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Starlink Beta Has Outperformed Most Internet in the US

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21–30 of 94 posts

Re: Starlink Beta Has Outperformed Most Internet in the US

#21

download speed is great, but what’s the latency like?

30-40ms round trip generally. It's Starlink's biggest advantage vs. existing satellites, along with greater capacity per user due to the huge number of satellites, so they don't need draconian data caps.

Re: Starlink Beta Has Outperformed Most Internet in the US

#23
What blows my mind is how a lot of parts in highly developed countries like the US or Germany don't have access to a broadband internet connection.

We had a lot of investment from the EU to install optical fibre everywhere, even in small towns. Now we have even small companies that only operate locally with very, very competitive prices.

Re: Starlink Beta Has Outperformed Most Internet in the US

#24
post #23

What blows my mind is how a lot of parts in highly developed countries like the US or Germany don't have access to a broadband internet connection. We had a lot of investment from the EU to install optical fibre everywhere, even in small towns. Now we have even small companies that only operate locally with very, very competitive prices.

At least the US has the excuse of being huge, which does make it much harder to provide good coverage. We don't have that excuse here in Germany.

The situation isn't entirely terrible in Germany, but extremely variable depending on your location. I have 1Gbit for 40 EUR per month, but there are certainly places that aren't even remote that get no reasonable broadband.

Re: Starlink Beta Has Outperformed Most Internet in the US

#25
post #23

What blows my mind is how a lot of parts in highly developed countries like the US or Germany don't have access to a broadband internet connection. We had a lot of investment from the EU to install optical fibre everywhere, even in small towns. Now we have even small companies that only operate locally with very, very competitive prices.

What part of the EU are you in?

Re: Starlink Beta Has Outperformed Most Internet in the US

#26
post #23

What blows my mind is how a lot of parts in highly developed countries like the US or Germany don't have access to a broadband internet connection. We had a lot of investment from the EU to install optical fibre everywhere, even in small towns. Now we have even small companies that only operate locally with very, very competitive prices.

At least the US has the excuse of being huge, which does make it much harder to provide good coverage. We don't have that excuse here in Germany. The situation isn't entirely terrible in Germany, but extremely variable depending on your location. I have 1Gbit for 40 EUR per month, but there are certainly places that aren't even remote that get no reasonable broadband.

Yeah, the US is huge, but technologically we could say they are the most advanced country in the world. All the big boys are there. I would expect a lot more from them.

And in some places, even big cities, people don't even have a choice as there's only company.

Re: Starlink Beta Has Outperformed Most Internet in the US

#27
post #25
post #23

What blows my mind is how a lot of parts in highly developed countries like the US or Germany don't have access to a broadband internet connection. We had a lot of investment from the EU to install optical fibre everywhere, even in small towns. Now we have even small companies that only operate locally with very, very competitive prices.

What part of the EU are you in?

Spain

Re: Starlink Beta Has Outperformed Most Internet in the US

#28
post #23

What blows my mind is how a lot of parts in highly developed countries like the US or Germany don't have access to a broadband internet connection. We had a lot of investment from the EU to install optical fibre everywhere, even in small towns. Now we have even small companies that only operate locally with very, very competitive prices.

It's hard to not see fibre internet as a waste of money right now given 4G/5G costs coming down dramatically.

For me personally, 4G is extremely fast and cheap while being, importantly, low-latency.

Even gaming and other latency sensitive applications are possible on 4G/5G. Why not just roll out 5G networks?

Eventually, 5G will outperform fibre on a cost and speed basis (for a long time my FTTH home internet was slower than my 4G connection by a large margin). Of course, I mean practical terms rather than theoretical. Practically, fibre speeds are usually limited by 1Gbps-maximum middleboxes in community fibre cabinets that are not cheap to upgrade.

Re: Starlink Beta Has Outperformed Most Internet in the US

#29
post #28
post #23

What blows my mind is how a lot of parts in highly developed countries like the US or Germany don't have access to a broadband internet connection. We had a lot of investment from the EU to install optical fibre everywhere, even in small towns. Now we have even small companies that only operate locally with very, very competitive prices.

It's hard to not see fibre internet as a waste of money right now given 4G/5G costs coming down dramatically. For me personally, 4G is extremely fast and cheap while being, importantly, low-latency. Even gaming and other latency sensitive applications are possible on 4G/5G. Why not just roll out 5G networks? Eventually, 5G will outperform fibre on a cost and speed basis (for a long time my FTTH home internet was slow…

I disagree. 4G is severly limited in capacity so speed will vary everywhere, and same will apply to 5G too. Fiber has incredible capacity and can be upgraded by changing OLT and ONT equipment on both sides. It can also run multiple protocols.

2 Gbps XGPON2 is starting to roll out in my country and it's a rather simple upgrade (but costly). If your ISP isn't offering gigabit on fiber, it's purely motivated by greed and lack of competition.

Also I'm not aware of any "community fiber cabinets" limited to 1 Gbps. Are you talking about GPON or Ethernet networks? Ethernet is not FTTH but FTTN, like DOCSIS or VDSL can be.

Re: Starlink Beta Has Outperformed Most Internet in the US

#30

I'm amazed that the latency appears so low. I used satellite broadband for years here in very rural England, latency was more like 1000ms!

If you take the US to Europe round-trip, the latency is even faster then the cable bound connection, because the light in vacuum (space) travels around 1/3 faster then in fiber.
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