I say this as a former customer... Hughesnet is an absolute joke. Looking past their incompetent installers (who provided me with a major leak in the roof over my kitchen) and their horrible uptime (clouds in the sky = service outage), at it's best the internet service could only be described as painfully slow. Super high latency, constant dropped connections, poor throughput and to top it all off customer service that I'd rate as equivalent to cell phone providers.
The technology has gone through an iteration or two, with the latest coming in the last year. Your judgement may have been valid in the past (though you're providing a far worse perspective than I've heard from anyone else), but if you haven't been a customer for a while, your past experience is not a predictor of current performance.
As for the incompetent installers, they're probably the exact same local contractors working for Dish Network or DirecTV. Results will vary by area.
I say this as a former customer... Hughesnet is an absolute joke. Looking past their incompetent installers (who provided me with a major leak in the roof over my kitchen) and their horrible uptime (clouds in the sky = service outage), at it's best the internet service could only be described as painfully slow. Super high latency, constant dropped connections, poor throughput and to top it all off customer service that I'd rate as equivalent to cell phone providers.
Please, do yourself a favor, and stay far away.