NEED RECOMMENDATIONS: Stand alone HS internet provider.

[George Kimery]

first, I do not have cable, satellite, TV etc. I am on dial up internet connection which has to go. I am looking for a high speed internet provider that will provide me with stand alone high speed internet service. The only one I know about is Hughes Net. Are there other choices and what is the price range on getting set up?

Thanks for any and all suggestions.

[Jon Light (deceased)]

George--a lot has to do with the question of what infrastructure is available where you are. DSL, over your telephone wire, requires certain proximity to transformers on the lines.

I used Earthlink for years. It is what it is. No thumbs up or down. I've now got FIOS which is pretty kickin' but requires massive fiber optic line laying, otherwise I'd still be with Earthlink.

You can try this site and see if you can find out what you need to find out. If your lines won't work for DSL, satellite may be your only hope (which happens to be a Hughes Net thing on the Earthlink site).

http://www.earthlink.net/access/dsl_freestanding.faces

[Dave Potter]

first, I do not have cable, satellite, TV etc. I am on dial up internet connection which has to go. I am looking for a high speed internet provider that will provide me with stand alone high speed internet service. The only one I know about is Hughes Net. Are there other choices and what is the price range on getting set up? Thanks for any and all suggestions.

For satellite-based internet service, along with HughesNet, there's also DishNet, and maybe a few insignificant others I don't remember at the moment. And there are also cellular-based internet services, which are expensive. Fiber optic cable is the gold standard these days, but again, it's location-dependent.

But satellite internet - just say "no" if there's any other viable option. I decided to drop our local cable provider for personal reasons, and try it, within the past year, and the experience was abysmal.

It's painfully slow, compared to cable, and you'll have a monthly data cap. Ours was 10GB/month. I needed to download one application, just one stinkin' program in compressed format, and I wiped out our entire monthly data allocation in a couple of hours. You can buy extra capacity a la carte, but it gets expensive quickly. I made the decision to drop "DishNet" 6 months after I started it, and was forced to ante up $700 in early termination fees. The whole experience was like a bad dream. If you ever plan to use internet for much in the way of file transfers of images, music, or similar large files, or to stream or download videos, satellite internet service isn't the way to do it.

Dial-up internet service is obviously not acceptable today. Research what's available in your local area, and opt for cable vs satellite, if at all possible. I Googled internet service in your area, and Comcast was right at the top. Have you investigated them?

[Scott Duckworth]

As for Sat service, there is also Exede Internet. It's on ViaSat II, and runs me $60 a month for 10GB and the modem rental. The 10GB is your metered service, plus you get 12AM - 5AM free time. They also offer VoIP phone service.

http://www.exede.com/

[Wiz Feinberg]

first, I do not have cable, satellite, TV etc. I am on dial up internet connection which has to go. I am looking for a high speed internet provider that will provide me with stand alone high speed internet service. The only one I know about is Hughes Net. Are there other choices and what is the price range on getting set up?

Thanks for any and all suggestions.

George;
It has been several years since I had to even think about using dial-up ISPs. But, up until 2004, that is what I had. The issues with modems led me to do research and as a result, i wrote a web page dealing with tweaking your modem settings for the best results. I titled it Modems-101. Read it and maybe it will help you fine tune your modem for the best obtainable results. If not, there are links to other websites that have information about tweaking your modem.

I can attest to the fact that a well-tweaked dial-up modem downloads and uploads faster than one that creates data errors (e.g. Block errors, resends, latency).

I did a little recon for you and have found a dial-up ISP that offers a free Dial-up accelerator download. I used to use a similar commercial program called Propel Accelerator, which did work, but has been discontinued. These programs compress the text, html and images to speed up the delivery of web pages.

[George Kimery]

I live out in the country and I can't even get a signal on my cell phone at home. I have seen the Hughes van running around, so I figured they have service in my area. I called them and they assured me that they did.

It will cost me $158.00 up front to get going and for the first month's charge. After that, it will be $59.00 a month with a 24 month commitment. Their customer service salesman, after I explained my needs, recommended this plan, which he assured me was the cheapest package that they offer. This plan, after dropping my AOL and Net Zero will only cost me $18.00 more per month and I will have high speed.

I now have dial up AOL and Net Zero now that are costing me a total of $41.00 a month, which I will drop if I hook up with a HS provider.

Some time ago I checked with Comcast and they would not sell me just internet service. They wanted me to "bundle" with TV service which I don't want.

So the question is, if you only had two choices, Hughes Net or keeping AOL and Net Zero dial up, which would you want.

Thanks for everybody's input.

[George Kimery]

I live out in the country and I can't even get a signal on my cell phone at home. I have seen the Hughes van running around, so I figured they have service in my area. I called them and they assured me that they do.

It will cost me $158.00 up front to get going and for the first month's charge. After that, it will be $59.00 a month with a 24 month commitment. Their customer service salesman, after I explained my needs, recommended this plan, which he assured me was the cheapest package that they offer. This plan, after dropping my AOL and Net Zero will only cost me $18.00 more per month and I will have high speed.

Some time ago I checked with Comcast and they would not sell me just internet service. They wanted me to "bundle" with TV service which I don't want.

So the question is, if you only had two choices, Hughes Net high speed or keeping AOL and Net Zero dial up, which would you take?

Thanks for everybody's input.

[Dave Potter]

So the question is, if you only had two choices, Hughes Net high speed or keeping AOL and Net Zero dial up, which would you take?

If it boils down to those choices, only you can make the decision. You'd need to take into consideration the comparison between the two, i.e., the monthly costs, the upload/download speeds, the contract comitments, etc.

Be careful about rejecting "bundling". We faced the same decision, and decided to go with "bundled" TV-internet-phone service, even though we don't even have a landline phone connected, since the cost to do the same thing without phone service would be even higher. Such is life.

But, once again, I offer the warning that satellite internet is at the bottom of the heap, all things considered. Trust me on that - I've been there.

[Scott Duckworth]

George, before you do Hughes, check out Exede...