[NYTr] HughesNet Users Revolt Against 24-Hour Caps
 
Date: Sun, 20 May 2007 13:57:57 -0500 (CDT)


Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
DSL Reports -May 18, 2007
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/83925?brk=2

HughesNet Users Revolt Against 24-Hour Caps

But does it constitute a HughesNet breach of contract?

Posted 2007-05-18 18:15:53 by Karl 

As recently noted, satellite broadband is your best bet if you're out
of range of other options, though none of the major satellite providers
get high marks from our users: see reviews for Wild Blue, HughesNet and
StarBand. HughesNet ranks the lowest, a major reason for that being the
company's daily rolling usage caps ("fair access policy"), which exist
to help counter the company's overall lack of satellite capacity and
just got significantly worse.

Before April 18, HughesNET customers on the Professional tier could
download up to 350MB in a four hour period. They've since been
restricted to 375MB over a 24 hour period, after which their
connections are throttled to marginally usable status for 24 hours
(this used to be 12). One user tells the Consumerist his attempt to
escape his contract by claiming the change constituted a breach of
contract has been in vain:

    "My 5+ hours of phone conversation with them has been fruitless.
After reading back Tier 3 billing support their own Subscriber
Agreement policy regarding release from contract and explaining to the
representative that it clearly stated that I could be released from my
contract if Hughes changed the service, the representative told me that
he didn't come to that conclusion after reading it, and that he wasn't
a lawyer so he couldn't say for sure either way."

Can any lawyers chime in? Users in our HughesNet forum are considering
a shift to WildBlue, after they've complained to the Better Business
Bureau. We don't care how strapped you are for capacity, broadband
users should never be worried about whether they'll be able to download
the next Windows service pack or not.. 

       
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