Today is the long awaited day. You can order the New Hughesnet Gen4 service plans today and be among the first to be installed. So what does this mean?

• Be one of the top priority installations when the service launches
• Get special upfront discounts
• Guaranteed installation between October 1st and October 15th or your upfront fee is returned to you.

Hughesnet promised that the Gen4 system would be able to allow customers to do more of with their internet connection. They have delivered on that promise and will be offering the highest speeds ever seen from a satellite internet connection. With the Power MAX plan delivering download speeds up to 15 Mbps, and upload speeds up to 2Mbps it blows the competition out of the water. The plan date for service launch is October 1st!

During the pre-sale period customers can take advantage of a special Hughesnet Gen4 introductory offer. A $50 payment at time of order will lock in your position to have one of the very first installations. You will also qualify for $99 instant savings which makes your installation FREE! This offer ends on September 9th so don’t delay.

One of the big questions I saw on online forums is about how the new FAP will work. This is the data allowance a customer can download. The FAP or “Fair Access Policy” will be changed to a monthly basis instead of daily. On the Power plan which has a 10Mbps download speed and 1Mbps upload speed, a the data allowance is a total of 20 GB per month. 10GB of this will be anytime, the other 10 will be called Bonus Bytes. These Bonus Bytes will be available to the customer from 2AM to 8AM local time. This by the way is a one hour extension on what the old download time was.

Learn more about ordering Hughesnet Gen4 Now.

Hughes has announced their newest satellite that will deliver their customers a new faster internet has been placed in its final resting place at 107 degrees west. You can see the position of the satellite here: Echostar 17 tracking.

Germantown, Md., July 23, 2012—Hughes Network Systems, LLC (HUGHES), the global leader in broadband satellite networks and services, today announced it will begin testing of its new EchoStar XVII satellite with JUPITER™ high-throughput technology, following the successful placement into its permanent geosynchronous orbital slot of 107.1° West longitude last week.

Orbiting at 22,300 miles above the earth, the new generation Ka-band satellite was launched by Arianespace from Kourou, French Guiana on July 5, 2012. Space Systems/Loral manufactured EchoStar XVII, which is designed with a high capacity, multi-spot beam architecture that will expand coverage on areas with the highest traffic demand by consumers and businesses in North America.

“The launch and positioning of EchoStar XVII is a significant milestone for Hughes, as it will be the cornerstone for our HughesNet® Gen4 satellite Internet service,” said Paul Gaske, Hughes executive vice president and general manager, North America Division. “With well over 100 Gbps capacity, EchoStar XVII will build on the success of our SPACEWAY® 3 satellite─the world’s largest commercial satellite network, expanding high-speed satellite Internet access in North America to over 1.5 million new consumer and small business subscribers. Hughes pioneered the satellite broadband industry, and with HughesNet Gen4 we will deliver customers a media-rich Internet experience like never before.”

HughesNet Gen4 will dramatically improve Internet browsing performance and high-bandwidth video and music applications. Hughes expects to begin commercial operations this fall.

Hughesnet has announce the successful launch of their satellite that will deliver the service they call Gen4, Echostar 17. The satellite was launched yesterday at 5:36 EST from a European Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. Read the official press release from Hughes.

Germantown, Md., July 6, 2012—Hughes Network Systems, LLC (HUGHES), the global leader in broadband satellite networks and services, today announced that the EchoStar XVII satellite built by Space Systems/Loral was successfully launched and placed into geostationary transfer orbit by Arianespace, setting the stage for the new HughesNet Gen 4 satellite Internet services offering dramatically increased performance and capacity.

The Ariane 5 rocket lifted off July 5, 2012 at 5:36 p.m. eastern time from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana aboard an Ariane 5 ECA launcher. The rocket left the spacecraft in a geosynchronous transfer orbit at approximately 6:03 p.m. eastern time. Space Systems/Loral’s Mission Control Center in Palo Alto, California reported spacecraft acquisition at 6:20 p.m. eastern time when signals were received at the ground station in Hassan, Karnataka in India. Space Systems/Loral reports that all systems are functioning properly.

Extensive tests will be completed after the spacecraft is maneuvered into a circular orbit 22,300 miles above the equator at 107.1° West longitude. Hughes expects to begin commercial operations this Fall.

The Ka-band EchoStar XVII with JUPITER high-throughput technology will enable HughesNet Gen4—Hughes’ fourth-generation satellite Internet service. HughesNet Gen4 will dramatically increase Internet browsing performance and support high-bandwidth applications such as, video and music. HughesNet Gen4 customers will be able to experience faster speeds and the industry’s greatest download capacity so they can experience Internet connectivity at its fullest.

“The addition of EchoStar XVII to our existing satellite capacity, ground network, and services takes satellite Internet to the next dimension,” said Pradman Kaul, president of Hughes. “Our HughesNet Gen4 customers will be able to enjoy a media-rich world like never before. We congratulate the Arianespace and Space Systems/Loral teams on a flawless launch.”

About Arianespace

Arianespace is the world’s leading launch service and solutions Company, providing innovation
to its customers since 1980. Backed by 21 shareholders and the European Space Agency,
Arianespace offers an international workforce renowned for a culture of
commitment and excellence. As of today, Arianespace had performed 206 Ariane launches (301
payloads), 26 Soyuz launches (2 at the Guiana Space Center and 24 at Baikonur with Starsem)
and the first launch of Vega. It has a backlog of 22 Ariane 5, 15 Soyuz and 3 Vega launches,
equal to more than three years of business.

About Space Systems/Loral

Space Systems/Loral, a subsidiary of Loral Space & Communications (NASDAQ: LORL), has a
long history of delivering reliable satellites and spacecraft systems for commercial and
government customers around the world. As the world’s leading provider of commercial
satellites, the company works closely with satellite operators to provide spacecraft for a broad
range of services including television and radio distribution, digital audio radio, broadband
Internet, and mobile communications. Billions of people around the world depend on SS/L
satellites every day. For more information, visit www.ssloral.com.

About Hughes Network Systems

Hughes Network Systems, LLC (Hughes) is the world’s leading provider of satellite broadband
for home and office, delivering innovative network technologies, managed services, and
solutions for enterprises and governments globally. HughesNet® is the #1 high-speed satellite
Internet service in the marketplace, with offerings to suit every budget. To date, Hughes has
shipped more than 2.8 million systems to customers in over 100 countries, representing over 50
percent market share. Its products employ global standards approved by the TIA, ETSI and ITU
organizations, including IPoS/DVB-S2, RSM-A, and GMR-1.

Headquartered outside Washington, D.C., in Germantown, Maryland, USA, Hughes operates
sales and support offices worldwide, and is a wholly owned subsidiary of EchoStar Corporation
(NASDAQ: SATS), a premier global provider of satellite operations and digital TV solutions.
For additional information about Hughes, please visit www.hughes.com.

Update July 5, 2012: Today is the launch of the Gen4 Echostar 17 Satellite. Watch the launch live at 5:30 EST here: Hughesnet Gen4 Launch

Last week we attended the Hughesnet Hits conference in Baltimore, MD. We learned some exciting news about the new service from Hughesnet called Gen 4. First the service plans, data limits, etc have not been announced as of yet. We can expect something as the actual launch of the new service gets closer. The satellite that will deliver the service –Echostar 17– is scheduled to launch this week, July 5th. The roll out date of the new service is still undisclosed, but we can hope for 30 – 45 days after launch of the satellite, so we can look for mid August – early September.

The satellite footprint will cover most of the eastern half of the United States, the west coast, and a couple of rough beams in the middle of the states. The area not serviced by the new satellite will continue to use the current Spaceway 3 system and equipment. However customers using the Spaceway system can expect a performance increase. The reason for this is, as customers in the Echostar 17 area migrate and fall off of the Spaceway platform, more bandwidth can be allocated to those customers who have that system.

The new modem for the Jupiter system is called a HT1000. The Hughes HT1000 will use the same chassis as the HN9000; However, the 1000 will be grey in color. It will have a single cable connection which will make installation easier. It also seemed to have more weight in the bottom. This will hopefully help with the issue the 9000 had with being top heavy and falling over.

Hughes also redesigned the radio unit of the Gen4 system. Making installation easier, and weather resistance more effective, the new single wire input connection of the new radio unit is located on the bottom of the radio. The feed-horn “which collects the signal after it is reflected” is pre-attached to the radio unit. The marman clamp which caused a water leak issue, has been eliminated. Customers who wish to upgrade can do so very easily. Most of the dish assembly is the same.

VoIP with Satellite Internet?

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Can VoIP work with satellite internet? That is what Hughesnet is hinting at. Apparently they have been busy doing testing with different venders to provide a flawless VoIP service to there customers. Since the captivity of the new Jupiter system is very large, they can allocate a portion of the bandwidth to prioritize packets for a VoIP service. So how will it work? Well the latency will still be a normal satellite lag which is around 700 ms, but Hughesnet will be able to detect what packets are for VoIP and put them in the front of the line, speeding up the communication times.

So what about the lag time? Some may say that 700ms for voice communication is way to much and it will never work. Let’s take a standard local telephone call that is made on a land-line to land-line. This connection will have a latency of 30ms to 150ms. Now if we take an example of a cell phone call using the same example the latency can increase in the range of 250ms to 600ms, depending on service providers, and range. With services like Google Voice these times can increase to 700ms to 1050ms, which is the same range as a satellite internet connection. So in theory these lag time ranges are already in use today.

New Installer Tools for Gen4 service

This is the part that is most interesting to us. Hughes said the installation of the Gen4 system would be easier and it looks like they where right. Aside from only needing one coaxial wire for installation, we will have a new iPhone and Android OS app for installing. This can take the place of a laptop and is a complete solution for pointing, paperwork, quality pictures, and finding line of site.