It's a pity that cooperative broadband is usually ignored, while people and local governments expect venture backed companies to solve their problems. They work for themselves, not for you. Cooperatives tend to have reasonable prices, reasonable speeds, and work by reasonable principles. They might not be the cheapest and fastest, but will be there for you because you're a member/co-owner, not a customer.
Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury
121–130 of 348 posts
Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury
#122"Unreliable luxury" should be Elon's marketing slogan.
Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
> ~$90 monthly fee is bad ~$120 in California
Comcast is over $120/mo in California.
> Comcast is over $120/mo in California.
Starlink does not really compete with Comcast in areas Comcast already serves(at least when it comes to speed/price/reliability), it just doesn't make sense to use Starlink when Comcast is available other than maybe as a secondary backup connection. Starlink is significantly faster and cheaper however than other providers like Viasat which serve areas without economical terrestrial based internet options.
Comcast installation costs would be roughly $250,000 to my property and is the only hardline broadband provider in my area.
Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, but spectrum isn't infinite, at some point it is maxed out, especially the sat-to-sat links, which effectively halve the available bandwidth (assuming just one hop).
Directionality makes it less inclined to be "maxed out". If you have infrastructure ground stations, and they're built for 5 satellites overhead, you can get 5 times the spectral density total throughput if there's 5 satellites overhead. > which effectively halve the available bandwidth I disagree (and I'm not sure where this idea is coming from-- do you think they use the same spectrum or something?) I think they ef…
The downlink/uplink capacity of the satellite that receives data from another or has to send data to another doesn't magically increase. So adding hops reduces the bandwidth available. To reduce it to extremes: if all but one of the satellites used sat-to-sat links and only one had a downlink you'd see a substantial reduction of the available bandwidth per satellite. To a rough approximation the bandwidth available is the bandwidth available to a single sat divided by the number of sats using that one up/down link.
Yes, sat-to-sat enables new use cases. But it also has other effects.
Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
Directionality makes it less inclined to be "maxed out". If you have infrastructure ground stations, and they're built for 5 satellites overhead, you can get 5 times the spectral density total throughput if there's 5 satellites overhead. > which effectively halve the available bandwidth I disagree (and I'm not sure where this idea is coming from-- do you think they use the same spectrum or something?) I think they ef…
The downlink/uplink capacity of the satellite that receives data from another or has to send data to another doesn't magically increase. So adding hops reduces the bandwidth available. To reduce it to extremes: if all but one of the satellites used sat-to-sat links and only one had a downlink you'd see a substantial reduction of the available bandwidth per satellite. To a rough approximation the bandwidth available i…
> if all but one of the satellites used sat-to-sat links and only one had a downlink you'd see a substantial reduction of the available bandwidth per satellite.
All the satellites above me have an uplink from a ground station.
Also, satellites above ocean with few people in their footprint can see my uplink but can't use it effectively, because they don't have many users in their footprint (possibly none, because of elevation angle restrictions).
If we have satellite-to-satellite links, then those satellites above ocean can share their bandwidth with satellites above me. Therefore, real system capacity goes up.
Assuming that ground stations are upgraded as the size of the constellation grows-- they're strongly directional. Their throughput is the uplink bandwidth * the spectral efficiency * the number of satellites within LOS of an uplink ground station. Intersatellite links let you use more of this throughput without it going unused and "spoiling"-- that's the main point.
Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury
#126In areas where it's not oversold it works very nicely: 150-250 down / 10-30 up with 20-55ms ping to 8.8.8.8. Source: me in extremely rural central EU location.
Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury
#127All these talks about Starlink -> Remember it's a bandaid solution to your governments poor planning and infrastructure rollout of a core utility / service. I say this as an Australian who watched one government plan a national rollout of fibre while another came in justifying most people don't need a connection better than 25/5 (based on usage data at the time) and went ahead and gutted the project. We're now trying…
Meanwhile here I am in the Netherlands (semi-rural I'd say), having two fiber modems installed because we have 2 competing fiber networks here. At least one of them goes to 2500/2500 for about 75 eur a month. Probably it'll go much higher in the future.
[dead]
Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
Internet without connected power is pretty common around here. Internet is obviously needed for those who work from home. And it's increasingly required for the needs of everyday life (government services moving online, bank branches closing). So, yes, absolutely - many people without connected power need the internet.
"Internet without connected power is pretty common around here." Oh, that's interesting! I always thought this to be an outlier scenario. What is "here"? Can you estimate the size of population to this applies?
Even in the south east of the UK - compared to the US, an very densely populated area - there are some homes that have wired telephones, but rely on generators for power [1]
Presumably because at some point, it was cheaper to buy 30 years of diesel than to run a power cable, and yet cell coverage wasn't widespread enough to replace a wired telephone.
Of course, we can debate whether providing telephone service is us beneficent city dwellers generously subsidising our backwards rural cousins for the good of their children; or us being taken for fools and subsidising the rich's gigantic holiday homes and rental properties.
Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury
#129All these talks about Starlink -> Remember it's a bandaid solution to your governments poor planning and infrastructure rollout of a core utility / service. I say this as an Australian who watched one government plan a national rollout of fibre while another came in justifying most people don't need a connection better than 25/5 (based on usage data at the time) and went ahead and gutted the project. We're now trying…
Meanwhile here I am in the Netherlands (semi-rural I'd say), having two fiber modems installed because we have 2 competing fiber networks here. At least one of them goes to 2500/2500 for about 75 eur a month. Probably it'll go much higher in the future.
Are the two fiber modems hooked up to different networks?
Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury
#130All these talks about Starlink -> Remember it's a bandaid solution to your governments poor planning and infrastructure rollout of a core utility / service. I say this as an Australian who watched one government plan a national rollout of fibre while another came in justifying most people don't need a connection better than 25/5 (based on usage data at the time) and went ahead and gutted the project. We're now trying…
Australian resident here - Like the other poster I agree it's a band-aid. I agree it's not the world's best connection (there is considerable latency sometimes). I agree I shouldn't have to be paying Elon Musk 140 bucks a months to get a decent connection but ... I am, because that's all I can get here. We're just outside Perth, less than a k from a new(ish) suburb development and our only NBN option is "Fixed Wirele…
I moved from Sydney to Auckland and now can get up to 7700Mbps. 1000Mbps costs 60 something AUD. One of my colleagues in Melbourne got the fiber upgrade (under 10k) and claimed the install on his tax so there's that to reduce it a bit.