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Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

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Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#211

Post by wraptile »

shaklee3 wrote: post #197
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…

That's not true. Viasat and hughes cover everywy in the USA with speeds faster than that.

Source? I'm not from US but I googled around and Viasat offer 30/3 mbps with a soft speed cap after 100GB for 150usd/month [1] Hughes offers 25/3 mbps priced per data cap 50GB is 140 usd + equipment lease of 15usd /month.[2]

Neither of which is even remotely close to Starlink's offering.

1 - https://promo.viasat.com/plans/standard-30-715T5-11796UC.htm... 2 - https://www.hughesnet.com/get-started

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#212

Post by swarnie_ »

nuker wrote: post #163
celsoazevedo wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If a sat flies over a city "Musk said there will be plenty of bandwidth in areas with low population densities and that there will be some customers in big cities. But he cautioned against expecting that everyone in a big city would be able to use Starlink. "The challenge for anything that is space-based is that the size of the cell is gigantic... it's not good for high-density situations," Musk said." https://arst…

> it's not aimed at people that live in cities People are, u know, people. They will defy the "not designed for you" clause. Still, is there a number for one sat bandwidth?

Are people going to pay a $500 equipment cost upfront and then $99 a month if they have alternatives?

For me in my big city i can get 360mb down unlimited lines for the equivalent of around $50 per month.

Anyone choosing the Starlink option in that scenario probably shouldn't have financial independence in the first place.

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#213

Post by AlexDanger »

syedkarim wrote: post #139
AlexDanger wrote: post #103

I'm a big believer in Starlink and SpaceX generally. It annoys me that I can not invest in these big bold innovations directly. Has anyone thought about how to invest indirectly on the belief that Starlink will succeed? For instance, are there satellite equipment suppliers or other upstream supplier who stand to profit with Starlink's success? Likewise, who might fail based on Starlink's success? Should I be shorting…

There are dozens of custom ICs from STMicroelectronics in each terminal. ST is a public company; NYSE:STM The terminal is also using a large amount of high-frequency substrate. That could be Rogers, but maybe one of the much cheaper Chinese materials. But I don’t think a position should be taken based on what’s inside of a terminal. The real play is in shorting the entire satellite industry. Every existing satellite…

Fantastic response!

Are you aware of the players in Australia? There is Skymesh (owned by a UK company) but I'm not aware of other players in the Aus market.

Of all of the providers on your list - are any of them doing LEO constellations that are able to provide low latency in the way that Starlink can offer?

One might quibble about cost efficiencies and system capacity, but in the consumer market I cant see how you can argue with the physics advantage of being 50x closer to your customer!

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#214

Post by shaklee3 »

wraptile wrote: post #211
shaklee3 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true. Viasat and hughes cover everywy in the USA with speeds faster than that.

Source? I'm not from US but I googled around and Viasat offer 30/3 mbps with a soft speed cap after 100GB for 150usd/month [1] Hughes offers 25/3 mbps priced per data cap 50GB is 140 usd + equipment lease of 15usd /month.[2] Neither of which is even remotely close to Starlink's offering. 1 - https://promo.viasat.com/plans/standard-30-715T5-11796UC.htm... 2 - https://www.hughesnet.com/get-started

OP said "where people couldn't get more than 10/2 or so for any price."

Your response directly refutes that, so I don't know why you are asking for a source. I didn't say either of those are competitive with a non-existent service offering from starlink. Wait until they have a real service that is oversubscribed, then we can discuss what plans they'll offer.

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#215

Post by reducesuffering »

AlexDanger wrote: post #103

I'm a big believer in Starlink and SpaceX generally. It annoys me that I can not invest in these big bold innovations directly. Has anyone thought about how to invest indirectly on the belief that Starlink will succeed? For instance, are there satellite equipment suppliers or other upstream supplier who stand to profit with Starlink's success? Likewise, who might fail based on Starlink's success? Should I be shorting…

$GOOGL invested in and owns 5-10% of SpaceX. Even if SpaceX is valued at $100B, every $200 you invest in Google would be around a $1 into SpaceX, but if you think SpaceX is going to be the first 10 trillion dollar company or something crazy, it could make sense.

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#216

Post by Plutoberth »

40four wrote: post #201

”Starlink satellites are over 60 times closer to Earth than traditional satellites ” Goodness! I really need to learn more about satellites! For some reason that statement really strikes me. I wonder what the ‘band’ of distance from earth most satellites fall into. The range of area a satellite can orbit earth must be pretty wide if this is the case. Now I need to look up what is the closest & furthest distance a sma…

Starlink roughly orbits at 1200km. The most common orbit for internet sats is geostationary orbit, which means that the satellite is stationary with regards to an observer on Earth. It works because a satellite on a circular orbit at that height moves at the same speed as the rotation of Earth.

This way you can have a simple, pointed antenna and not an obscenely expensive phased array like Starlink. That being said, GEO is only 36000km,so I'm not sure where the "60 times" figure comes from...

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#217

Post by ncallaway »

pugworthy wrote: post #76
walrus01 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's weird but I've watched and cheered on almost every SpaceX launch since the Falcon 1 days, including Starlink launches. Starlink isn't the pinnacle of all that work, but I almost want to buy it just to celebrate it. And though not a competitor to Comcast for the reasons you point out, I'm probably not the only person who's very happy to finally have a decent alternative showing up. Just a shame it didn't come in…

I'm definitely in some of these same boats.

I currently have Comcast, but I really despise them. Starlink will be a small step up in price, and a small step down in speed for me, but I'm going to do it just to be away from Comcast.

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#218

Post by ericd »

cma wrote: post #92
secfirstmd wrote: post #54

I'm currently in the middle of trying to help loads of human rights defenders in Myanmar plan to deal with the internet shut downs that are happening. Satellite stuff like Iridium is too crazily expensive to be useful. I really wish some thing like this was available.

Wouldn't these be easily visible from the sky? They need clear line of site. It seems like it would be like putting out "come arrest me" smoke signals.

They could probably be camouflaged with something that doesn’t attenuate signal much?

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#219

Post by ericd »

swarnie_ wrote: post #212
nuker wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's not aimed at people that live in cities People are, u know, people. They will defy the "not designed for you" clause. Still, is there a number for one sat bandwidth?

Are people going to pay a $500 equipment cost upfront and then $99 a month if they have alternatives? For me in my big city i can get 360mb down unlimited lines for the equivalent of around $50 per month. Anyone choosing the Starlink option in that scenario probably shouldn't have financial independence in the first place.

I’d keep in mind that some people really, really hate Comcast/AT&T/CenturyLink/etc from the years of abuse they’ve meted out. They might be willing to pay a substantial premium to not have to deal with them/contribute to their bottom line anymore.

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#220

Post by mike_d »

fulafel wrote: post #187
walrus01 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> b. no ipv6 yet. > c. all IPs are in cgnat IP space Interesting, this is more like an internet proxy than connecting devices to the internet. Hope they fix it soon. Does the TOS forbid running eg ssh or remote desktop services? Or VPNs?

It is a consumer internet eyeball service. Having an assigned routable address is not a thing in many countries, and you really shouldn't expect it as a "feature" in the future.

Eventually the Comcasts of the world will sell off the majority of the IPv4 they hold to the AWSs of the world.

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