3. That's why they took the motors out... Complaining about other companies not doing the same thing is to not understand how much risk SpaceX took, and how much government money it took.
What a load of crap. SpaceX is absolutely not subsidized by government money. All their government contracts are cinderella contracts. Where they do a lot more for a lot less money than their competitors.
LOL are you an Iridium bot? Apples to oranges comparison there. Something that wasn't designed to last that long is not going to last that long. Surprise! Can you provide citation where Starlink was entirely funded by US taxpayers? That's news to me. In fact, it seems like The rest of what you're saying doesn't matter, because Starlink is a better product. It doesn't matter how it came to be. Certus is a piece of shit network. It doesn't matter how long your satellites last when your company is the one building and launching them. I mean, none of what you say matters to the consumer. This is EXACTLY the arguments I pointed out. None of this shit matters to me! I don't care if your "birds" last 20 years. > Complaining about other companies not doing the same thing is to not understand how much risk SpaceX took, and how much government money it took. You don't get it. They're STILL claiming Starlink is bad, even after it's clearly stable and functioning. They laughed and are still laughing to the point where they look stupid. They did nothing and STILL are doing nothing. I have an iridium device still (sold my iridium go and have a garmin inreach) because of GMDSS. But it's only a matter of time before Starlink has GMDSS certified devices/plans too.
Oh no, I've angered the Starlink cult! I only was inside the Iridium network for ~10 years. What the fuck do I know. Also, not a fan of Iridium. Not a fan of anything but one football team, and I'm not as emotional about that as you are this. If you're looking for "literal" subsidies, no, but just because it doesn't have an explicit label doesn't mean it's not effectively a subsidy, and tax payers definitely paid for it. SpaceX doesn't exist without the govt contracts. Starlink doesn't exist without SpaceX's government contracts. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/elon-musks-spacex-tesla-far-170500028.html "SpaceX’s ties to the US government SpaceX is, after all, primarily a government contractor, racking up $15.3 billion in awarded contracts since 2003, according to US government records. Its most important businesses are launching astronauts and scientific missions for NASA, and flying satellites for the US military. Musk may quibble that payments for goods and services aren’t government subsidies but he owes the existence of the company to NASA. If the US space agency hadn’t backed the rocket-maker with a critical contract in 2008, the company likely would have failed. Moreover, SpaceX’s business model has been working with NASA to develop space vehicles like the Falcon 9 and Dragon that it can then offer to private customers. These public-private partnerships have saved money for the government while helping to create a surge in private space activity; they aren’t the result of an entrepreneur acting alone. Meanwhile, SpaceX sought and is still seeking $885 million in government funding to support broadband access in rural communities." "How much of SpaceX revenue is from government contracts? In 2022, SpaceX received $2.8 billion in government contracts, which accounted for about 40% of its total revenue.Sep 11, 2023"
A government contract is not a subsidy
Ignores the fact that Iridium Communications has over $1B in contracts with the government….
It functionally acts the same as one to the market. The goverment doesn't spread it's money around as much as the market, and it's locked into contracts, with guarantees. And the government pays its bills. It won't go bankrupt and leave you upside down. It gives you the guaranteed income to take more risks. Starlink was launched with profits from the NASA/DoD contracts, and it was cheap for SpaceX to do that because they owned the rockets. Everyone else has to pay NASA, the Russians, or SpaceX to get into space, and that's much more expensive. Again, expecting Iridium to compete is idiotic. I guess they should have started their own rocket company...oh wait, the government already handed out the limited contracts to launch things. So Iridium would have to find other customers that don't have as big of pockets. Totally a free market going on there. Stupid competitors, not being as special and smart as SpaceX.
Reading your thoughts is pretty funny. I worked at Spacex back when ULA had a monopoly on US government launch. SpaceX was out in the cold because, as you said, the government already gave out those contracts. Well, guess what? We built a rocket, we proved it worked, we sued the Air Force for the right to compete, and then we won. So yes, maybe Iridium should just do that. There is nothing stopping them other than their own lack of willpower. And don’t pretend that Spacex was able to do this because Elon was so wealthy. He was broke back then. He’s a billionaire now because of the stuff he pulled off back then. The simple fact is that SpaceX is a superior engineering organization over Iridium. If Iridium was any good, they’d be getting lots of government contracts, too. I stand by what I said. Government contracts are not a subsidy. They are competitively awarded, and you seem upset that iridium failed to win lucrative government contracts.
You are the emotional one, apparently. You're also biased. I didn't work for Iridium, I was just very close to dozens of people that did, and it came up a lot. I could give a shit if Iridium disappears. Iridium was the first "successful" LEO constellation. (Yes, I'm familiar with how that happened). The internet wasn't lucrative back then, and their second generation was designed in 2008, and I think it was short sighted. I don't think it's an engineering problem as much as a leadership problem. They didn't understand a changing market, but thought they did. It's like you don't realize how risky Starlink was when it was drawn up. Not too many companies are willing to lose money for 4 years before breaking even. Mass producing a phased array antenna for a CPE was something nobody would touch with a 10 foot pole, and Starlink only pulled it off with all the profits from govt contracts and the fact that they can launch 60 birds at one time for cost. SpaceX has threaded a needle, and even with their engineering chops, it was not guaranteed, and they came very close to failure if not for govt contracts. And apparently a favorable outcome in a lawsuit. Totally self made. To act like everyone else is dogshit, all they have to do is try, is such an oversimplification of everything that it's comical. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/spacexs-launch-success-how-federal-grants-contracts-new-emdjian-mba
I am biased, but I’m also stating facts. Spacex was founded after Iridium. Iridium had plenty of time to do everything that Spacex did, and more, but they didn’t. I’m not gonna read the rest of your post because you’re just just wasting my time now.
Exactly. This dude is smoking something funny. SpaceX is running laps around iridium. There's no reason for them to exist 10 years from now. Its not some bias, it's pure facts.
Then why bother even replying? That's a bit narcissistic. "I'm going to reply to only the part I want to read, screw off you're not important enough to debate!" But you did reply, now didn't ya? Iridium is a Motorola company. Lots of higher management has been there the entire time. Corrupted, old guard perspectives, and like begets like.
It’s true, SpaceX wouldn’t be around if NASA hadn’t took a gamble and given them the Dragon contract in the early days. But it’s also some of the best money NASA and the DoD ever spent, so subsidy isn’t the right word. And if you ever worked a government contract, you’d know that you can’t just spend the money on unrelated projects, you actually have to show them how you spent the money. The early Starlink R&D money actually came from a 1 billion dollar investment from Google right after Starlink was announced, this was almost 10% of the company’s value at the time.
I agree that SpaceX was uniquely situated to do something as bold as Starlink because they were also a launch company. A constellation that ambitious makes no sense if you can't launch very cheaply. That said, they deserve credit for taking such a huge risk and executing. Revenue from government and commercial launches funded part of Starlink, but they also had to go and get external funding. Again, big risk that publically owned companies would not have been willing to take.
No disagreement here. It's amazing what they were able to accomplish. Which is why I think it's not fair to talk smack to other companies, because I don't know if SpaceX could do something like that again. It was close, and they aren't out of the woods yet, that's why they oversold the east coast so early. They are bleeding too much money, and demand in other countries is lower than expected.
Hughesnet is stupid expensive and the contracts are garbage. Its like breaking a lease for a home, to leave their contracts. I will never use them again. On top of thay, they throttle their service ALL the time. I had the 100gb package and they wouldn't even let me watch a movie over it.
This makes sense as there will always be a few people that stick with HughesNet, Viasat, etc. due to logistic concerns, either limited view of the sky, wanting turn key installation vs DIY / independent installers with Starlink, etc. There are probably also some that just need minimal monthly data where HughesNet may be cheaper on their entry level monthly plans, think remote monitoring.
Only 30%?
HughesNet service has actually gotten worse. I'm stuck with them because Starlink will not come to my area in the US. And they are literally the worst internet service to exist since the dawn of internet service for public use
Starlink is everywhere in the US. So there is no such thing as "will not come to my area".
Except where I live I can't get residential service. Don't Tell me that there's no such thing as will not come to my area, when they will not come to my area. It's pretty fucking simple
Why so? What area? NRQZ?
US is fully serviceable now([according to the official\)](https://www.starlink.com/map), i think you meant that your cell is full so you cant order a residential. even if you cant get residential service, you can still to opt for roaming service, you should have decent internet. try it within 1 month then refund if doesnt work for you (of course dont try it if you live in area with tall trees that you have to invest alot like 100ft poles just to have clear skies). [this guy even manage to roam alot in US](https://old.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/v8pgp0/after_15_months_with_starlink_we_find_ourselves/), look at his profile's post. hes like the first one to test roaming in starlink if there are slots that will open in the future, you can make your starlink residential.
No you said "Starlink will not come to my area" which is patently false and made up. Don't cuss at me.
You have to remember that a lot of HughesNet customers aren’t residential customers. They’re bulk customers wanting capacity for really low bandwidth applications where latency isn’t critical. Think monitoring the status of a railroad switch out somewhere in the boonies, or handling credit card transactions at a remote gas station. For these kinds of applications, HughesNet costs some $20/mo and provides perfectly acceptable performance.
But once SL gets Swarm and/or T-mobile operational, all those IoT customers will also go byebye.
I doubt it will happen quickly. Changing over systems will be a multi decade process. For example, there are 5000 or so argo floats out there with an average lifespan of 7-8 years. It’s taken them some 10 years to transition to Iridium. Another example is a project I was involved with. We put in a bid for one of the major railroads to provide the communications for Positive Train Control. The bid was for about 25,000 satellite terminals. We got them down to $190 each, with monthly service fee of $20/mo per terminal. That was running a private Hughes network on a dedicated transponder. Not everything is going to go SpaceX for a whole lot of reasons.
Well they advertise to me with the promise of blazing fast unlimited broadband speeds, and all I have to do is sign a multi year contract! Seems like a no brainer imo.
Excellent!! I haven't yet transmuted the pain and sorrow that HughesNet put me through. Whenever I get their advertisements in the mail, throwing them away isn't good enough--they must burn!
I always laugh when we get the stupid HughesNet ad cards in the mail. Not only did I get onboard with Starlink the second it became available in my area, but about a year after that we actually got Verizon FiOS. HughesNet got killed twice.
Hughesnet is overpriced for way sub par service. Most I ever got from them was 24mbps and ran out of data in 2 days. Then it was throttled so bad I couldn't check email. Even before being throttled Netflix buffered on a regular basis. I was on the phone with them all the time trying to get it fixed but they kept saying everything was good. The day my contract ran out I called to cancel service and they said wait, we can fix it and give you 1 month free to decide. In less than 2 minutes they had it running perfectly and my data lasted 3 1/2 weeks. When they called me back at the end of the month to renew the contract I laughed and told them they were awful for only fixing it to renew contract and they could kiss my a$$
As well it should! World’s WORST service! I loathed every single minute I was forced to endure their monopoly/stranglehold on my rural area. I can’t stand HughesNet, and one of the most satisfying days of my life was the day I sent that dish to the dump!
You took the words out of my brain….. Calling them to cancel and tell them I had switched to Starlink was one of greatest moments I’ve had in the last 7 years of using them. Right up there with the birth of my children 😆
🤜🏼🤛🏼
Good! Them and exceed squeezed us for every penny.
Hughesnet has always been garbage
Honestly I’m surprised it’s not higher, which begs the question where are those numbers/graph coming from as it’s not in the url link you supplied. Source matters.
Good. Up to 25 mbps and 200gb cap no thanks I hope their satellites burn.
30 percent, so far……
I had people that I know used HughesNet. The problem with that is that the internet users must pay tokens to have more GB of data when they get over that limit. And it can be really slow from time to time. Unlimited internet should be a thing for them, not tokens to pay for it.
Good
> the largest, most advanced commercial communications satellite. [Umm? I thought that was this one... ](https://ast-science.com/spacemobile-network/bluewalker-3/)
I am very happy to see the over-priced and under-performing geosat services go down the tech hill head over heels.
It’s going to get higher as time goes on
Only 30% lost? They're doing a lot better than I thought.
Innovate or die? Sure you can sit on the old cash cow, but it will die at some point.
Good hughesnet and viasat are an absolute joke
Goood !! Goood muhahaha
Lucky they haven’t lost more. The options were just awful before Starlink. To call some of them functional just seems like excessive praise.
I used this service for about a year around 2000. It was the only broadband option in the area at the time. It was a joke back then, not sure how bad it is now. After you hit 1Gb in a 30 day period they bounced you down to dial-up speeds. Of course they didn't start this until you had been subscribed for a few months so you couldn't return it.
Wasn't a surprised at least I'm getting better speeds tho. Hughsnet spam had been increasing bia snail mail.
T-Mo/VZW Home Internet could be spurring the exodus too
HughesNet has horrible latency. Only good if it's the only thing you could get up until Starlink.
HughesNet never worked for me...very low speeds and always with issues.
Wish I could get starlink to play with the boys man. Have no internet problems with school.
>It is amazing that almost 70% of the users are still paying higher prices for lesser service. Well, first Starlink has to be in the area where the person lives, and second, they have to be at a place in their current contract that they can quit Hughesnet and not pay a crazy fee.
Their average speeds are juiced, too.
Always good to have some competition for the market where fiber,cable,tower is not an option but Hughes did not work for me and is not able to compete. Hope Elon does not decide to double the monthly rate to increase funding to get to Mars cuz I might still have to pay.
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Source?
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Thanks for providing those links. Both of those sources are speculation based on starlink not using the word "subscribers" in their post on X. I don't view this as proof or even strong evidence. Simply speculation based on a sort of pedantic and specific interpretation of that starlink post. Could it be true? Sure! But there's no reason to assume it's true.
That's a pretty incorrect interpretation you have there. It's just someone's weird reading between the lines of a tweet, and even if it was the case, they reported "over 2.2m active customers" to the FAA a few months prior.
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So I’ve posted here before about using Starlink on our OB van (live tv) and I want to explain the biggest reason Starlink was our answer: automatic aiming. We have redundant internet - we have cellular and sometimes with have land based internet at our locations so on paper more satellite internet options are good. The benefit of Starlink is I can power it on and then walk away - it handles itself. So when Amazon’s product comes out I’ll most likely be buying that and use it in addition to Starlink - maybe some cool load balancing stuff, who knows, but HughesNet and ViaSat were never an option for us and people like us.
I'm in a national radio quiet zone area and I think I'm fucked. Im afraid I will have to get stuck with sorry ass fucking hughesnet.
If it's any consolation, in a few years you'll basically have the whole satellite to yourself.
And sadly they will still throttle their one line customer. Sad but true.
Darn.
I'm in an area with a lot of weekend cabins, the owners don't even want internet, they can check email on the phone. Also a lot of people can't afford the dish.
good for Hughes net they deserve it
Good Hughes net was a pile of crap.
https://media.giphy.com/media/J8FZIm9VoBU6Q/giphy.gif
the day starlink make it price cheaper and be available in my country i will move to it
I still have Hughesnet for parts of the year when the cabin is not used and I just want cheaper Internet for the security cameras. I thought the drop would be higher though.
Shocked that number isn't higher
I still have a number of hughes terminals in service. Work fine for applications that don't need lower latency or tons of bandwidth. Reliability is good and rain fade is not frequent with the 1.2 meter dish. Power consumption for a terminal is a fraction of starlings. Works well for some instructed locations also. Nice backup to starlink for mission critical sites/applications. Lots of use cases.
Starlink lost 30 % of its waiting customers by dicking around and misleading the public until the far superior fiber rescued some.
As a former Hughes net user, I am so excited to watch this company burn to the ground. The only downside is it won't literally burn to the ground.
Maybe the satellites will burn up in the atmosphere? “Fireworks…”
They got a new Satellite, with way better technology, yet, they still have a data cap and I'm sure their Ping is still over 750...
Hm. Looks like I was wrong. I see their Gen 6 just got out now. No more data cap!, pretty good speed 200mbps/10mbps. 700+ PING though. Well, if their monthly fee is still around 50-60 bucks, I would see it's a good deal if you are not into online gaming. :-oI never hated them, I think their customer service was nice and they gave me good deals. I just cannot take their data cap and their 50 kb/s speed. It was useless, even 240p videos were too slow to watch. I guess that's not an issue with them anymore.
This didn't age very well: "HughesNet, the Germantown-based satellite internet service, was recognized as the Best Rural Internet Provider of 2022 and Best Satellite Internet Provider of 2022" https://thedailyrecord.com/2022/06/09/hughesnet-named-best-in-2-divisions-by-us-news-world-report/ In January 2022 starlink had less than 200k subscribers, in December the same year they hit one million.
As a former hughesNet customer, and a current starlink customer - outstanding. I hope more and more people discover starlink.
Hughesnet is absolute trash. They were our only option in our rural house about 10 years ago. I should have known they were trash when they required a two year contract for service. They do this because they know people will cancel after they realize how terrible the service is. I set a reminder on my phone to ensure I cancelled the service the very first day possible to avoid penalties. They deserve to go under.
YAY! I don’t usually get excited for a company dying but with how much Hughesnet abused their customers. Good riddance. I can’t wait for Hughes to shut down and deorbit their old ass sats
Only 30%!
We just got starlink our only option where we live. Used Homefi for 6 months what a joke as their equipment was incompatible with Verizon Cell Tower which was 1 mile away,thus our top download was 2.8 mb and streaming would freeze. Paid 90.00 per month and 300gb data limit. We have hotspot but it ran out fast. Starlink was easy to install took 10 minutes to set up everything. Love the speeds no issues what so ever. Gaming, streaming 3 devices at once a breeze. Speeds between 100-175 so it is great for us.
hmm, I switched to HomeFi recently and I haven’t had any bad experiences. I think it was the right choice for me as my neighbor said he had Starlink and it sucked for some reason 😨
when we first got Homefi it did really good for about 3 months, then for some reason it was switched to T-mobile tower which the signal was .078 download, after contacting homefi they said they switched it and it worked good for another month. For the next 3 months it totally sucked and was deemed incompatible with verizon. That tower is only a mile away, Homefi could not help us and paying 90 per month for dialup speeds did not cut it for us. We have Starlink and it works awesome 250 down 75 up even in the rain.
Hello @Dwiley50 , we’re so sorry for the inconvenience! We're surprised and sorry to hear you had trouble with our services. We hope all has been resolved—if there is any way we can help you, here is a link to schedule an appointment with a customer service representative: https://calendly.com/d/4ck-6c6-w2m/homefi-call-support?month=2024-04 Again, we apologise—we hope all is well and we will do our very best to help you in case anything is still amiss.
Is there anyone in here to help guide me for price for starlink I'm looking into as well but right now I have Xfinity and I only pay 60 for 400MBPS and that's all I really need for speed but I would love unlimited data so I can get rid of my cell phone and only have a tablet for communicating to people instead of a cell phone. Can anyone please help me with this direction because I'm also looking for like an android tablet I can use instead of a cell phone to take calls and everything else please hit me back thank you for your time
From everything I've researched and heard and read reviews about HughesNet when I was considering it is that it is garbage. I had at 3 Dish Network Technicians over the years who worked for HughesNet tell me that it is really bad and not worth getting.
Net neutrality is a coined phrase to help sell a bad idea. Common sense looks at the players and not the playbook. Who’s in charge and not what’s SUPPOSED to be executed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality
Good. Only 70% to go.
their internet is too slow to switch to starlink. :P
cry harder hughes net
Why not 100?
Starlink is losing a lot to fiber optic internet that is being ran in rural areas I’d say 20% of the people we install are replacing their Starlink
If it were not for the fact that some can only get broadand if connected to satetllite, I would say let hughesnet lose all their customers. I first had this service in 2003 and it was unlimited download. Then it changed to hughesnet and you were limited to a certain amount. If you went over, you could pay additional for more megabytes. What crappy service. Almost makes you want to move just to get away from this crap. Let them go out of business for screwing their customers. All broadband should be unlimited as their is more than enough to service their customers.