Subscribe“Broadband is a highly competitive industry in the United States, with many options for customers.”
Despite that mantra from the cable and telephone industry, large sections of the country have two options for broadband service – satellite or nothing. For an estimated 80,000 Californians, nothing may be a better option. That number represents the estimated number of state residents locked into a contract with HughesNet for satellite-delivered “broadband” service. For several years, many customers have been appalled at just how bad HughesNet is at delivering that service, and now several have had enough.
Filed in the Northern District of California federal court in Oakland, a class action lawsuit alleges that HughesNet falsely advertises the quality of its service, particularly regarding speeds it promises but doesn’t deliver, and does not disclose the full extent of the company’s throttling and cap policies.
HughesNet limits customers to a daily limit starting at just 200MB of consumption, and then throttles speed to dial-up or slower for at least 24 hours for anyone who exceeds it. Repeated instances of exceeding the cap extends a customer’s time in the throttled speed penalty box or can lead to service suspension.
Customers who find they no longer wish to live under this kind of “broadband regime” find escaping the two year service contract expensive, requiring a $400 early cancellation fee.
For millions of Americans, well beyond cable lines or too far away for DSL service, broadband under any terms is an extremely expensive proposition. HughesNet requires customers to purchase equipment, costing around $300 up front (after a $100 mail-in rebate), including mandatory installation fees. For just 1.0Mbps service, the monthly cost is around $60 with a 200MB daily limit. If you want to attempt service at 5Mbps, that will cost $350 a month with a 500MB daily limit.
For HughesNet customers Tina Walker and Christoper Bayless, who instigated the class action suit, even pricing this high wasn’t the reason for filing the suit on behalf of California residents. It is because speeds promised are speeds rarely delivered. Many independent reviews of the service agree, with many finding download speeds at 200-300Kbps more typical.
Walker and Bayless also allege the company throttles more than the “few” customers HughesNet claims exceed the daily limits.
By the time customers decide they’ve had enough, they have to spend several hundred dollars to get away from the company, and many are also stuck with useless equipment they had to buy up front.
They are asking for a refund of any early cancellation fees paid in California, an end to the policy that charges them, and more truthful disclosure about the actual level of service HughesNet is capable of providing.
HughesNet defends their service, pointing to a 30 day window for customers to sample the service and decide whether it is right for them, and having the option to cancel during that window with no early termination fee. Customers are still out the initial investment for equipment and installation, however. The company does claim that many customers can return their HughesNet equipment and receive a $200 discount off their early termination fee, if they qualify.
But the company also charges an early termination fee for customers it throws off their network. If you exceed their usage limits too often, they can cancel service and immediately charge your credit or debit card a $400 fee. If you agree to return the equipment, they will refund $300 of that fee, charging you $100 for making them get rid of you as a customer.
Beyond that, HughesNet does not comment on the specific merits of any lawsuit filed against it.
For rural Americans, any concept of “broadband” service is slow and expensive, with long term contracts, usage caps, and in some cases, expensive overlimit fees. The three satellite competitors in the United States all require term commitments, and sell their least expensive broadband service at prices urban and suburban residents pay for the fastest levels of service:
StarBand: $299 equipment fee/$50 installation 1Mbps service $69.99/mo – $79.99/mo (1-2 year commitment) — 1,600MB download/400MB upload 7-day rolling limit
Wildblue: $150 equipment fee/$50 installation 512kbps service $49.99/mo (1 year commitment) — 7,500MB download/2,300MB upload 30-day rolling limit
HughesNet: $299 equipment & installation fee, after rebate 1Mbps service $59.99/mo (2 year commitment) — 200MB daily download limit
HughesNet should be severely punished for false advertising. They don’t tell you how much “extra” the installation is going to cost you. (In my case $100 for a pole – for many far more.) They lie about the effect of their FAP policy, claiming it only affects those who download movies and images. That is untrue. Regular surfing WILL hit the FAP limit on their lower end accounts. That is when most of their new users find out about the reality of FAP. The penalty for hitting that FAP limit is 24 hours without Internet service IF you know that… Read more »
Thanks for sharing this very detailed review. I had no idea it was even worse than I originally thought. I thought they throttled the connection to dial-up speeds, not zero speed. It’s this kind of cap which is designed to make you scared of using your account, to not even consider using the service you paid for out of fear of hitting the dreaded cap. That’s what the entire TWC cap model was all about — getting you to fear using “too much” Internet. Of course, they didn’t cut you off when you exceeded it – they had a money… Read more »
The strange thing is I had one of the very first two-way Earthlink satellite dishes and it worked fine. I even moved and reinstalled it. There was no FAP, no slow loading, no issues at all. It worked fine even on Google AdWords and Google Analytics. Maybe they had a lot of excess capacity then. I have been looking for a local Wireless company. I’ve used two in the past and they were as good or better than the DSL and Earthlink. They are really poor at making it easy to find them though! I’ve heard there are a couple… Read more »
Only way to find a reasonable T1 (1.5Mbps/1.5Mbps) price is to ask every T1 provider that can service your area. Don’t expect it to come cheap though. You’re looking at over $100 for the telco loop alone. Quite frankly, I’d rather be with flaky DSL service than be with something like satellite or have to worry about paying for an overpriced T1 line (though I’m sure the T1 would feel much better than a DSL line), really. If you can get some line stats from the neighbors such as attenuation and margin, that’ll be a great way to see why… Read more »
Yeah, when FAP goes active for any reason, it isn’t a matter of throttling you down to dial-up speed. Your internet access is just gone until they decide to turn it back on. Dial-up speed would be a huge improvement. I try to browse using Opera with all scripts, plug-ins and images turned off and it honestly would be easier to watch Youtube on dial-up. I’ve managed to get hit by FAP 3 times in the past week and I don’t have a clue how I even got near the bandwidth limit. I wasn’t downloading things or watching videos; just… Read more »
There are reports of things being broken. If you don’t need the internet for a day, HuguesNet does provide the usage page. What you should do is switch off your modem for a day or two, and then turn the internet back on and see if their usage page shows usage. If it does, then you need to get at them about that. If not, then something’s up…
This issue with HughesNet with their FAPs, slow speeds, and hefty charges is one of the things I see all the time over at DSLReports and I read them. Seriously though, for the price people pay for that service from the equipment, to the service itself, to the ETF, you could easilly grab a fractional T1 line (768kbps/768kbps) for a few months to get Broadband or find a provider with EV-DO service with no caps (coming from a cell phone tower fed via a T1 line most likely). I’m glad to see that a lawsuit is going on from all… Read more »
If you’re going to pay $350/month for an internet connection, you might as well get a T1. 1.5 symmetrical and no caps.
Your chances of being able to get a T1 are higher as it’s an older system with a greater amount of coverage.
The chances of getting a T1 should be very high, as T1 lines themselves can be repeated unlike DSL. Cable internet can basically be repeated using boosters, but even that’ll get you so far.
Another stupid company trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube
If you are going to get rid of that satellite service, don’t toss the dish in the trash! Instead, make a super wi-fi antenna out of it. There are tutorials on the internet with people reaching access points up to 7 KM away. Also, there are wireless access services in some rural communities and will install a powerful antenna, for a fee of course, to access their service. Had a friend, who lived out in the boondocks, that had a setup like that. He had speeds up to 3Mb/sec. I would just build the antenna yourself, on the cheap, and… Read more »
Basically a cantenna on Steroids 🙂 I’ve heard of using old satellite dishes and such for that, and it’s quite incredible on how far people have been able to send Wi-Fi. I have found it odd though, that at times I can pick up my Linksys WRT54GX AND connect to it for a few seconds from 3 miles away (and I can verify it’s mine as I see my PCs at home as well as I can log into the router using my credentials) with the standard SMA antennas on it.
I still can’t believe people actually believed those commericals 😉
I finally decided to searched this message I was getting “The following error occured:
Error Code = 1299. Unknown TCP connection error.
——————————————————————————–
For More Information, Please Click Here. I have been getting irritated and I am the one that just turns it off. Well luckily tonight I found this site, WoW if we would have only read this 3 months ago.
So am I understanding this right, I am limited to the amount of time I can get on the internet. For example (Check mail, school stuff, weather, and banking.)???
Gracie in Oklahoma
You’re not limited in the amount of time you’re online. You’re only limited by how much data you transfer a day with HughesNet (based on your package, like 250MB a day, 700MB a day, etc and after the usage amount, your internet supposably goes to 28.8k modem speeds but people say it’s basically 9600 baud/no internet). There are reports all around the internet though about people switching off their modems since something was going on with HughesNet’s systems that was making FAP usage show up higher than it was supposed to be. If you’d like to track your usage, if… Read more »
Yep . . . I’m currently in FAP mode for no apparent reason. Didn’t do any massive amount of surfing and don’t download movies and it took about 3 minutes from the time I clicked on the link to this page before the page actually loaded. Hopefully this comment will upload before I fall asleep.
Hughesnet FAP is a major ripoff. I think, I may have a new option in my neighborhood . . . if so, I’m done with Hughesnet.
According to Hughesnet – “HughesNet defends their service, pointing to a 30 day window for customers to sample the service and decide whether it is right for them, . . . ” They have the power to selectivly choose who gets to “enjoy” the throttled back service whether you have exceeded the FAP or not. For a while, and like clockwork, I could load up a Youtube file at 10:55. It would start and stop as it was streaming. At 11:01 on the dot, the bar would take off like a rocket ship. My point is that they can make… Read more »
At the time our only option was Direcway or dial-up. Direcway had decent service and no throttling but the latency and frequent dropped connections bothered our users. I became a pro at recognizing what was going on with the sat connection to remedy stopped service without calling customer support, which was decent at the time. Before wireless DSL came to our area I had considered getting T1 connectivity and sharing it with other users. I think we were quoted at $600-800/month for a duplex full T1 service. Either way when you divide it by 10 users it was pretty affordable.… Read more »
I agree that they make your first 30 days perfect. I’ve have two different contracts and setups because of poor service and by me taking action through the Better Business Bureau. With each contract the first 30 days are perfect, then after the 30 your modem will download a new set of software that throttles your perfomance. I hear many say their speeds seem fine til around 3 or 4 in the afternoon at which point hughes “throws the switch” and kill speeds til midnight. They do this claiming people are getting off work, kids out of school, etc so… Read more »
I’ve got two options where I live: Hughesnet, or Dishnetwork. When I started with Hughesnet 2 years ago, the FAP wasn’t a problem, and the speed was reasonable. NOW though, the kids have grown and have their own computers, and with the increased content on the web the FAP is a problem. Also, now around 7 or 8 pm, the speed slows substantially even when the FAP hasn’t been exceeded. At least Dishnetwork uses the 30 day rolling average, not the 24 hour timeperiod. I don’t know if there speed slows or not. But, it’s time to switch – until… Read more »
Hughesnet is truly a rip off!!! This crap just started with us and we have been customers for almost 3 years. All of a sudden we could not even get online. We thought it was the computer and started massive research on drivers and components that cause lag. We even downloaded new IE and flashplayers. Nothing worked. Then we discovered the hughesnet page and it all came together. I know this is illegal and plan to get the attorney general involved. Yes, lure everyone into a false sense of security and then pull the plug. I could use a few… Read more »
I’m a rural customer and my options are dialup, cellphone at about $70/mo for the first 5G and $50/G after that or satellite. The only satellite to serve my area is Huges. I had extensive discussions with the sales guy about how I would exceed a 5G monthly limit within the first week. I explained that I work from home and rely heavily on the Internet. I did nothing to give this guy any impression that I was a light-weight Internet user. This is what he told me (I wrote quoted items as they were spoken, so this is not… Read more »
when i signed up for hughesnet 4 years ago,dial-up was my only other option.the first few weeks on the service seemed great compared to dial-up but i didn’t last long.after 30 days was up and under contract,speeds were about half as good as they were before.also when i signed up for hughesnet service over the phone,i was never told about the fair access policy.the salesman only asked what other broadband option was available in my area and if i usually do alot of downloading.i told him yes i do like to do quite a bit of downloading but nothing was… Read more »
Hey…didn’t I talk to you on the hughesnet tech support line for like 3 hours the other day? Yeahhhh you’re the one who insists I’m enjoying lightning fast speeds according to the test results on your end. If not, it must be a virus, my router, or an old computer. So why do I enjoy better speed and reliability using the free internet at the local McDonald’s? Must be own incompetence. Yeahhhhh that’s the (trouble) ticket !!!
Folks, I am looking for satellite customers to give me their experiences with what I call “satellite fraudband” service for an upcoming article. What I am looking for are impressions about the pricing, the service, how the service (or lack of service) impacts your family’s use of the Internet, what kind of competing service would make you dump satellite, and whether you’d stay with the service if speeds and the “fair access” allowance was bumped up.
You can use the contact form on http://stopthecap.com to send your answers or share them in our comment section.
Just my 2¢ from working on folks’ WildBlue connections in central Texas… Latency blows. 1-2 seconds (1000-2000 ms). Download speeds tend to be as advertised. Same with upload speeds. Speedtest.net underestimates upload speeds though so if you go on there with a 512/128 connection you’re looking at 38 kbps… Most folks in my area sign up for WildBlue via the electric cooperative, CTEC (http://ctesc.net). CTEC provides the e-mail service (I think they do it via the NRTC) and phone support. WIldBlue provides the connection to the internet…so you could say CTEC is the equivalent of a dialup “aggregator” ISP like… Read more »
What most of you don’t seem to realize is even cable companies have a FAP, this is mandated by law to make sure everyone gets access to the internet. I did a lot of research before I bought HughesNet. WB has a FAP of 7,500 on the low policy which is what I was told most people buy. That would be about 250 MB a day but about half the download speeds of HughesNet at 512kbps. If you exceed that you go into FAP for 30 days not 24 hours, there is a penalty I was not willing to work… Read more »
FAP token? Please explain.
A FAP Token is a get out of throttled jail free card for HughesNet: “Sometimes you might want to reset your allowance without waiting for the Recovery Zone to end. For these occasions, we provide easy access to Restore Tokens – a service that instantly resets your Download Allowance and lifts the speed restriction. Each HughesNet subscriber receives one complimentary Restore Token each month on his or her billing date. You can use this free Token any time you exceed your Download Allowance. You can also purchase additional Tokens throughout the month, priced based on your plan’s Download Allowance.” Recovery… Read more »
I’m familiar with the FAP etc. and figured that that’s what the FAP token did. FWIW it might be useful to write a post on the system 🙂 For reference, check out these links: http://www.xplornetsucks.com/forums/showthread.php?t=985 http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r23550296-Restore-Tokens http://services.hughesnet.com/service_tools/fap/index.cfm http://improvingsoftware.com/2009/11/03/someone-at-hughesnet-must-be-reading-my-blog/ To summarize, below are the tier names, daily caps and prices per FAP token. They’re actually VERY high, as you’ll see by the math I’ll do in a second: Home – 200 MB – $5.00 Pro – 300 MB – $7.50 ProPlus – 425 MB – $10.50 Elite/ElitePlus/ElitePremium – 500 MB – $12.50 ProPlus is the cheapest per GB out of all… Read more »
With the Home service plan, you may enjoy increased download speeds of up to 1.0 Mbps, with typical speeds of about 550 Kbps to 650 Kbps during peak times. Upload speeds, which are capable of reaching 128 Kbps, are typically 70 Kbps to 80 Kbps during peak hours. This is the sevice plan i have and i want to point out this part “with typical speeds of about 550 Kbps to 650 Kbps during peak times” im so getting screwed im getting 125kps down period if that much ever. Where is the law suite at you say well it seams… Read more »