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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)

#61

Post by gpm »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #42
jacquesm wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm not an expert on the Starlink network, but their coverage isn't uniform. Even across the 48 states. The constellation provides more effective bandwidth in some areas than others. SpaceX has a government subsidy to provide high speed internet right across the street from my parents house. But they have no satellite coverage in that area according to their own map. I don't really understand the business plan of Spa…

> But they have no satellite coverage in that area according to their own map.

There is nowhere in the lower 48 where starlink has no satellite coverage, I believe there are still areas where they have not built out ground stations though, and since most of the satellites don't have laser links to talk to other satellites (due to issues with their original lasers not fully burning up on re-entry - now fixed) they need to have a ground station under the same satellite as the customer.

They also have limited bandwidth to any one satellite, so they need to limit the density of their customers. Satellites move up and down lattitudes, but at any one time the density of satellites is higher at higher latitudes, so they should be able to serve more customers there.

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

#62

Post by gkfasdfasdf »

perydell wrote: post #8

Article looks and sounds like clickbait. One of the fundamental aspects of starlink is the internet access and speed you will get. That doesn't seem to be covered here. You took down your starlink because you couldn't transfer it to someone else, are afraid of the damage starlink is doing to astronomy, and you don't like the design decisions about the new dish that you don't even have? Sorry, this doesn't make any se…

I don't think it's clickbait at all. The concerns about power usage, proprietary connectors, and lack of ethernet or WiFi 6 seem spot on.

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

#63

Post by robalfonso »

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?

He’s got a video where he tried this and was unable to get it working.

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

#64

Post by reportingsjr »

pirate787 wrote: post #52
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 clamori…

Starlink won't work well for the sort of sprawling exurbs you live in, fyi. It can't support a very high density of dishes due to RF bandwidth limitations.

Starlink's key markets are fairly spread out rural areas, not infrastructure expensive exurbs and suburbs.

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

#66

Post by ZetaZero »

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...

It's a low orbit satellite, which limits the amount of coverage for each satellite. And currently (without the sat-2-sat laser link), there needs to be a ground station also in range. If his cousin's house isn't close enough to a ground station, it just doesn't work. That's why Starlink is allocating based on addresses.

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

#67

Post by jandrese »

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).

There is no doubt Elon has haters that will loudly proclaim that everything he does is a scam. Just read any Youtube comment section where he appears.

Are they as prevalent as the people who think his feet can't touch the ground because they are too holy? I don't know, but I do know they exist.

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

#68

Post by jagger27 »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #44
sidewndr46 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not an expert on the Starlink network, but their coverage isn't uniform. Even across the 48 states. The constellation provides more effective bandwidth in some areas than others. SpaceX has a government subsidy to provide high speed internet right across the street from my parents house. But they have no satellite coverage in that area according to their own map. I don't really understand the business plan of Spa…

I don’t understand though. His cousin is 70 miles away, are the satellite coverages that small?

It’s about the base station capacity, in theory. Though it seems super unlikely that an address that’s only 70 miles away would be on a different base station.

This will change dramatically once sat-to-sat laser comms are fully online as it will put more base stations “in range”.

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

#69

Post by BlueTemplar »

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).

Well, it did seem to be the popular perception before the first Tesla came out and the first SpaceX rocket landed again...

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

#70

Post by nkrisc »

nikanj wrote: post #37
perydell wrote: post #8

Article looks and sounds like clickbait. One of the fundamental aspects of starlink is the internet access and speed you will get. That doesn't seem to be covered here. You took down your starlink because you couldn't transfer it to someone else, are afraid of the damage starlink is doing to astronomy, and you don't like the design decisions about the new dish that you don't even have? Sorry, this doesn't make any se…

I agree, it's very "SEE THIS INSANE DESIGN FLAW IN STARLINK"-esque. And the design flaw is "They elected to use weather-proof proprietary connectors, instead of letting me crimp my own CAT6

Starlink is not the first device to use CAT6 outdoors. There are plenty of existing RJ45 options.
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