Last updated Sunday April 28th, 2024
Hughes Net is better
I had Hughes net for 4 years and thought I would try another provider hoping it would be better so after seeing that exede had the highest rating (I should have done more research) I signed up well BIG mistake I understand data limits and slowing the speeds down but these guys do something different not sure what when I went over with Hughes net it would still work but be very slow now with exede I can't even do some basic functions like connect to a VPN for work or my kids can't even check some games they have like clash of clans (kids are about to kill me). With Hughes net you get free tokens to restore service with exede they want to charge so even after one month I will more than likely cancel and pay the 15 a month Exede is the worst and I never thought I would find a company so bad that i now have to call Hughes net and see if they will take me back without charging me a lot I will have wasted over 600 dollars in just 1 month with exede after the installation cost and termination fee I can't believe there are not laws to help protect consumers I understand the contract but they offer no trial period no I know why because everyone would cancel
The star should be brown, at least. When I moved further out in the boonies, I was told Hughesnet and Ecede were available. I chose Hughsnet. Come to find out, they seem to farm out stuff to Excede, because after 3 or 4 reschedules for install, guess who showed up? Yep. When I ordered the service to start with I purchased the 12Mb product. The next am, I finally hunted blindly around and found the portal. When it finally loaded, I about fell off my chair. The meter said I'd used 100% of my 10Mb's and was now restricted. I didn't have any success getting a person to talk to, but I found the support tab, and e-mailed my problem. I got a reply a couple of days later explaining that it was because we watched movies the night before. When I ordered this service I was very clear that we watched lots of movies with our Roku. I was told I'd have to stop watching the Roku programming and limit myself to 3 or 4 movies a month. Well, crap! I can't afford to use it, and I definitly can't afford to try to cancel. I'm a PhD (push here dummy!) computer, so I am at 'their' mercy. I guess I could close my bank account...but damn! I hate to get had without even a kiss on the cheek. Makes me sad
Very slow after your first 30 days
First month or two of service were great, speeds higher than advertised. After the 'trial' period during which you can return the service with no penalty, speeds went dramatically down. My average speed, even at 2am, was 2Mbps down and 1Mpbs up. I tried to work with technical support and even had them come to the house but in the end they kept telling me there was 'network congestion' in my area.
It's really awful because now I'm stuck with a virtually useless internet service for $60 a month or cancel and incur almost $300 in fees.
Avoid this unless you can get it without a contract, maybe then they give you full speeds.
Caveat emptor!
Buyer beware! Unless you are totally tech savvy and spend almost no time on line (an unlikely combination), this service will burn you. We watched no movies, no streaming, no music downloading and still ran over our 15 Gb package almost every month.
Also, the connection often failed, requiring unplugging, replugging almost daily - not horrible, but incredibly annoying for such an expensive service. And the speeds never seemed much faster than our old DSL.
On the plus side, whenever I called to complain, the people were incredibly nice and several times gave us some free data...BUT NEVER OFFERED TO SEND A TECHNICIAN.
The upshot. If you have an alternative to Exede, take it.
I used the service for two weeks after waiting 2 months to get it hooked up. Now after two weeks got a bill for 238.00
Check Verizon MiFi First
I had to get a MiFi hotspot from Verizon because the Exede satellite connection wouldn't work reliably over VPN. That's fine, I was aware of this when I moved into the area and planned accordingly. The MiFi JetPack has enabled me to work quickly and reliably from home using my client's VPN.
As a full time work from home employee, I do online meetings with voice/audio and screensharing through Verizon almost everyday. A large part of my work involves editing documents and uploading/downloading them to Sharepoint servers and source code repositories. I consume between 8 and 9 GBs per month doing this every business day on a 20 GB Verizon data plan. At the end of the month, I use any leftover data to watch Netflix or Youtube. I email, I download documents and I upload changes to corporate shares. Verizon is not the fastest, but adding a small antenna to the JetPack gave me a good boost. I'm truly grateful for Verizon as are many rural people.
I use Exede on the other hand for checking email and surfing the Internet. I do a lot of reading online for news and current events. (I did have to give up on some professional development streaming broadcasts, or at least, use the MiFi pack instead.) I eliminated Youtube and streaming after my first month with Exede because the usage was off the charts. Four episodes of House of Cards and my Youtube gardening shows and I was out. (I have the 10 GB plan with 20 GB promo for the first six months. I'm planning to cancel when the promo runs out next month. No one can function on 10 GB of data.) I've continued to pay premium fees to buy extra data. 2 GB from Exede at $20 lasts about two days. It's just me using the satellite connection. I live alone in a remote area. Occasionally, I have to quickly shut a browser down if I land on CNN or some other site that does automatic video playback.
The urban elites haven't figured out yet that most of America is still on heavily metered data plans.
Boy, I remember when America used to lead in every area of innovation. My Japanese and European friends are amazed at how primitive we are in the area of modern communications (we adittedly have a lot more ground to cover because of our size). I think Austrailia is worse, so thank God for that.
America has this new Third World feel to it now and after 20 years of the adoption of high speed broadband in the consumer market, you'd think that the rationing, unavailability and high prices would be over. If anything, it's gotten worse. Before I moved from my city and left AT&T DSL, they had implemented metering in my neighborhood. A neighborhood that was located in the middle of Atlanta in any affluent area. Of course, AT&T had reabsorbed Ma Bell, so the executives don't have to worry about competition.
The way Exede meters data is incredibly wrong. My gut tells me that they will be involved in a class action law suit at some point in the future. Right now, we're just waiting for a disgruntled employee to spill the beans.
Verizon lets me work full time from my house at 8 - 9 GB per month with ~11 GB to spare. Exede burns through 2 GB in two days for web surfing and email. (No Skype, no chat, just normal Internet usage.) Price-wise, the Verizon account looks more expensive ($120 per month for 20 GB) but isn't if you are constantly having to buy more data from Exede.
The complaints about how (not why) Exede measures data usage are common. Most folks are savvy enough to know that the company is misreporting actual usage. This is a common complaint on their user forums and there someone from Exede replying that they are "looking into it."
I'm unable to go back to DSL because AT&T does not service my new area. According to a local provider that services friends a few miles away, corporations divide up a state after buying off local legislators. Then, rules are put into place so that only AT&T or some other company can service a given area even though a neighboring ISP can (and wants to) provide service that the rightful feudal lord won't. There is no technical reason that this other ISP could not hook up me with DSL tomorrow (at least, according to the sales rep I talked to).
The biggest problem is that all of these companies are granted quasi-monopolies by politicians, thus eliminating the ability of ordinary working people like myself to get the services available to larger towns and cities. Small town America is desirable for many people because life is better in many ways, but the technology gap is so huge that I don't see a revival any time soon.
AT&T has absolutely no plans to offer DSL where I live because it's a town of only about 1,000 people -- who are 16-22 miles away from two larger suburban towns with populations in the 50K range each. (Calling AT&T to ask when DSL will be available is a bad idea; you will get pelted with follow up automated survey calls for days afterwards. Apparently, service reps at AT&T need constant feedback regarding their answer to the question "do you have service yet for my area?") Both of these towns are affluent suburbs of metro Atlanta with better choices for cable and internet providers. Unfortunately, monopolies like AT&T are without incentive to extend their infrastructure a few miles down the road to small towns because regulations already forbid a competitor from providing needed services. This is the essence of American capitalism.
I did contact Exede to cancel once before, after the first time my data limit was reached (this was in early November.) The service rep said that there were test markets for larger data packages (150 GB) and that, if successful, these would be rolled out to other regions. This hasn't happened and probably won't and is another reason why I'm looking to cancel soon. I think Exede has exceeded its capacity for new customers and plans.
Anyway, I understand the reason for the company's name now although I would have probably come up with something far better. Speed-wise, I get 10 Mbs and I'm okay with it. It does what I need, at least for a couple weeks after the new billing period has started and before I've hit the data wall.
If you are rural, I'd encourage you to check out Verizon. They have coverage maps that are mostly accurate and your signal strength will vary. You have 15 days (I think) to cancel your data plan if it doesn't work for you and return the MiFi JetPack. The nice thing is that the JetPack fits in your hand and can be easily returned. Satellite dishes are a whole another bag of chips. Be forewarned: Verizon does have some punitive fees for going over your data limit. I did this *once* when I was having to download an OS upgrade for my Mac. It was the only time I hit the Verizon limit.
One closing comment re: remote office workers. There's a lot of talk about saving the environment and reducing carbon footprints and reducing gas usage. I've done all these things in the last year by living in a small town and avoiding two hour daily commutes. No one in the U.S. is serious about of any this for, if they were, getting land-based broadband in a small town about 60 miles from a major urban area would not be so difficult. It's all smoke and mirrors aimed at making some already too rich white guy even richer. Don't believe the environmental establishment's rhetoric. The U.S. is becoming more regressive all the time.
terrible service
tservice, very slow connections. got as a bundle deal for 87.97 but being charged 108.00. wanted to drop service. they want you to pay 15.00 a month for the remainder of the contract. if they had a good service they wouldn't need a contract people would want to stay with them. suggest you look around before you buy this service. not good at all.
Worst Company do not use the
When closing on a house and overwhelmed, I took the suggestion from Directv about an Internet service provider. It has and continues to be a miserable experience. The Internet is slow. They claim you suddenly are using too much. I am 65 and live alone. I have an iPhone and iPad a printer and Directv using the service. I do not stream and video or do gaming but I still used 21 in four days. Told me I was hacked and to change my password. I was never told when getting the service that satellite service would not support a microcell booster. My cellphone cannot be used as my voice fades in and out. And, they say they are providing the service they agreed to and will charge me 170 a month until November 2016 to NOT use their service. I am at my wits end. Please do not get this internet service provider. They will not tell you the truth ever.
Bad, bad, bad
I have had Exede Internet for the past 14 months, and have found out the following. Lightning fast internet it is NOT. Fact is I have had data cards which work faster. Each month we use all of our data to the very end, although all we do is check emails and surf for information... no downloading at all. Decided it was a shame that we could not do any on demand features on Dish, so I found out that Exede has what is called a FREE ZONE time. Boy what a sucker ploy this feature is. I used the so called FREE ZONE time to download movies and each day I received a email from Exede that I had used all my data usage. When I called customer service, technical services said that my dish was miss aligned and was using triple the data. They wanted to charge me $59.00 for the call... ON LEASED EQUIPMENT I said... no way. Threatened to disconnect and they sent a tech out. He said that there is nothing wrong with my system and suggested I buy a new computer! Mean while I have been placed on restricted service and I have found that the speeds that I am experiencing in restricted mode are the same when NOT RESTRICTED. Just another American scam corporation. Can't wait to get cable where we are located or I sell my house and move. I would like to give Exede a (-2) but have to settle with a one star because a zero isn't an option.
Data Usage Scam
Data usage is crazy high. There is no way to keep it under 10, 15 or even 20GB for a full months use. We have this service in a vacation home and before heading in we run off all the wi-fi on all kids devices to ensure no streaming or online gameplay. Just general browsing and email over 3 days on easter weekend and we are already at 4.5 GB (thats 45 GB prorated with not streaming,video's or online music). Exede and any satellite internet for that matter that charges for usage is terrible. The technology has not evolved for most people to use. Will definitely change.