Hughes.net slower than dial up! Internet

we switched from dial up to Hughes satelite just over a year ago because we believed it would be faster. What we've experienced is horrible customer service, beyond slow dial up, high prices, and extreme frustration.

I might as well tell you, I am not a gamer, I don't spend hours on high resolution sites playing games and I rarely ever download music or anything of that sort. I do however 'work' for a review website and therefore download ebooks - but that's all I download.

I'm the only person in the house who uses the internet on a normal basis... in fact the service is so bad, my son often asks me if the internet is slow before requesting that I look up cheat codes for him.

Most of the time I have to shut down and reboot before I can even get my email to download and I don't think I've ever been so frustrated with simply trying to maneuver around the web. It wasn't this bad before they enacted that fair access policy - which basically as far as I'm concerned simply means that Hughes.net has become too greedy and allowed too many people to sign up for their services on the satelites that are available. SO basically I'm spending over $60 a month for internet service that's way beyond dial up slow with no real benefits. and they certainly never told me anything about their fair access policy or I would not have signed up!

What makes the whole situation worse is all of a sudden I'm seeing all these commercials for more customers when there are already so many who are UNHAPPY with the service being provided and locked into a two year contract. Plus living where I do there aren't many options. You either have 26.4kbps dial up or satelite - neither is acceptable!

I'm actively looking for something else as soon as this contract is up. There has to be something else available atleast something local where I won't have to be calling someone who can't speak english in a foreign country who has to go by a textbook to discover a problem. When there's a storm in the area and the satelite dish gets blown off course then there's no reason to go through 2 hours of steps on the computer and with the dsl system to see if the problem can be fixed!

Terrible, terrible service! Definitely will not be recommending Hughes to anyone! In fact I discourage it when I hear people talking about signing up for the service.

Christine
Cloverdale, Oregon
U.S.A.