Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

starlink.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 541 posts

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#81

Post by shipman05 »

systemvoltage wrote: post #22

I am not sure if this is wishful thinking but can Starlink lead to growth of smaller communities that are self-sustaining (produce their own renewable electricity, food, etc) that cannot simply exist due to connectivity constraints? I have a dream of the world where we live in 1-10k population small towns littered around the globe, connected through starlink and public ways, and the idea of cities would become obsole…

I'm not sure this is ends up as utopian as you make it sound. I imagine a lot of people moving out of big cities will bring the big cities with them.

First you need your Starbucks. Then your brew pubs. Better roads and sanitary services. Amazon Prime two-day delivery.

Suddenly these rural small towns start looking a lot like exurbs in large metros. Not a total negative. A lot of small towns are in desperate need of economic infusion, but I don't believe you can transplant wealthy city dwellers into rural American without irrevocably changing the way of life in those places.

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#82

Post by Kerrick »

rewtraw wrote: post #67
fomine3 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fiber and 4G/5G station won't work for such scale community?

Correct. These places aren’t getting fiber or strong 4G/5G connections. Have you visited rural towns?

I live outside of a rural town on 29 acres and my 4G gets 4Mpbs and my WISP provides 20Mbps. It’s no Google Fiber, but it’s enough to let my wife and me both work remotely and be on video calls most of every workday.

That said, I just signed up for Starlink because it’s faster and cheaper than my WISP, and hopefully more reliable. Right now we get a few minutes of dropped connection a few times per day.

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#83

Post by anonAndOn »

samstave wrote: post #20
geerlingguy wrote: post #14

I was able to place an actual order just last week in St. Louis, MO. I will be using it and doing some tests in an area that actually has cable Internet (though spotty, and until very recently was limited to less than 20 Mbps up, no matter how much you paid). But you have to realize, when you look at the $600 initial cost and $100 monthly fee—this will bring 100+ Mbps down and 15+ Mbps up to so many places (even in s…

UH??? Serious Question: So are the early adopters subsidizing the masses down the line? i.e. so at $100/mo + $600 start-up/set-up fee -- thats for early adopters ... so the "african farmer who can pay And the encryption policy? The Privacy policy? The data-mining-of-location-history policy? Yeah, it's a Nope from me dawg... And I folow Elon closely, and I like a lot of what he says and stands for - but he is at the b…

Your average African farmer may not get their own dish but I bet there are charities and NGO's who would be willing to pay for the dish and subsidize a local school's Starlink service. Throw a WiFi hotspot on the side of the building and now the village has access. This is a game changer that will open up the remote corners of the globe.

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#84

Post by mrtnmcc »

walrus01 wrote: post #44
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #17

Any idea on pricing? I wonder how many people would switch over if it was priced ~$10 higher than a Comcast plan, just to avoid having to deal with Comcast. I hope this ubiquitous competition will force prices for wired Internet down and customer service quality up. And if it is able to scale, this will be a VERY attractive offer in underdeveloped countries like Germany. (Germany may be a first world country, but the…

It is not intended as a competitor for Comcast. A well built, engineered and maintained DOCSIS3 system with channel bonding can easily support 600Mbps+ down per user (not all at once simultaneously, the standard metrics of oversubscription apply), and 20-25 Mbps up. Starlink is intended for more fringe or impossible to reach areas.

Starlink today slightly beats my Comcast performance-- both up and down. Starlink costs a bit more, but the service, bandwidth, latency is getting better every week--I'd rather be hitched to a modern company that knows how to improve.

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#85

Post by supernova87a »

Note, it says you cannot take your Starlink to a different address (or I suppose, put it on a boat, plane, RV, etc):

https://www.starlink.com/faq

"Can I travel with Starlink, or move it to a different address?

Starlink satellites are scheduled to send internet down to all users within a designated area on the ground. This designated area is referred to as a cell.

Your Starlink is assigned to a single cell. If you move your Starlink outside of its assigned cell, a satellite will not be scheduled to serve your Starlink and you will not receive internet. This is constrained by geometry and is not arbitrary geofencing."

Although, whether this is a technical limitation of the bandwidth/footprint, or an operational strategy is someone more knowledgeable's guess.

Does it have to do with how many beams they choose to / can create from the satellite antenna array? And only certain cells with concentrated users are "enabled" for service? Until more satellites come?

Do they actually lock your subscriber ID (?) to the particular cell and would deny it if it appeared an an incorrect cell, or is it as they say literally, as long as a cell is served, you could be one of the "all users" within the cell?

So many questions.

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#86

Post by thrwn_frthr_awy »

zamadatix wrote: post #31
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #17

Any idea on pricing? I wonder how many people would switch over if it was priced ~$10 higher than a Comcast plan, just to avoid having to deal with Comcast. I hope this ubiquitous competition will force prices for wired Internet down and customer service quality up. And if it is able to scale, this will be a VERY attractive offer in underdeveloped countries like Germany. (Germany may be a first world country, but the…

$499 to get the equipment and $99/m for service. Right now service is locked to the cell you purchase in. The intent is to allow mobility eventually.

Keep in mind the $99 is the price for the beta. I’m not sure if they’ve confirmed the non-beta price.

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#87

Post by daveevad »

walrus01 wrote: post #40

I have been using a starlink beta terminal for 3 months now, ask me whatever you want. Day job is senior network engineer for a regional-sized (4 US states) fiber based ISP. My most important message to everyone reading this is that it's not intended to compete with properly implemented wireline based services. It's going to absolutely blow away consumer-grade highly oversubscribed, bottom of the barrel ku and ka ban…

Can you ssh into it or would one need to reverse tunnel?

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#88

Post by walrus01 »

daveevad wrote: post #87
walrus01 wrote: post #40

I have been using a starlink beta terminal for 3 months now, ask me whatever you want. Day job is senior network engineer for a regional-sized (4 US states) fiber based ISP. My most important message to everyone reading this is that it's not intended to compete with properly implemented wireline based services. It's going to absolutely blow away consumer-grade highly oversubscribed, bottom of the barrel ku and ka ban…

Can you ssh into it or would one need to reverse tunnel?

The latter. You can initiate whatever connection you want from inside the cgnat, but there's nothing externally accessible yet. Mine has a few different openvpn tunnels (clients at the starlink side, servers in datacenters elsewhere) going different places.

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#89

Post by space_fountain »

walrus01 wrote: post #79
stefan_ wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like more conspiracy theories. For all we know it has a GPS receiver as a precise reference clock.

no, quite literally, if you move a beta terminal from your designated service location, it won't work. I know at least 4 people who also have beta terminals who have tried it. It depends on the size of your 'cell' - some people have been able to go a few km away, some people report it doesn't work even a few hundred meters away from their house. When you sign up for the beta you have to specify your street address an…

I have heard speculation that the issue is actually satellite signal steering. They’re using phased array antennas on both sides so the satellites need to know where to be listening

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#90

Post by colordrops »

walrus01 wrote: post #64
IgorPartola wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the big issues I’ve had with anything but wired ISPs is latency. They specifically talk about 20-40ms latency being expected in most locations, but don’t specify to where. I currently get about 20 +/- 4 ms from me to 8.8.8.8 consistently. Is their latency to my first hop? Also, what is their IPv6 support like? Can I get a routable /60 or similar? Static IPv4/IPv6? And do you need to use their router or can you…

a. absolute lowest latency I've seen to a major IX point in seattle is about 15.8ms. More often it's 22-23ms. On a longer term, averages between 20-30ms. That's for the combined total of four 550km paths through space plus terrestrial latency from their earth station to seattle. Keep in mind that on something like a DOCSIS3 cable coax last mile segment can have a minimum latency of 12-16ms from just the cablemodem to…

I regularly get 12ms latency to google over my DOCSIS3 cable coax connection.
Post reply on HN