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I took down my Starlink dish (but haven't cancelled)

jeffgeerling.com

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Re: I took down my Starlink dish (but haven't cancelled)

#51

Post by ncallaway »

NDizzle wrote: post #40
geerlingguy wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how the first version router was (the one I have). The new 2nd gen router has WiFi (ac), but Ethernet is not built in. You have to buy an extra dongle that costs $20 and goes inline to the dish. The new router does have a bypass mode, so you can get around using it at all (though it still needs to be plugged in as it's the PoE source through the proprietary cable). The reset method is a bit weird, since it doe…

I had no idea they launched a v2. I wonder why they would regress so much. The obvious answer is cost... but they have to know how much people want good internet service in remote areas, right? I'll pay for it and I know I'm not the only one.

As mentioned in the article, though, how much could the added cost of an Ethernet connector be?

That can’t increase the BOM that much, right?

Re: I took down my Starlink dish (but haven't cancelled)

#52

Post by pirate787 »

mprev wrote: post #27

If you can get high speed, low latency, affordable internet access another way then Starlink probably isn't for you. We've just moved to a place where our only other option was a £400 a month leased line delivering synchronous 100Mbps. For less than a quarter of that, Starlink gives us roughly 120-150Mbps down, around 7Mbps up, and pings around the 30 ms mark. Upload is slow but workable for now. It's easy to complai…

Agree 100%. My community is in the DC metro area and despite our relatively ex-urban setting, the corrupt local and state government has failed us. Subsidies badly misspent and monopoly policies that stifle land-based competition. Probably 25-30% (thousands of households) have no access to true broadband, just unreliable DSL from a bankrupt provider that once put our state representative on payroll. We're all clamoring for Starlink.

Re: I took down my Starlink dish (but haven't cancelled)

#53

Post by osipov »

hanklazard wrote: post #33

“Then there are other people reading who think he's the commensurate con-man” Does anyone actually think this about Elon? Think what you will about the guy’s persona, but it seems undeniable that he is doing big things in the world (and outside of it).

No post body was provided.

Re: I took down my Starlink dish (but haven't cancelled)

#54

Post by reportingsjr »

jacquesm wrote: post #34
geerlingguy wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My biggest gripe is the fact I can't transfer it to my cousin, who lives on a farm with 300 Kbps DSL, 70 miles away. Back when preorders started, it wasn't obvious how slow Starlink would be to expand, and it also wasn't obvious transfers wouldn't be a supported feature for many months. Even so, my cousin also signed up in hopes to get Starlink, and 11 months later her date was moved from 'late 2021' to 'late 2022'.…

What's the point of satellite internet if you can't move the dish around? That would seem to be one of the USPs...

Due to the design of satellite based internet they are fundamentally limited on how many dishes they can support in a certain area while still achieving advertised bandwidth rates.

There is a very, very high probability that if they allowed people to move starlink transceivers/dishes around that a number of areas would end up with higher concentrations than wanted, and starlink would have a lot of angry customers.

Re: I took down my Starlink dish (but haven't cancelled)

#55

Post by sschueller »

lsaferite wrote: post #43
sschueller wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CHF 64.75 (~71 USD) per month for 25 gbit synchronous [1] here in Zürich, Switzerland. The cost now is hardware. The Fiber infrastructure in the city is mostly operated by the state electrical company. Anyone can provide service over it. [1] https://www.init7.net/en/ [2] https://www.speedtest.net/result/c/df4123cf-5f0e-40f2-bf71-f...

25Gb ?! Symmetric? Wow. I guess that's a benefit to a small relatively wealthy country? My question would be, what do you have to even _use_ that much bandwidth? I have 1Gb/50Mb asymmetric and my Ubiquiti router can't really saturate the down stream. Sure, I could invest in a more powerful router, but in normal daily use we never even get close to max bandwidth.

It's only the city and places that got lucky enough to have been connected via Fiber by the state owned phone company. There are still areas with garbage connections at a high cost.

The reason the city has such a good fiber connectivity is because of a vote a few years ago that pushed this. It cost a lot of money but was worth every bit IMO.

I hope something like this gets pushed for the whole country. I see it as core infrastructure like electricity and unlike cable or copper it is way more future proof.

Re: I took down my Starlink dish (but haven't cancelled)

#57

Post by Diederich »

fastaguy88 wrote: post #3

I get it. If you already have internet, then Starlink is not for you. There are lots of questionable design choices (particularly in version 2), it's picky about placement, etc. etc. But if your other choice is HughesNet or its competitors, that throttles you after 15 GB (2 days of non-streaming usage for me), or 50 GB, the Starlink "shortcomings" are irrelevant. With Starlink, if you can get it, and if you can site…

> If you already have internet, then Starlink is not for you.

We bought a property in a very rural area in mid 2020. One of the hard requirements was verified high speed Internet access.

Our home has good performing Comcast. But I also pay $100/month and have a Dishy on my roof. Fortunately our home is very tall and we're able to get about 95% visibility, since our home is in the middle of a forest.

Why am I paying an extra $100/month? Because our Comcast has outages. It's not surprising since we're at the end of miles and miles of above ground cable that has hundreds of trees pushing up against the wires and poles.

I'm a pretty well off 'tech person' so an additional $100/month to cover a few hours of use makes sense.

(Wireless coverage is terrible around here, so that was never a backup possibility.)

I'm pretty convinced that Starlink is not only going to revolutionize many people's lives, but it's also going to be a cash cow for SpaceX, in large part funding their Mars ambitions.

Re: I took down my Starlink dish (but haven't cancelled)

#58

Post by reportingsjr »

csours wrote: post #41
geerlingguy wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My biggest gripe is the fact I can't transfer it to my cousin, who lives on a farm with 300 Kbps DSL, 70 miles away. Back when preorders started, it wasn't obvious how slow Starlink would be to expand, and it also wasn't obvious transfers wouldn't be a supported feature for many months. Even so, my cousin also signed up in hopes to get Starlink, and 11 months later her date was moved from 'late 2021' to 'late 2022'.…

What happens if you just take it there and plug it in?

The dish won't work since it knows where it is via GPS and where it is supposed to be. There is a little bit of tolerance in where the dish can be moved, but certainly not 70 miles of leeway.

Re: I took down my Starlink dish (but haven't cancelled)

#60

Post by geoffeg »

hanklazard wrote: post #33

“Then there are other people reading who think he's the commensurate con-man” Does anyone actually think this about Elon? Think what you will about the guy’s persona, but it seems undeniable that he is doing big things in the world (and outside of it).

I think "con man" is a bit too strong, but he does have a history of making promises that either slip significantly (misses deadlines by years) or end up not playing out at all. There are various reasons I can imagine for that, from naive optimism, to marketing or wanting to motivate people.
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