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

Starlink Premium

starlink.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 223 posts

Re: Starlink Premium

#151

Post by quantumduck »

DrBenCarson wrote: post #8

What used to be "by mid to late 2021" is now "late 2022" for my location. I'm not shelling out another $400 for nothing. In fact, this reminded me to cancel my pre-order. Thank you! $99 back in my pocket. Deliver scalable GA and I'll subscribe.

Everyone seem to assume that the only reason dates got pushed was because they were looking for premium customers. I don't think that's true.

I think a lot of dates that got pushed back are simply because they couldn't launch enough satellites to provide enough bandwidth in certain popular cells without degradation of quality. 'But tons of people who ordered way after me are getting them' you might say, but that's because they are being served by the same satellites in different cells that are likely less crowded along their trajectories. The were monetizing the capability that already exists, they are not prioritizing someone else.

Re: Starlink Premium

#152

Post by smoyer »

fastball wrote: post #57
smoyer wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's about the purchase price of an iMac but the service plan costs far more.

A base model iMac is $1300, or 260% the up front cost of a Starlink receiver.

When I filled out the purchase form, the enhanced star link receiver was $2500

Re: Starlink Premium

#153

Post by dboreham »

mdasen wrote: post #111
DrBenCarson wrote: post #8

What used to be "by mid to late 2021" is now "late 2022" for my location. I'm not shelling out another $400 for nothing. In fact, this reminded me to cancel my pre-order. Thank you! $99 back in my pocket. Deliver scalable GA and I'll subscribe.

I wonder if Starlink will start prioritizing their premium customers. If someone is willing to pay 5x more, it seems like Starlink would want to get to them first.

Depends how many of them there are.

Re: Starlink Premium

#154

Post by dboreham »

It'd be good if they would spec the upstream throughout. I have Starlink as a backup to my own terrestrial microwave network and the 20Mbit max upload is the only thing stopping me using only Starlink and retiring from the networking business.

Re: Starlink Premium

#155

Post by mromanuk »

mdasen wrote: post #111
DrBenCarson wrote: post #8

What used to be "by mid to late 2021" is now "late 2022" for my location. I'm not shelling out another $400 for nothing. In fact, this reminded me to cancel my pre-order. Thank you! $99 back in my pocket. Deliver scalable GA and I'll subscribe.

I wonder if Starlink will start prioritizing their premium customers. If someone is willing to pay 5x more, it seems like Starlink would want to get to them first.

Of course they will. But that’s standard practice of every telecom company. Thats ingrained in the transport protocols, from TDM, to Frame Relay/ATM and also IP technologies Source: I used to work in one Telecom company

Re: Starlink Premium

#156

Post by grishka »

capkutay wrote: post #135
grishka wrote: post #128

A tangent: it's honestly really disappointing to me that Starlink requires proprietary equipment to use. High-speed, low-latency satellite internet would've been a real game-changer in countries where the government seeks to control information flow by blocking websites and online services. But because you need the proprietary dish made specifically for Starlink, they'll of course just restrict import of these.

Maybe when the open source community successfully executes manned space missions, we can free ourselves from the tyranny of proprietary satellite technology…

They could've published their documentation so it would be possible to build a client terminal yourself out of readily available parts. You'll still have to pay for the service itself, obviously. And I'm not talking about satellites themselves, only about the user equipment.

Re: Starlink Premium

#157

Post by smoldesu »

nickvanw wrote: post #107
gkhartman wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was nodding along until I got to the $500/mo. service charge. I'd feel pretty good about $150/mo. or $200/mo., but I guess I'm not their target market since I have decent wired broadband. I was hoping that this would give Spectrum some competition in our area, but I'll have to wait a little longer.

Starlink won't really ever be designed to compete with wired internet. There is limited bandwidth per satellite, and the density of most places that have good wired internet far exceeds what is reasonable on the current generation of satellites. It's designed for people who are currently suffering on geostationary satellite internet, or some other low-bandwidth/high-latency setup.

Exactly. I'm typing this out over a first-gen Starlink connection, and the value is a lot better than most people realize. My other options include:

- 4g hotspot, 150ms latency, ~15gb/month, speeds of ~10-20mbps, costs $50 + $15/gb overage per month

- WISP network, 400ms latency, unlimited data at 500kbps-6mbps, ~95% uptime, costs $80/month

- HughesNet satellite, 600ms latency, 50gb/month, less than 10mb/s down, 90% uptime, $150/month

Or I could get Starlink with ~50ms of latency, unlimited data, ~100-150mbps down, 99% uptime at the fair price of $100 per month. Once you've lived away from broadband for long enough, you can bet everyone is fed up with the other 3 options.

Re: Starlink Premium

#158

Post by wmf »

grishka wrote: post #156
capkutay wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe when the open source community successfully executes manned space missions, we can free ourselves from the tyranny of proprietary satellite technology…

They could've published their documentation so it would be possible to build a client terminal yourself out of readily available parts. You'll still have to pay for the service itself, obviously. And I'm not talking about satellites themselves, only about the user equipment.

I don't think you understand the complexity of what you're suggesting. I doubt there are any off-the-shelf chips suitable to build a Starlink terminal and even if there were it would still cost over $10M and maybe more like $100M to design the terminal.

Re: Starlink Premium

#159

Post by ZGDUwpqEWpUZ »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #147
BugWatch wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off topic, but thank you for the "USians" part (I've been using "US-'icans" for years).

Has “American” gone out of style?

I can remember "USians" being in use since at least as far back as the 90s. It's just a cute way of acknowledging there's more to the Americas than just the US.

Re: Starlink Premium

#160

Post by BenjiWiebe »

markdown wrote: post #76
gonehome wrote: post #44

$500 deposit, $2500 total cost for the dish, $500/mo for the service. Looks like it's targeting the enterprise market. The dish cost is probably closer to the actual value of the dish. The original dish we bought for $500 I think I read actually cost closer to $3k for them to manufacture (I'm not an expert on this)? Regular service is $500 for a dish and $99 a month which is a great deal for 50-200mbps at pretty low…

> The original dish we bought for $500 I think I read actually cost closer to $3k for them to manufacture $3k? Were they mining the metal by hand and then using only the most hipster blacksmiths shipped in from Portland to hand press the steel for the dish?

It's not really the dish that's expensive (and it's not even a "dish antenna"). It's the integrated electronics and phased antenna array (which takes expensive tricky electronics to make it work).
Post reply on HN