DuckSouth.com

Anyone have a take on which is better?

I can only post on one side of this question... I have hughes net and the customer service flat out sucks... If I hadn't already bought all this chit, I would look into other providers...

I have Wildblue. It is better than dial up. I lose it when the weather turns bad. Have not had a need for customer service yet, so I cannot speak on that aspect of it

Hughes sux in my opinion. It is OK when it works which is about 70% of the time. It goes out with cloud cover everytime and sometimes at will.

We resell WB in west AL and I can honestly say it is awful.....I dont even use it......I would steer clear....if you download or upload much, be sure to ask about your FAP (fair access policy) limits.....

I have Wild Blue, it is definately better than dial up, but it only works about 75% of the time. But, when you live in the sticks, your options are limited.

My buddy has both, WB at the house and HN at the shop. I can watch live feed ballgames running at 700K on the HN. I can't do it with WB.

Check with Roger Goss at NewWireless. I switched to their tower system after being with HughesNet for about five years. NetWireless is about 3 times faster and $15.00 a month cheaper and you don't lose reception during bad weather.

I had Wildblue for the past 2 years and couldn't wait for the contract to expire. We've gone to a local tower system and it is A LOT better. Wildblue didn't work if there was a slight breeze and then you had to "refresh" half a dozen times when it did. My wife got so frustrated she stopped using the internet at home and just relied on her iphone or computer at work.

Add another to the pile of Hughesnet sux customers. The worst part to me is they have transfer limits that they don't tell you about until you @#$% to them about why its running so slow. It's a running 24 hour limit so if you hit it in 4 hours (which I've done listening to an online radio station), you're SOL.

I work at a computer shop and HN is what we have there. We have had better luck out of hughesnet but both with give you fits with bad weather its the nature of satellite. Customer support is not great with either of them. HN has a per day download limit and WB has a per month limit. If you exceed that with HN you will be basically cut off/slowed to a crawl for 24 hrs. If you exceed it with WB we'll say day 15 of 30, then you are cut off for the rest of the month. Double check that but I am pretty sure about it. If you have intermittent problems on either and it doesnt trigger a warning in the modem and you call while it is working then they will tell you everything is working fine now, call back when it quits. They cant do much about that is what they will say. Thats with both of them. We have more customers with HN than we do with WB and HN is who we prefer but in my opinion its a crap shoot with both. Both are definitely better than dial-up. I dont think you'll find much help with your decision on the forum but we'll offer opinions. Hope it helps one way or the other. Good luck.

Is there a tower system around the Winona area?

I got a thing in the mail recently and also someone mentioned it the other day that DirectTV is offering internet with their cable now. It says not available in all areas though. Has anyone tried it?

Not sure about DirectTV, but I was looking at what Dish was offering and it was Wild Blue just at a lowered cost. From what I have learned, both WG and HN will limit your downloads and can only be relied on 75-80% of the time. The cost for either is comparable to AT&T phone+internet service.

Now to the good news...thanks to Jim. I called Roger (whom I knew, just did not know his company offered such service)at NetwirelessLLC and he gave me a quick rundown of what they offer. For my area, they sound like the logical solution to high speed internet. No downtime because of clouds/rain, no fair amount agreement for too much downloading, site survey to check and make sure the signal is strong at your particular site, fully installed at a nice price, monthly fee that is less than WB or HN, also lower than AT&T phone/internet service. Only reason we have the home phone is for the internet so no loss by doing away with that. Talked to 2 other people who had gone with satelite service a few years back who now use NetwirelessLLC. Their experience has been great. Very fast they say, faster than satelite without the headache of times when rain/clouds eliminates service. I am hoping to get set up around Sept 1st. Thanks for the info!

Oh yeah, not an advertisement, just a interesting point for some of the rural living people in my area....

www.netwirelessllc.com