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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)

#71

Post by driverdan »

In many areas cell data is a better choice.

When I lived in a bus I traveled to almost 30 states and spent most of my time in rural areas like national forests. Finding a good signal was a lot easier than you might expect. Get the right hardware with an external antenna and high speed coverage is good in most of the country.

Finding a good plan can be tough. If you can get a good T-Mobile signal they have unlimited plans for a reasonable price. AT&T has data plans that are $1/GB. There are grey market resellers that offer unlimited SIMs at an inflated price.

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

#72

Post by traviswt »

geerlingguy wrote: post #12
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…

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'.…

Disclaimer: I am a very happy Starlink customer that has no other option for internet besides terrible LTE.

Starlink never originally advertised the ability to transfer service or even sell your hardware. It was very clear from the beginning you had to use it for the address you provided, and their communication was very clear to that effect.

You are definitely correct that logically you should be able to sell your kit, transfer service, or just move with it (Elon has said you’ll eventually be able to use it on an RV). But you took that logical end result and set your own expectations based on assumptions that were not aligned with reality.

You are not in the target market, of course you’re going to be frustrated.

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

#73

Post by AshleyGrant »

causi wrote: post #47
csours wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah, that was my first thought. After reports of success from people mounting it to the roof of their RVs I thought you could move it anywhere you wanted.

You can physically move it wherever you want, but you have to hope that there is an opening available in the "cell" at the new location, otherwise, you've got a paperweight.

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

#74

Post by gambiting »

reportingsjr wrote: post #58
csours wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ha, reminds me of the tiny 3G picostations you could get from your mobile operator for a while when 3G was in its infancy - if you said you had really poor signal at your home, they would send you a small 3G station you could use in your home and which used your own internet for data and calls....but the hardware had a GPS built in to make sure it was never moved from the address it was assigned to(otherwise you could take it say, abroad, and make calls with your own numbers without paying for roaming - not that in that specific scenario paying for roaming would have made any sense anyway).

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

#75

Post by AshleyGrant »

alexktz wrote: post #49
clvx wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar situation but I switched to T-Mobile. I have a Starlink order but it got delayed 6 months. At this point, I'll just cancel it because T-Mobile Home Internet is a game changer.

How "unlimited" is the T-Mobile Home Internet package?

In my experience it's been totally unlimited. I try not to abuse it, but when I re-image my desktop, Backblaze will end up uploading multiple terabytes (even though I've inherited the backup state and the drive/directory structure is identical). I've never had a single issue.

The Home Internet service is 100% deprioritized compared to postpaid cell phone data, so they really are selling "excess" capacity.

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

#76

Post by SkyPuncher »

geerlingguy wrote: post #29
sschueller wrote: post #16

I don't understand why cable connections are so bad when there is DOCSIS 3.1. Is it that the cable provider just has such a limited link on their end that people are getting speeds sub 100mbit? Are they vastly over provisioning their networks?

In my case, Spectrum has decided that they want a flashy "gigabit tier", so they provision everything as download bandwidth (940 Mbps), and then only assign 35 Mbps upload. I'd pay extra for business class service, but it doesn't even help, it's the same speed just with some more guarantees and a stable IP.

This is ultimately what drove me away from Spectrum (along with some absolutely piss poor routing that introduced massive lag).

$95/month for 400/20. I don't need all of that download bandwidth, but I could use a bit more upload bandwidth.

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

#77

Post by BlueTemplar »

NDizzle wrote: post #32
jeffbee wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you have a nifty setup, but I’m surprised you would consider such a high price for your third connection. Why is it worth so much in your case? For the price, you’re approaching the amortized cost of burying miles of cable, which could be an option for people who are only a short distance from wired infrastructure.

Well, if I can get my cost for the premium Starlink to $200, I would drop the TMO home internet. Right now I'm paying $99 for Starlink, $23/mo ATT, $50/mo TMO. Hardware costs were $450 for the router and LTE modem (EM160g) and roughly the same for (what I know know to be the gen 1) Starlink. I had no idea they rolled out a gen 2 Starlink that's even more restricted than the first one. Ah well. When I was in NORCAL an…

You should look it up - some farmers decided to lay down their own fiber (also for the neighbors) - access to tractors helps !

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

#78

Post by Diederich »

causi wrote: post #47
csours wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah, that was my first thought. After reports of success from people mounting it to the roof of their RVs I thought you could move it anywhere you wanted.

Each Dishy is assigned to a specific ground station, so you can freely move it around as long as it's 'close enough' to that ground station. (I don't know the distance by memory..) There's a way to ask Starlink to switch your ground station, which is what people with the RVs are doing.

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

#79

Post by BlueTemplar »

NDizzle wrote: post #11

I've had Starlink in Rural AR for 10 months now. I have it currently set to "failover only" on my Ubiquiti device, as it's snowing sideways and there is a tremendous (read: 30%) amount of packet loss at the moment. I don't yet know how to do automatic failover due to packet loss on a UBNT device, but that's what I'm looking up this afternoon. Anyways - I have 3 ISPs, with two of them being LTE. One is the unlimited A…

CGNAT ?!? Huh, I would have expected Starlink to be IPv6 only...

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

#80

Post by geerlingguy »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #45
geerlingguy wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my case, Spectrum has decided that they want a flashy "gigabit tier", so they provision everything as download bandwidth (940 Mbps), and then only assign 35 Mbps upload. I'd pay extra for business class service, but it doesn't even help, it's the same speed just with some more guarantees and a stable IP.

It's the same in my area. I have 200/10 now for about $78 month. I don't need more than 100 Mbps down under any circumstance. I would pay nearly $200/month to get on the 940/30 plan here. I don't really feel like paying more than double to get internet that is still painfully slow. Also the DOCSIS network in my area is such low quality it isn't reliable anyways.

Yeah ever since the pandemic started, speeds average closer to 700 Mbps down (which is still about 3x more than I've ever really needed...). I would gladly pay the same amount for like 100 down/100 up, but then Spectrum couldn't call their service "Gigafast".
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