Hughes Launches Faster Gen4 Broadband Speeds New 10-15 Mbps Services Go Live Today Tipped by bbeesley 
After successfully launching their new EchoStar XVII satellite last July, HughesNet today officially launched (pdf) their new "Gen4" broadband services. Despite earlier rumblings that they'd be offering speeds up to 20 Mbps, the company's new tiers come in 10/1 Mbps, 10/2 Mbps, or 15/2 flavors, which help bring HughesNet in line with the faster services recently offered by Viasat/Exede, as well as Verizon's new fixed LTE service Home Fusion. As is always the case with satellite broadband, the new tiers come with usage caps -- now ranging from 20GB a month up to 40 GB a month. • Power: 10 Mbps down, 1 Mbps up for $60 a month ($50 promotion) with a 20 GB monthly usage cap. • Power Pro: 10 Mbps down, 2 Mbps up for $80 a month with a 30 GB monthly usage cap. • Power Max: 15 Mbps down, 2 Mbps up for $100 a month with a 40 GB monthly usage cap. All tier prices don't include a $10 monthly additional lease fee. As we've noted in the past, the new Gen4 services come with something the company is calling "bonus bytes" -- to be used only during off peak hours (they're included in the plan cap totals above). From the company's website: With HughesNet Gen4 your total monthly Data Allowance includes two components: 1) A generous anytime Data Allowance that can be utilized at any time, including during peak daytime hours. The amount of your "anytime" allowance depends on the plan you choose. The Power plan comes with 10GB, the Power PRO plan comes with 15GB, and the Power MAX plan comes with 20GB. 2) Each HughesNet Gen4 plan also comes with an equivalent amount of extra Data Allowance called Bonus Byte, which can be utilized during the off-peak, nighttime hours (2AM-8AM in your local time zone.) Bonus Bytes are a value-added feature you can get only with HughesNet Gen4. With Bonus Bytes and the Download Manager tool offered with HughesNet, you can schedule large downloads such as Microsoft software updates to take place during the night so they only use Bonus Bytes and have no impact on your "anytime" Data Allowance. This HughesNet FAQ offers additional detail, and as always you can head to our HughesNet forums to see user impressions or ask questions.
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1 edit | What if you go over your cap? Do they charge $30 per GB? | |
|  |  BF69Premium
join:2004-07-28
Camden, TN | Re: What if you cover of your cap? you get throttled to dial-up speeds. | |
| | | | | Re: What if you cover of your cap? Or you can buy more: 500MB for $5; 1GB for $9; 2GB for $16. | |
| | | | BF69Premium
join:2004-07-28
Camden, TN | Re: What if you cover of your cap? said by silbaco:Or you can buy more: 500MB for $5; 1GB for $9; 2GB for $16.
So $32 for that watching that movie on Netflix. Hmmmmm I'd rather be throttled. | |
| | | | | | | Re: What if you cover of your cap? said by BF69:So $32 for that watching that movie on Netflix. Hmmmmm I'd rather be throttled.
It would be cheaper to buy a physical disc and have it shipped to your house.  | |
| | | | | | | | Re: What if you cover of your cap? said by silbaco:said by BF69:So $32 for that watching that movie on Netflix. Hmmmmm I'd rather be throttled.
It would be cheaper to buy a physical disc and have it shipped to your house. Sad but true... | |
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| | | | | | | | | | BF69Premium
join:2004-07-28
Camden, TN | Re: What if you cover of your cap? said by iansltx:Last I checked, Netflix movies aren't 4GB in standard-def. Who wants to watch SD movies on a HDTV? Netflix SD is like watching VHS.
Heck, HD maxes out at 4.5 Mbps or so, which means that a 100 minute movie would weigh in a bit less than 4GB in HD.
B) Some movies are 100 minutes some are 2 hours or more which is 120 minutes.
Also, think about it...there's a much better way to watch video delivered by satellite, from a bandwidth perspective: Dish or DirectTV. Even with spot beams, these birds have limited capacity.
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| | | | | | | iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Golden, CO
kudos:2 Reviews:
 ·Verizon Online DSL
 ·RoadRunner Cable
·Comcast
| Re: What if you cover of your cap? Then it's their problem that they picked a place where satellite broadband is the only thing they can get.
DBS is an efficient way to deliver video to widely dispersed users. Unicast satellite Internet...not so much...considering that it would only take 25,000 customers or so streaming HD video to max out the entire HughesNet satellite...the brand new one. | |
| | | | | | | | BF69Premium
join:2004-07-28
Camden, TN | Re: What if you cover of your cap? said by iansltx:Then it's their problem that they picked a place where satellite broadband is the only thing they can get.
Yes someone buying a house before the internet was around should have predicted the future.  | |
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| | | | | That was the token amounts for the old systems. You have no daily limits on this system and if you hit your monthly limit you can a another 10, 20, 30 GB. Jupiter or A.K.A HT1000 has plenty of capacity and on the base plan you could watch 6-8 full featured films. which most people dont actually do. I have unlimited capability but i never have time to sit down and watch 8 full length movies but i do go watch episodes from th emajor networks and you could watch 100's of these a month and not exceede the new limits of th enew system. Anyway who doesn't upgrade will be paying 60 a month for 1 meg and 7.5 GB vs 10 meg and 20GB for the same money this should be a no brainer. And the system is fast, very fast. Our customer have been in Shock, these are longtime users who have done upgrades before and were skeptical and now they are amazed | |
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| | | | (500MB for $5; 1GB for $9; 2GB for $16, this is if you go over your allowance you can buy a token for the prementioned. | |
| | |  RRedlineRated RPremium
join:2002-05-15
Williamsport, PA | said by BF69:you get throttled to dial-up speeds.
I don't understand how they can justify doing this. I always thought it was strange to throttle users so drastically. Why not a tiered throttling? Why not throttle speeds by 1/2 after so much, then by 1/4, then by 1/8, etc.? Why go from full speed to ridiculously, painfully, unbearably slow all at once? It really seems like they are using this as more of a punishment than as an attempt to manage "fairness."
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One nation, under Zod! | |
| | | | Reviews:
 ·HughesNet Satell..
| Re: What if you cover of your cap? said by RRedline:It really seems like they are using this as more of a punishment than as an attempt to manage "fairness."
I don't think they ever had "fairness" in their intentions, it's just comic relief.
The idea is to make the connection unbearable so people will buy "Tokens". (More data).
In unrelated news FAP has a very different meaning in most parts of the internet than "Fair Access Policy", it might be more accurate.  | |
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| | | | I head that they charge $8 per extra gig. | |
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| | | For the price I would sign up for Sprint's unlimited 4G. | |
| | | iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Golden, CO
kudos:2 | Re: What if you cover of your cap? If you can get Clear WiMAX, you're not the target customer for this. | |
| | | | | said by brianiscool:For the price I would sign up for Sprint's unlimited 4G.
If you can get Sprint's 4G, you don't subscribe to Hughes. | |
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| | No more unlimited.... The plans would be more tolerable if they included unlimited usage at night, like the old plans do. It is a shame to see that removed, even if most users truly did not use it that much. Exede has that now. | |
| | BF69Premium
join:2004-07-28
Camden, TN | Re: No more unlimited.... Yep I'd take Excede's 25 GB plan with FAP free time from 12 AM - 5 AM even if it is $30 more per month. | |
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BF69Premium
join:2004-07-28
Camden, TN | Caps really half of what they say 40 GB cap is really only 20 GB can only be used between 2 AM and 8 AM. WildBlue has a FAP free time period form 12 AM to 5 AM. | |
| |  Simba7I Void Warranties
join:2003-03-24
Billings, MT | Re: Caps really half of what they say said by BF69:WildBlue has a FAP free time period form 12 AM to 5 AM. I'd take that if satellite was my only option.
Just have a caching proxy (erm.. Squid) go nuts between 12a-5a. That way, in the morning, all your normal sites will be updated locally and any updates will be available without eating your bucket alive.
This would definitely benefit households with more than one computer or "Internet connected device".
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Bresnan 30M/5M | CenturyLink 5M/896K
MyWS[PnmIIX3@3.2G,8G RAM,500G+1.5T+2T HDDs,Win7]
WifeWS[A64@2G,2G RAM,120G HDD,Win7]
Router[2xP3@1G,2G RAM,18G HDD,Allied Telesyn AT2560FX,2xDigital DE504,Sun X1034A,2xSun X4444A,SMC 8432BTA,Gentoo] | |
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| | | Vs DSL? So for ordinary web browsing how does 15 Mbps satellite (with the long latency) compare to 1.5 Mbps DSL? | |
| | Reviews:
·HughesNet Satell..
| Re: Vs DSL? said by PastTense:So for ordinary web browsing how does 15 Mbps satellite (with the long latency) compare to 1.5 Mbps DSL?
I'd say it's probably fairly similar, the new sat might be able to load pages a bit faster if it's a bit big.
Streaming would be pretty nice if there wasn't the massive cap.
But yeah... still the latency, you're never going to do any "twitch" gaming on sat, at least not any time soon. | |
| | |  diablo1892Say hello to my little friend
join:2011-04-21
Friendly, WV
·HughesNet Satell..
·Dialup USA, Inc.
·EarthLink
| Re: Vs DSL? said by jmad980:But yeah... still the latency, you're never going to do any "twitch" gaming on sat, at least not any time soon.
I doubt any satellite provider will ever be capable of gaming in the future... heres why: satellite= direct connection, still portable however. Wireless connection= the connection can be picked up all around or in a small area.
Either one of these types of ways for connecting is still lame cause you cannot host and you cannot get the best performance from your own connection
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HN7000S/ 1 watt/ pro plus edition/ 4 pc's on a D-Link wired router/ 1-2 pc's on wireless D-Link router with password | |
| | | |  LightSPremium
join:2005-12-17
Greenville, TX
·Time Warner Cable
·RoadRunner Cable
| Re: Vs DSL? While true, the reason why is not what you stated.
The reason? The distance. Even at the speed of light, over the distance this has to travel, you will not be getting latency that you can play shooters (or any other game that requires quick reactions). | |
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1 edit | DSL at 1,500Kbps would be a better choice because it would have a much higher cap to no cap at all and would be a hell of a lot cheaper. | |
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| | | BF69Premium
join:2004-07-28
Camden, TN | Re: Can't watch video's and stream on a 40GB cap Actually a satellite is 22,000 miles in space not 30 miles. 30 miles isn't even space. Also the latency on satellite is about a second. Which doesn't make one bit difference with something like streaming a movie. | |
| | | | Perhaps you would be best to get DirecTV and use that for your movie. With users like you, 300GB or greater per month, you should be throttled. This is why the FAP is in place. | |
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What a joke