It is definitely better than dial up. Hughes has a Fair Access Policy which limits the amount of data you can download in a 24 hour period. Go over it and they cut your bandwidth down to a trickle (worse than dial up) for a 24 hour period. You can pay more money for a higher ceiling on the FAP but it still sucks. You can buy the equipment off ebay and then pay someone to install it. That's how I worked it and saved some money up front.

Weather can also be a concern.

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