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Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury

xda-developers.com

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Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury

#131

Post by teekert »

killingtime74 wrote: post #129
teekert wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes, one is already sticking up from the ground and will be brought into the house in the next month. And someone just came by to see if a second one can be installed, that one still needs to be brought to the house, somewhere in the next weeks.

It seems wasteful, I know, but it's nice to have competition at least.

Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury

#132

Post by me551ah »

tedk-42 wrote: post #22

All 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 in India, I am paying ~50$ a month for 1 Gbps fiber connection. On speedtest and fast.com, I easily average about 800+ Mbps download speeds on ethernet.

Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury

#133

Post by ysleepy »

me551ah wrote: post #132
tedk-42 wrote: post #22

All 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 in India, I am paying ~50$ a month for 1 Gbps fiber connection. On speedtest and fast.com, I easily average about 800+ Mbps download speeds on ethernet.

In a rural town? Metropolitan areas have always been well served.

Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury

#134

Post by mschuster91 »

tedk-42 wrote: post #22

All 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…

> All these talks about Starlink -> Remember it's a bandaid solution to your governments poor planning and infrastructure rollout of a core utility / service.

Partially. The thing is, the US is so unbelievably huge that it is economically infeasible to serve extremely rural areas with high-speed wired (i.e. fiber, DSL) or wireless (microwave, 4G/5G phone) internet, even with massive government subsidies - and that applies for other large-area countries such as Germany or Australia as well.

Starlink completely changes the equations there as (for the user) no investment is required other than getting a terminal, and for anything mobile (sea ships, RVs, emergency services) it blows the competition from geostationary satellites completely away.

Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury

#135

Post by Ekaros »

realusername wrote: post #102
fomine3 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Japan, Starlink price is continuously down (now $50) because only richer techy people (of course they have fiber and live in metropolis) buy it and they don't use much. FTTH coverage is really comprehensive even in very rural area, so there are very few residential practical use case. It would be excellent for camping. It seems that it practically priced.

It's pretty much the same in France, standard internet cost is about 35€ and fiber is being deployed at record speed, I live in the countryside (real countryside, 50 inhabitants village) and I have access to fiber. I'm not sure starlink has a future in this kind of environment outside of niche applications. Their business model is difficult in my opinion, they both need a lot of customers from rich countries to recou…

It seems that Starlink works in places that fail to build either fiber or good 4G/5G coverage. But even there if the demand is too much they might not have capacity to provide good service.

I don't believe it is viable model they are running.

Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury

#136

Post by realusername »

Ekaros wrote: post #135
realusername wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty much the same in France, standard internet cost is about 35€ and fiber is being deployed at record speed, I live in the countryside (real countryside, 50 inhabitants village) and I have access to fiber. I'm not sure starlink has a future in this kind of environment outside of niche applications. Their business model is difficult in my opinion, they both need a lot of customers from rich countries to recou…

It seems that Starlink works in places that fail to build either fiber or good 4G/5G coverage. But even there if the demand is too much they might not have capacity to provide good service. I don't believe it is viable model they are running.

Yeah that's clearly another issue on top, if there's a place where they have some demand, they'll have a lot of demand, it's an everything or nothing market.

Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury

#137

Post by zamadatix »

eganist wrote: post #62
n8henrie wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$90 if you're rural?! I'm now going to be paying $120. I live in a small town on the Navajo reservation. We don't have postal service, many here don't even have running water or electricity. The alternative ISP is 6 mbps max. Any idea how I apply for this rural pricing?

Not sure where they got that figure; I just spot-checked a few rural homes in reservations and got back the same 120 figure you did. Fingers crossed something exists for you though.

The figure comes from TFA. The criteria being "rural areas" in unsourced though as all Starlink reported was areas with "excess capacity".

I was able to get 90$/m using an address North Dakota 58647 but not a random address in the middle of nowhere Wyoming. This leads me to think the user capacity in the 24km cell isn't the only factor as the North Dakota address was certainly less rural than the Wyoming one I picked (and both instantly available).

If I had to guess I'd say you do have to be rural enough your user cell isn't near capacity but not in a region where there are a limited number of ground stations for the satellites to connect back to. For the Navajo region there are no ground stations in NM, one in AZ but in the opposite corner of the state, one in NV, one on the opposite end of UT, and one in the opposite end of CO. For Wyoming the story is almost identical. For ND there are 3 ground stations in the state.

Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury

#138

Post by marcyb5st »

teekert wrote: post #118
tedk-42 wrote: post #22

All 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.

2.5 Gb/s symmetrical is a sweet deal. Here in Italy in a town of 3k people I got "only" a 1Gb/s symmetrical, but so far I can't complain. It costs 25€/month so it's a pretty great deal

Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury

#139

Post by youngtaff »

rippercushions wrote: post #21
capableweb wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sentiment has been (up until this point?) that Starlink needs to lower costs for the customers, not increase them, as otherwise the customer base will remain as tiny as it currently is. Last I remember, the cost was ~500 USD + the monthly fee, I wonder how many in a rural environment are ready to pony that up for a measly connection. Maybe not difficult for live-on-a-farm-software-developers, but what about the r…

If Starship works out (and that's admittedly a big if), the price of launching Starlink satellites will plummet and they'll be able to boost the number of satellites in orbit from ~4k to 30k, which will improve bandwidth and cut costs. https://spacenews.com/spacex-goes-all-in-on-starship-configu... Also, if you think a $500 one-time fee is bad, try asking Comcast how much they'll charge for pulling 20 miles of fiber…

> they'll be able to boost the number of satellites in orbit from ~4k to 30k,

And potentially screwup the upper atmosphere by polluting it with vaporised aluminium as the satellites re-enter

And definitely pollute the night sky too

Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury

#140

Post by WeylandYutani »

teekert wrote: post #118
tedk-42 wrote: post #22

All 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.

I ordered KPN gigabit internet but I live on my own and probably don't need the bandwidth.

It's cheaper than Ziggo' coax though (300 mb).

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