Staff rating

4.0

Customer rating

4.0

(76)

Plans starting at $30.00

Download speeds up to 940Mb

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Staff rating

3.8

Plans starting at $65.00

Download speeds up to 1000 Mbps

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Staff rating

3.8

Customer rating

3.1

(13)

Plans starting at $49.99

Download speeds up to 25 Mbps

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Staff rating

4.0

Great fiber service, if you can get it

CenturyLink offers excellent fiber internet, but it’s available only in limited markets. If you can't get fiber, you may be able to get a DSL connection but you'll pay nearly as much.

What we like

Unlimited data across all plans
Fast fiber connections in select markets
No contracts

What we dislike

Limited fiber availability
Much slower DSL internet speeds
Below-average customer service

See full review

Savings tip: CenturyLink often has sign-up promotions for first-time customers. Call to ask a rep about current deals and discounts.

Check deals

Staff rating

3.8

Strong value and performance from a smaller brand

Overall, we like Clearwave Fiber. It’s a speedy fiber provider with decent pricing and good customer service. Our main complaint is that it’s just not as competitive on the pricing as it could be. In general, though, we think people will be happy with Clearwave Fiber.

What we like

Symmetrical speeds
Unlimited data
No contracts

What we dislike

Price hikes after 12 months
Relatively new, unproven company

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Savings tip: Clearwave Fiber often has sign-up promotions for first-time customers. Call to ask a rep about current deals and discounts.

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Staff rating

3.8

Affordable, high-quality satellite internet in remote areas

HughesNet has the cheapest broadband satellite internet plans, with speeds up to 100 Mbps and unlimited data. HughesNet is powered by Jupiter 3, which it touts as the world's largest and most advanced communications satellite. HughesNet offers affordable, high-quality satellite internet, perfect for households and rural areas. HughesNet is available in small towns and places off the beaten path. You can usually sign up for HughesNet in areas where cable and fiber internet aren't available.

What we like

Affordable satellite internet
Wide availability
Unlimited data available

What we dislike

Price may increase
Two-year contract

See full review

Savings tip: HughesNet often has sign-up promotions for first-time customers. Call to ask a rep about current deals and discounts.

Check deals

Value

4.0

Great fiber value meets high-cost, low-performance DSL plans

CenturyLink offers two types of plans, depending on your location. The more common option is DSL, which is relatively slow and offers inconsistent speeds. The other option is fiber, which is extremely fast and reliable.

Generally speaking, the DSL options are not a great value. The price is reasonable, but the speeds mean you’re likely to get more for your money elsewhere (this is true for many DSL providers). The fiber plans are a much better value—they offer much more speed for the money than CenturyLink’s DSL plans and are competitive with other providers’ fiber offerings. In fact, CenturyLink's 940 Mbps plan costs a little more than half of the national benchmark for similar plans. (1) We highly recommend CenturyLink fiber if you have it available.

Pricing details vary by location. Visit

CenturyLink's website

or call 1-833-804-2792 to speak with a rep.

See pricing

Value

3.5

Solid value and transparent pricing

Clearwave Fiber fares decently overall in the value department, in large part because fiber just tends to be a good value. With faster plans, like Fiber 1 Gig, Clearwave is competitive and the performance is excellent. This package offers 11.75 Mbps per dollar spent, compared to the Fiber 500 plan at 6.67 Mbps per dollar. Although the latter is cheaper per month, you can clearly see how you get more for each dollar spent with the top-tier plan.

However, compared to competitors like AT&T, Clearwave is definitely more expensive. This difference is more pronounced with the lower-tier packages, where you get a lot more for your money with other providers.

It’s not all bad news, however. You do get unlimited data on all the plans by default—some providers, notably Xfinity, charge quite a lot for this. The equipment costs are also low, at $10 per month.

Additionally, while the price does increase after 12 months, the bump is relatively small at just $15 per month. Clearwave is very up front about this, which is a refreshing change—normally we have to dig to find out how much a plan’s price will increase after promotional periods end.

Pricing details vary by location. Visit

Clearwave Fiber's website

or call to speak with a rep.

See pricing

Value

3.5

Affordable satellite internet plans with speeds up to 100 Mbps

HughesNet offers fast speeds at an affordable price. In some areas, HughesNet offers up to 100 Mbps download speeds and unlimited standard data.

HughesNet offers three satellite internet plans, all with unlimited data: Select, Elite, and Fusion:

HughesNet Select is a great choice for small households. Get speeds up to 50 Mbps, depending on the area you're in. You'll receive 100 GB of Priority Data. This should be enough for a small household to browse the internet, listen to music, stream podcasts, and stream HD video.
HughesNet Elite is a good choice for households who get online a lot. You get speeds up to 100 Mbps, depending on availability in your area. You also get 200 GB of Priority Data. This is perfect for doing video conferencing or doing light, turn-based video games online.
HughesNet Fusion is the fastest and most responsive internet that HughesNet offers. You get speeds up to Mbps and 200 GB of Priority Data. You should be able to stream HD video and play multi-player online video games in real-time.

If you regularly get online and use the internet for work or gaming, we highly recommend the HughesNet Fusion. With this plan, you get more reliable, constant internet because it taps into wireless networks for some online activities.

We love that when you sign up for a HughesNet plan, you get mesh Wi-Fi nodes to help eliminate internet dead zones in your home and ensure your household can get online at the same time. You can get these professionally installed with your HughesNet system, so they're placed in the best possible places to maximize their effectiveness.

Pricing details vary by location. Visit

HughesNet's website

or call 1-833-804-4974 to speak with a rep.

See pricing

Performance

4.5

Performance is excellent for areas with fiber access

There’s a performance divide based on the type of service available. The CenturyLink DSL plans can range from 15 to 100 Mbps, which is a wide range. Additionally, 15 Mbps just isn’t great these days. It doesn’t even reach broadband speeds (25 Mbps or more). That said, you shouldn’t have to worry about getting the advertised speed—whatever plan you sign up for, you seem to get what you pay for with CenturyLink.

On the other hand, the fiber plans offer Gigabit speeds (up to 940 Mbps), which is excellent. Additionally, fiber internet offers synchronous download speeds and upload speeds, meaning you can game, video chat, or upload large files just as fast as you binge Netflix. Fiber also tends to be inherently reliable because of the way the technology works—the light signals in fiber optic cables can carry more information over longer distances than coaxial cables. We have no complaints about performance on these plans.

Available speeds vary by location. Call 1-833-804-2792 to speak with a CenturyLink rep or

go to its website.

Performance

5.0

Fast fiber speeds and unlimited data

Clearwave Fiber does better in the performance department. Speeds are fast—up to 1 Gbps—and all the fiber plans offer symmetrical speeds. This means the download and upload speeds are the same.

With something like cable your upload is normally about 10% of your download speed, if that. This helps a lot with live streaming, video calls, and sharing large files like videos.

As for reliability, fiber is generally pretty solid. However, Clearwave is a newer company, so it’s hard to say how well the service will hold up. Here’s what we can say: in some markets, Clearwave has taken over Hargray’s fiber services, which we have found to be somewhat unreliable in the past. Hopefully Clearwave makes improvements for customers going forward.

Available speeds vary by location. Call to speak with a Clearwave Fiber rep or

go to its website.

Performance

4.0

100 Mbps speed is great, but performance depends on many factors

With any satellite internet provider, performance will depend on individual factors, including your location and how well your dish is positioned. There are also factors beyond your control, such as bad weather and occasional outages. Cable or fiber connections tend to be faster and more dependable, while satellite connections have slower speeds and higher latency due to the long distance between your home and the satellite overhead.

According to data from Ookla, HughesNet’s median download speed in Q4 of 2021 was almost exactly accurate with speeds advertised.

Available speeds vary by location. Call 1-833-804-4974 to speak with a HughesNet rep or

go to its website.

Equipment and installation

4.5

A fee for self-installation, but good equipment at a decent price

CenturyLink installation is more or less on par with other providers in terms of installation procedures and costs. If your neighborhood is wired for only DSL with CenturyLink, you can have your internet service set up by a pro for somewhere between $129 and $300 based on the installation requirements. You can alternatively choose to do a self-install for $15.

If you live in an area wired for CenturyLink fiber, your pro installation and equipment rental are free, and you may be able to self-install for free. You could also wrangle unlimited data and an included mesh wireless network if you sign a contract, so be sure to ask. This is about on par with other fiber internet providers.

Find out whether you need a professional to come by or if you can handle setup yourself.

As for equipment, the CenturyLink modem and router are also pretty standard stuff. The company charges around $15 per month for equipment rentals for DSL customers. The gear is nothing to write home about, but it works. You can also buy the modem outright from CenturyLink for up to $200—whether this is a good deal for you depends on how long you plan to have CenturyLink as a provider.

We don’t particularly recommend buying your own router. Both the DSL and fiber services require a modem certified by CenturyLink to function, so you may as well save some money and use the built-in wireless router.

Equipment and installation options can vary widely depending on

CenturyLink plans

available in your area.

View plans

Equipment and installation

3.5

No surprises here

Clearwave Fiber offers what it calls the Clearwave Fiber Router. Combined with a whole-home Wi-Fi system and a smartphone app, customers are promised wall-to-wall coverage and a slew of features to help make the experience better. These include individual profiles for people and rooms, bandwidth tests, guest networks, and parental controls. That’s a pretty solid package for $10 per month.

Installation is the typical fiber deal—you’ll need a tech to come out and install the Optical Network Terminal (ONT), which is basically the modem for your fiber network. After that, you can either use Clearwave’s router or bring your own. There’s a $99 installation fee, which is pretty standard.

Equipment and installation options can vary widely depending on

Clearwave Fiber plans

available in your area.

View plans

Equipment and installation

4.0

Easy professional installation and good equipment prices

When you sign up for HughesNet, you can decide to either lease or purchase equipment from the company. Usually, the cost for leasing equipment is around $20 per month and purchasing is around $450. Purchasing equipment is a good deal if you think you’ll continue your service beyond the two-year contract term.

Depending on current promotions, you can sometimes get discounts for leasing or purchasing and have the $99 installation fee waived. You may also be able to score a $100 prepaid gift card, even if you're using your ACP benefit.

Ordering online can sometimes save you up to $50, but the address system on the site is clunky. If you enter yours and Hughesnet says it can't find your address, you may need to call in.

HughesNet’s equipment costs and installation process are about the same as Viasat. Starlink, on the other hand, requires you to purchase the equipment up front for a higher cost and install it yourself.

HughesNet will send a technician to professionally install your equipment, which includes a satellite dish, Wi-Fi modem, router, mesh nodes to boost your Wi-Fi signal in your home, and everything else you need. Installation typically happens within five days of signup, and service windows are about 3 hours long.

The technician will put the dish on your house, or on a pole mount in the ground for $25 extra, and ensure a clear line of sight to the satellite. A hole will be drilled into your home for the cable to connect to the modem inside. Once the system is active and tested, the technician will also connect up to two devices to the network for you.

Equipment and installation options can vary widely depending on

HughesNet plans

available in your area.

View plans

Customer experience

3.0

Below-average customer service

CenturyLink consistently scores slightly below average in customer satisfaction (2), largely due to complaints about a lack of responsiveness regarding customer service. The service also gets a lot of complaints from new fiber internet customers, but complaints are very common industry-wide.

CenturyLink hires techs and contractors from around the country, so some inconsistency is expected. It redeems itself slightly, though, with an easy-to-use support page.

The company is expanding and we hear that many new cities will have fiber internet hookups from CenturyLink within the next few years. If you can get only DSL, though, you may have a connection as slow as 3 Mbps or one as fast as 100 Mbps, with huge variation in latency depending on how far you are from the nearest access point.

We like that CenturyLink provides DSL to customers who may have no other option, but we don't recommend the DSL offering if you have access to cable or fiber internet from another provider.

Visit CenturyLink's website

or call 1-833-804-2792 for more information on contracts and money-back guarantees.

Go to provider

Customer experience

3.5

Quick and helpful service

Since Clearwave is fairly new, the customer experience is a bit of a question mark. We’ve not seen a ton of user comments about the provider, but the few we have seen have been generally positive, citing good reliability, lack of data caps, and local customer support. This includes both former Hargray customers as well as new Clearwave customers.

Additionally, while the company’s website lacks self-help options, we chatted with customer service reps several times and were able to consistently get a response within a minute or two. The reps were direct, helpful, and friendly, and we appreciated the speed of the responses.

Visit Clearwave Fiber's website

or call for more information on contracts and money-back guarantees.

Go to provider

Customer experience

4.0

Plenty of support resources, and you can get actual human help

Customer experience with HughesNet is comparable to its primary satellite internet competitor, Viasat. For billing and tech support questions, the company gives you several ways to contact customer support: by phone, live chat, or email. HughesNet also has an online forum for customers to ask and answer each other’s questions, as well as FAQs and help articles. You can easily manage your account through the website or mobile app.

HughesNet also offers Home Voice, a VoIP phone service that uses your satellite internet connection, plus an internet security package. Both are free for the first month, but you'll be charged starting in your second month, so set yourself a reminder to call and cancel the extras if you're not sure you need them.

Visit HughesNet's website

or call 1-833-804-4974 for more information on contracts and money-back guarantees.

Go to provider

Made up your mind?

Find out what providers are available near you.

CenturyLink

3.9

(76)

5 Star

34%

4 Star

41%

3 Star

16%

2 Star

1 Star

Jessicafrom Greenbrier, AR

CenturyLink Customer for 1+ years

Reviewed on: 6-17-2022

It is reliable and always works for us when we Need to do multiple things at once. It is good service. With good workers.

Davidfrom Colorado Springs, CO

CenturyLink Customer for 1+ years

Reviewed on: 6-17-2022

Over all good service it does however bog down at some points

Johnfrom Minneapolis, MN

CenturyLink Customer for 8+ years

Reviewed on: 6-17-2022

It's too slow, I don't have the capability for fast internet,

Ronikkafrom Sidney, MT

CenturyLink Customer for 1+ years

Reviewed on: 6-17-2022

Setting up was a pain but once on the board great service and great rate.

Clearwave Fiber

0.0

(0)

5 Star

4 Star

3 Star

2 Star

1 Star

HughesNet

3.0

(13)

5 Star

4 Star

31%

3 Star

31%

2 Star

23%

1 Star

Carlos from Mojave, CA

HughesNet Customer for Less than a year

Reviewed on: 6-24-2022

It’s slow and sometimes nothing will even load when we supposedly have 30 gb a day

Amberly from Canisteo , NY

HughesNet Customer for 4+ years

Reviewed on: 6-22-2022

I think this company provides very good service for the price I like that the price does not change it's a set set price every month their customer support team is great the response time is amazing and I like most everything about this company I do wish that their speeds would be a little faster but they aren't that bad.

Mauleenfrom Hemphill, TX

HughesNet Customer for 1+ years

Reviewed on: 6-17-2022

The internet service is not worth what’s being charged. If there were more options for internet in this area, I would definitely switch to a better service. No competition in this rural area.

Debfrom West Jefferson, OH

HughesNet Customer for 1+ years

Reviewed on: 6-17-2022

We live in a rural area and Hughes Net is the only option for us

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Endnotes and sources

1. "Broadband Insights Report (OVBI)," OpenVault. Accessed August 17, 2022.2. "Internet Service Providers," ACSI. Accessed Dec. 10, 2022.

Endnotes and sources

1. “2022 Urban Rate Survey – Fixed Broadband Service,” FCC. Accessed 17 June 2022.2. “Starlink Hits 100+ Mbps Download Speed in 15 Countries During Q4 2021,” Ookla. Accessed 6 June 2022.3. “HughesNet outage or service down,” Downdetector. Accessed 6 June 2022.