Heck, even with all that crap, I'd almost be glad to have Comcast available where I am. My only two choices are Sattelite, and a local wireless ISP, and it turns out my local trees block the wireless unless I put up a 50ft+ tower.
I've had Hughesnet since back when they were Direcway, since they first came out with a modem that didn't have to run on software installed on the PC (so I could connect my Linux machines). The experience has never been good, frankly. But this week they managed to completely overtop themselves in incompetence.
They've been bugging me to upgrade my modem for a long time now. And I've finally gotten fed up with getting my connection throttled (read "killed," for any webpage more complex than a ff.net page) for 24hrs at a stretch if I happen to download more than 200MB in a single 24hr period (hint: don't buy two Amazon MP3 albums on the same day). And if I can get 50kpbs, it's time to cry for joy. Watching Youtube vids is an exercise in "hit pause, walk away, come back later and un-pause". And of course you have NO IDEA how close you're getting to the cap until after you hit it. There *is* a web page that will tell you what you've been using, hour-by-hour, but the most recent update is always 2hrs behind realtime.
(Steam? Yaright. WoW? Fuggediboutit. And I HATE HATE HATE Steve Jobs for making it IMPOSSIBLE to automate Itunes to download media and/or their FSKING HUGE PROGRAM UPDATES during the "free window" between 2AM and 7AM)
So, this week. I finally bit the bullet, upped my service plan... and got told I had to upgrade my modem for the new plan to work. Fine, click, click, order placed, modem arrives. Install is painless, just swap cables. Check System Status page on the internal webserver.... SIGNAL STRENGTH ONLY 29!?!?!? It was 60 a minute ago!
Call in. Get Indian woman with No Clue and bad accent over a lousy connection. Do the Level 1 Tech Support Tango for 1.5hrs. Finally get bumped up to L3. The engineer works with me for about 30min, then starts checking all my system specs... oh. Turns out I not only have to have a new modem, I have to have the DISH HARDWARE replaced as well. Which he immediately set me up for at no cost, by way of apology, which is Totally Cool -- the L3 engineer was great. But there's nobody in my house from early to late -- we all work weird, long hours, and I'm going to be gone working in Canada this weekend, and next, and...
And just to ice the cake: the one part of the modem upgrade process that DID work was the part that KILLED THE OLD MODEM in order to transfer the authorization keys to the new one. A process that can't be undone (well, probably could be, but it would almost certainly be a great big pain). So until I can find a time slot to get the sat-tech into my house, I have no internet at home. None. Well, wait, I still have an old dialup account that I keep going for my sister (further out in the boonies than me, no money for sat-net), but that only gets 28.8, maybe 33.6 going downhill with a brisk tailwind on a bright sunny day. Around here, you can tell how much its raining by watching the dialup speed drop.
....whew! I didn't realize I needed to vent that so bad. Thanks for listening.
I've had Hughesnet since back when they were Direcway, since they first came out with a modem that didn't have to run on software installed on the PC (so I could connect my Linux machines). The experience has never been good, frankly. But this week they managed to completely overtop themselves in incompetence.
They've been bugging me to upgrade my modem for a long time now. And I've finally gotten fed up with getting my connection throttled (read "killed," for any webpage more complex than a ff.net page) for 24hrs at a stretch if I happen to download more than 200MB in a single 24hr period (hint: don't buy two Amazon MP3 albums on the same day). And if I can get 50kpbs, it's time to cry for joy. Watching Youtube vids is an exercise in "hit pause, walk away, come back later and un-pause". And of course you have NO IDEA how close you're getting to the cap until after you hit it. There *is* a web page that will tell you what you've been using, hour-by-hour, but the most recent update is always 2hrs behind realtime.
(Steam? Yaright. WoW? Fuggediboutit. And I HATE HATE HATE Steve Jobs for making it IMPOSSIBLE to automate Itunes to download media and/or their FSKING HUGE PROGRAM UPDATES during the "free window" between 2AM and 7AM)
So, this week. I finally bit the bullet, upped my service plan... and got told I had to upgrade my modem for the new plan to work. Fine, click, click, order placed, modem arrives. Install is painless, just swap cables. Check System Status page on the internal webserver.... SIGNAL STRENGTH ONLY 29!?!?!? It was 60 a minute ago!
Call in. Get Indian woman with No Clue and bad accent over a lousy connection. Do the Level 1 Tech Support Tango for 1.5hrs. Finally get bumped up to L3. The engineer works with me for about 30min, then starts checking all my system specs... oh. Turns out I not only have to have a new modem, I have to have the DISH HARDWARE replaced as well. Which he immediately set me up for at no cost, by way of apology, which is Totally Cool -- the L3 engineer was great. But there's nobody in my house from early to late -- we all work weird, long hours, and I'm going to be gone working in Canada this weekend, and next, and...
And just to ice the cake: the one part of the modem upgrade process that DID work was the part that KILLED THE OLD MODEM in order to transfer the authorization keys to the new one. A process that can't be undone (well, probably could be, but it would almost certainly be a great big pain). So until I can find a time slot to get the sat-tech into my house, I have no internet at home. None. Well, wait, I still have an old dialup account that I keep going for my sister (further out in the boonies than me, no money for sat-net), but that only gets 28.8, maybe 33.6 going downhill with a brisk tailwind on a bright sunny day. Around here, you can tell how much its raining by watching the dialup speed drop.
....whew! I didn't realize I needed to vent that so bad. Thanks for listening.