Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 k…
> even sell your hardware If you can't sell it, is it really yours?
I took down my Starlink dish (but haven't cancelled)
231–240 of 258 posts
Re: I took down my Starlink dish (but haven't cancelled)
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
Early adopters have early adopter problems. Are you genuinely surprised Starlink doesn't support something they didn't claim to support and that most users don't even need? Complaining about "beta" labels, which everyone knows are meaningless? FYI: I unsubscribed because of this video (previous to it showing up on HN). It's obviously disingenuous clickbait. Look at the title alone. And it even goes into a pointless d…
I don't interpret it as complaining or disingenuous. It feels like he's sharing his experience and says a lot of positive things about it. But it just turns out it can't do what he intentionally bought it for. I was genuinely informed by the experience.
Re: I took down my Starlink dish (but haven't cancelled)
#233I 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'.…
Re: I took down my Starlink dish (but haven't cancelled)
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
$140/month to get the most upload bandwidth possible at my house (35 Mbps through Spectrum). Then $99/month for Starlink (for now, at least). Meanwhile a few blocks away a friend has 500 Mbps symmetric access for $50/month.
Time to build a wireless link to your friend :)
Re: I took down my Starlink dish (but haven't cancelled)
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 k…
> even sell your hardware If you can't sell it, is it really yours?
Re: I took down my Starlink dish (but haven't cancelled)
#236Regarding the number of proposed starlink satellites: The constellation is proposed to be approximately 10,000 satellites. I wondered how this compares to the number of US commercial flights per year. The FAA claims it handles 45,000 flights per day [1]. If we assume each aircraft has 5 flights per day and spends half it's time on the ground, then we might guess there are approximately 4,500 aircraft flying above the…
Except they aren't evenly distributed. Stargazing skews to nighttime hours while air traffic skews to daytime hours. Not to mention coastal vs inland densities. That is an interesting comparison though! And it'd be cool to compare with more nuanced assumptions - maybe even factor in how contrails affect things in addition to the 1:1 satellite:plane maths.
Each one is also visible from a larger patch of ground because it's 300 miles farther away than a plane.
Re: I took down my Starlink dish (but haven't cancelled)
#237- They integrated the power supply into the router. Cuts the cost.
- An ethernet port and a physical switch with all its required component costs money. If SpaceX determines that only one digit percent (very likely) of its customers use the Ethernet port on the router (or don't use the router, both of which is detectable from SpaceX PoV), then the ethernet port becomes a good target to remove.
- Same story with the cable from the dish. It's most likely that the cable, plugs and connectors for that cable costs less overall. Also note that there is not PoE standard that allows 180 watts, so they essentially had a non-compliant port that could potentially cause issues in some scenarios. For instance, the ethernet inductor module on the PSU board for the first version is rated for lower current than the dish needs at its maximum power usage so the components are essentially running on the edge of their spec, probably why some PSUs were failing (see reddit). In addition, by making the cable non-standard ethernet, they've eliminated a potentially large number of support requests of people adding extensions to the already at-the-limit cable and wondering why it doesn't work.
As for why you can't transfer your account: you have a service that's in high demand and low supply. It'd be irresponsible of SpaceX to allow one person to sign up for 10 services, then sell the equipment at higher price to a 3rd party and transfer the service, while those who really need the service have to wait longer.
It's good to sit down and think why certain product decisions are made, instead of assume "user hostility" right off the bat.
Re: I took down my Starlink dish (but haven't cancelled)
#238A lot of this is poorly informed. The reason many places can't get service isn't the number of satellites, it's the number of ground stations. The satellites don't communicate with each other, only ground stations, so there have to be some near you that the satellites can see for the entire time they're over you (either one very close to you or several farther away but surrounding you), or your signals don't have any…
I haven't researched Starlink much before, but if the target satellite count is 10k (some say 30k?) and replacements are needed every 24 months, this suggests that to keep Starlink running they need to deploy an average of ~415 satellites every month, forever. Some quick searching suggests a cost of $250k/satellite[0], for a total monthly bill of over $100M. I must be misunderstanding, because that seems pretty pricey, and it excludes launch costs, which they say are ~$30M. Maybe everything will be cheaper by the time the constellation reaches 10k satellites.
[0]: https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-starlink-satellite-launch-s...
Re: I took down my Starlink dish (but haven't cancelled)
#239A lot of this is poorly informed. The reason many places can't get service isn't the number of satellites, it's the number of ground stations. The satellites don't communicate with each other, only ground stations, so there have to be some near you that the satellites can see for the entire time they're over you (either one very close to you or several farther away but surrounding you), or your signals don't have any…
> Kessler syndrome is not going to happen because unlike their competitors SpaceX intentionally put all their satellites in very low orbit where the atmosphere naturally cleans up any debris within a couple of years. That's something uniquely enabled by SpaceX's low launch costs because it limits the useful life of the satellites, requiring frequent replacement. I haven't researched Starlink much before, but if the t…
Re: I took down my Starlink dish (but haven't cancelled)
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
> so when comcast goes to crap it's very important for her to be able to reconnect over starlink ASAP Have you looked at something like Firewalla and multi-wan setup? https://help.firewalla.com/hc/en-us/articles/360051575473-Fi...
Thanks for the link! I have considered such technologies, and I'll probably end up implementing one at some point. It's on my TODO list. (: My wife reports that she's able to switch WIFI from Comcast to Starlink in a matter of seconds, which doesn't actually break the video chat session. Not ideal, but not terrible.
When discussing it with some of the sysadmins that I work with, they had a "hmm... interesting" thought with it - the configuration for it compared to the dual wan router setups that they have for their home labs is (from their standpoint) much easier.
The issue isn't so much a "can you do it" but rather a "how much time do you want to invest in designing your own setup?"