Hughes direct pc satelite internet

[Mark Fecho]

Has anyone had any experience with Hughes Direct PC satelite service
ie: use your regular isp to send and download via satelite.
I am interested in this concept any info , reviews would be appreciated
thanks
Mark Fecho

[Walter Palmer]

My brother had it and works great! But it is very expensive especially
if you log on during business hours. It is so much a meg as well as a
monthly. Unlimited I think is $129.95 a month for 300k downloads. If you
only use at night and weekends it is $39.95 I think, but don't quote me.
The rates are changing all the time with that service.

[Joseph FitzGerald]

I looked into it about six months ago and was basically scared off. There
are a lot of potential problems with this service and when I noticed that a
class action was brought against Hughes because they oversold their
capacity I decided to drop it.

Problem #1: Latency. It takes a while to bounce something off of a
satellite. That means high latency which translates into seemingly slow
response time. Depending on your purpose this may or may not bother you.

Problem #2: Bandwidth. Hughes has apparently started throttling bandwidth
pretty significantly because they oversold their capacity. Satellites
aren't the end all be all of bandwidth. Far from it. Transponders can
only transmit so much data, so at peak times there can be serious problems
getting any significant bandwidth. When I was researching it I found a lot
of people that were complaining they were resorting to their dial-up modems
because they were faster!

When DirecPC first became available, I think a lot of people purchased a
great service. As more users subscribed, the service just got worse and
worse. It makes sense when you think about it, unlike terrestrial ISPs,
Hughes can't just add another T1 or T3. They only have a fixed amount of
bandwidth and that will never change (not unless they launch a new bird or
find a way to upgrade the transponders encryption capabilities).

I have no idea what the circumstances are now, but I'd suggest researching
your alternatives. You can get 128k DSL connections for around $100 -
$150/mo. Those prices will come down pretty fast too if the cable-modems
continue being deployed in more areas.

Joe

[jimr...@my-dejanews.com]

on Jan 20 1999 they offer service at $30, for 25 hours a month or $50 for 100
hours a month (they said that there are no data charges or time of day
restrictions)
my question, how much faster is it in the real world. With a really good
ISP I can get download rates of 5 k/sec on my 56k modem. Would I get 40k/sec
on the DirecPC 400 k connection ? j...@rader.org

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