In theory, StarLink would have been faster because they use many low-orbit satellites as opposed to a handful of further-away geostationary satellites like HughesNet. But "faster speeds" isn't everything and this money is meant to expand actual broadband/optical internet.

It's physics. The old satellite Internet uses geosynchronous satellites. That orbit requires the satellite to be 22,300 miles up.

The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second. So the 44,600+ mile round trip takes almost a quarter of a second (250ms) just for the signal to travel up to the satellite and down to the ground station.

250ms added to the normal Internet travel time each way makes for a very delayed internet connection (in practice, 650ms average latency or 2/3rds of a second ). Voice chat has notable pauses, online games becomes practically unplayable, and so on.

It's a bit hard to visualize sub 1s times, but if you say "how are you" at a normallish speed, the words "how are" would take close to 2/3rds of a second.

Starlink satellites are only 340 miles up. A round trip is less than 4ms. So the packet and the response from the Internet reach you sooner. Also each satellite can handle a fair amount of bandwidth which if the number of users is kept in check means closer to modern bandwidth. Looks like Starlink latency runs about 25ms on land and 100ms in remote areas (far away from a ground station).

Regarding bandwidth (how much data they can send at once), HughesNet seems to offer a max of 50mpbs while Starlink's current top (business) service is 500mbps.

So they're both satellite Internet services, but because in the difference in how they are deployed they offer very different speeds and latencies.

Hughes net is popular in my area. It has such severe latency it is unusable for gaming, unfortunately.

Looks like Hughesnet starts at 15 GB per month and 15Mbs down for $49.99 a month**

**Monthly Fee reflects the applied $5 savings for ACHⓘ enrollment. Enroll before the 2nd billing cycle for continued savings.

Service plans require a 24-month commitment. Equipment Lease or Purchase fees extra.

That is pretty bad.

Ping/latency...and upload speed.

Traditional satellite internet using geostationary satellites not only have bandwidth limitations but also very high latency. This is simply physics, even at the speed of light, GEO is pretty darn far out. For regular web browsing that's not an issue, but anything that is latency dependent either starts failing or becomes unbearable.

Latency to GEO is about 500 milliseconds, that's half a second for a request you send to get up there, then another half second for it to be sent back to ground stations, then normal internet latency, then another second back up and then down to you. So you have normal internet latency, plus 2 seconds, at the best of times. So things like VoIP and gaming often have many more issues, or sometimes may not even be really usable.

The Starlink contstellation being in a Low Earth Orbit means a much lower latency. Real world latency has been around or below 100ms total, similar to LTE latency times. In the real world it is just more like a mobile connection that works even in the middle of nowhere.