I had Hughes at first, about 10 years ago. It was slow, but it was the only choice. About 5 years or so ago, we switched to Exede. It was much better than Hughes (we only used it for internet-we tried to stream but the picture was a very poor quality and we had to deal with buffering constantly.). I was grandfathered in on an “unlimited” plan, which allowed us 250 GB per month. When you aren’t streaming you can pretty much say that 250 GB is “unlimited”. Well, I really got more and more interested in “cutting the cord” from DirecTV, and I spoke with friends who sell and install Exede. Exede was bought out by Viasat (or maybe Viasat owned them all along and they just dropped the Exede name). Viasat launched another satellite (Viasat 2) a couple of years ago. This resulted in a faster connection and decreased the amount of traffic on the original satellite that Viasat used for years. With 2 satellites they no longer have the problems with congestion that they had and I have to admit that it’s much better than ever before. They have changed their plan offerings and most people who are still with them are able to stream pretty much all they want for around $80/month. My old “unlimited” 250 GB plan was running me around $130/month.
As luck would have it, I was on this message board about 6 weeks ago and another poster told me about his parents who lived in a rural area had recently gotten AT&T fixed wireless internet at their home and that it was great. The poster suggested I check it out, so I did exactly that. I went to AT&T’s site and got to chat with a rep, who checked my location to see if their fixed wireless was available at my home. He confirmed that it was, and about 3-4 days later a tech came to my home and hooked us up. I’m averaging between 25-30 Mbps downloading and between 15-20 Mbps uploading. Not bad at all. My plan gives us 320 GB of data per month for streaming, and if you go over they give you another 50 GB for an additional $10, and will continue as long as you want. We won’t ever use that much, but it’s nice to know that you can use it if you want and it doesn’t cost you a fortune and you don’t have to worry about them throttling you down like the satellite companies do. I’m extremely satisfied with this AT&T fixed wireless. I never thought I would ever be able to get anything like this here at home. It’s very cool-I just wish I could remember the poster who turned me on to it because I would thank him profusely. He did me a solid, and I really do appreciate it.
