I found out the hard way (running a very small business at home), that even with the professional plan, there is 425MB download limit per day on this service. THAT was never pointed out to me as part of "fair service usage". Once you hit that limit, your internet service "dies" for 24 hrs. There is no notice, no email, no warning, just degradation of service regardless. I phoned the support (scripted foreign nationals), and finally was transferred to Portland, OR, and then to a supervisor with the same script. They don't care, and there is nothing you can do about it. I have 5 months left on my contract... then goodbye HUGHESNET!!! I won't deal with a company that has no other options than to double your spending per month. I already bought everything, paid for installation and pay $60/month. This is ridiculous in a day/age when everything is "log on, on-line"... anyone with a solution, feel free to contact me. I don't have access to cable, or DSL where I live. Only way to reach HughesNet is really thru their corporate headquarters: Hughes Network Systems, LLC.

11717 Exploration Lane
Germantown, MD 20876 USA.

Hugesnet internet service has to be the most overblown advertisement in the history of ad-copy. Total mis-representation. High speed internet? Not on a clear day in hell. This service takes real time off of your lifecycle just waiting for a page to load.
You get a two year contract, a never explained "Fair Access Policy" at a high price for what on almost every occasion amounts to a 28k modem, and less.

Service is fair, even when you can get off hold. At the 81.00 per month, install plus equipment. One would expect to have "Highspeed Internet". False advertisement is what Hughesnet offers. I watched an ad on TV for Hugesnet the other night. All smoke and mirrors.

Anyone wishing to form a class action suit against these bandits of the internet, count me in.

Hughesnet has the worst customer service of any company I have ever dealt with. If you are lucky enough to get someone on the phone you may or may not be able to understand their broken English. If you asked to be transferred to someone you can understand they accidentally disconnect the call while transferring you. Then if you do get through to someone he or she is a rude person who while keep putting you on hold supposedly looking up your info until you get accidentally disconnected or hang up out of frustration.

My service has been down over a month. A tech was sent out but not in the 5 days like they said, it took nearly 3 weeks. I have lost business and clients due to this. They won't even refund my month of service and refuse to send out another tech without a $125 charge.

I want out of this contract and I would like to cancel the other hughesnet service I have at my farm. I sell security systems and advise 50 clients a year to get satellite Internet. I will no longer be referring anyone to hughesnet.

First of all i think I should start of with say NEVER PURCHASE HUGHESNET!! I have had Hughesnet for about two years now. The only reason I have not canceled it is because in my area it is the only service besides dial-up that is available. Sometimes I think dial-up would be better. First of all the biggest problem is the unreliability ,the internet will stop working or it will become very slow for weeks at a time. Second of all the customer service is extremely poor. They do nothing to help except say, "keep a record of the speeds over the next three days" and then when you call back they say to do something else for the next three days. Another customer service problem is that it is EXTREMELY hard to understand the reps, between strong accents and poor phone lines it is almost impossible to understand them. Next but certainly not last is the Fair Access Policy (FAP). The FAP limits the amount of download and uploading that can be done. For my plan which it the Pro Plan I can only download 375MB and on the Basic Plan you can only download 200MB. After The FAP is exceeded the download speeds will be reduced to around 56K(dial-up) and sometimes slower for 24 hours. The next problem is that i cannot play online games or use xbox live without there being a massive amount of delay(lag) which makes it impossible to play. But this could possibly be excused since satillite internet is know to have lots of lag. Now for my current issue that i am dealing with right now. About three weeks ago my download speed dropped of to about 2KB/s which made internet browsing almost impossible. So I called customer service and they goofed around and have yet to resolve any thing. So for the past three weeks i have had virtually no internet. But i have called at least five times over the last three weeks. one week ago i was escalated to the third level of tech support and they where supposed to contact me within two days. One week later still no call. So i call back( 0n hold as I type this) and they have told me that they will try to call in the next day. So the reason i am so mad now is because i am pay $89 dollars a month for 5KB/s.

Hugesnet (formerly Direcway) implemented a 'Fair Access policy' (FAP) which does not allow for the daily download bandwidth paid for by the service plains. This is because there is a 24hour penalty after the threshold for a day is reached.

If at 11:59pm I go 1 byte over the 200MB in my contract they will limit speed to below dialup speed for 24 hours after (not the 1 minute for the rest of the day or until the usage is back on track). This makes the 2 day average of broadband access 201MB or 100.5MB/day, not the 200MB/day that I pay for.

This is NOT indicated on the page with the list of plains and allowed daily usage. You need to click to another page to read about the 24hour restricted usage.

Hughes net advertises:
"With HughesNet®, your super-fast, always-on, satellite Internet access is ready when you are—no dialing in, no waiting and no tied-up phone lines. You can download files in seconds, check email instantly and surf faster than you ever imagined." What they don't say is that you only have a fraction of an hour at their advertised download speeds a day. The 'always-on' is 'always-on' unless you want to use more than an hour a day of boradband such as video.

The FAP page then goes on to say you CANNOT do broadband applications without being unfair!?!

I just tried to read the fair access policy on the page with the descriptions of the residential plains an found I need to log in! That is, there is no way for a person who is not a subscriber to know about the 24 hour restriction AFTER they daily limit is reached even if it is at the end of the day. Below is a list from this document of what is NOT considered to be fair use:

from:
http://www.nationwidesatellite.com/HughesNet/service/HughesNet_fair_access_policy.asp

1. Full-length movie downloads
2. Peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing programs such as Napster, Kazaa or LimeWire
3. Continuous downloading or viewing streaming media content such as audio or video programming
4. Hosting of server devices such as email, FTP or Web servers
5. Hosting computer applications such as Web camera feeds
6. Automated computer to computer connections used for archiving of local computer content
7. Extensive downloading of Usenet Newsgroups (NNTP)
8. Use of BitTorrent applications
9. Simultaneous file downloads
10. Downloading large files (i.e., file sizes that are close in size to the download threshold of your service plan)

Note that all of the services above are considered boradband. I don't believe Hughes net can advertise always on broadband, have a system that will work at advertised speed for under an hour and then indicate that the above broadband activities are not allowed. After all that, they violate the terms of their advertised plains by limiting service the day AFTER a violation occurs to not be boradband either.