When you've got a captive audience (like say, rural broadband customers with no other options), you can get away with a hell of a lot. Just ask Hughesnet, a satellite broadband company that's managed to stay in business despite offering consistently sub-par service to customers for much of the last year. Not only does HughesNet service come with low caps (misleadingly called the "fair access policy" or FAP), the users who violate those caps face being throttled to below dial up speeds (between 7 and 14kbps). Even when well within their FAP limits, our users have consistently complained that they very rarely get the speeds advertised.

There was some hope that the launch of HugheNet's new Spaceway 3 satellite would alleviate some of these congestion problems. HughesNet recently made waves ripples by unveiling 2Mbps/300kbps ($119.99 a month), 3Mbps/300kbps ($189.99 a month) and 5Mbps tiers (price not announced yet) that all utilize the new satellite. Unfortunately, our users note that even with these new tiers they frequently don't see advertised speeds, with 2Mbps customers sometimes seeing speeds as low as 610kbps.

Worse, customers on the old tiers note that despite the new capacity, HughesNet actually lowered the FAP consumption limit for some users on their most popular Pro (1Mbps, $70) tier from 375 MB per day to 300 MB (forget HD films, P2P use or even many software updates). "They are altering the agreement," jokes one regular user in his best Darth Vader baritone. "Pray they do not alter it further."