Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury • Hacker News Board

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

#301

Post by gamblor956 » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 6:25 PM UTC

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…

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.

If I had a dollar for every time Elon Musk said something that didn't pan out or wasn't true, I would be richer than Elon Musk.

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

#302

Post by lazide » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 6:26 PM UTC

noncoml wrote: post #294

jameshilliard wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 terres…

> $250,000 That’s insane! Do they give you an option to draw your own lines? Any chance you can apply for some subsidy? I really don’t know why in 2023 fiber internet is not treated the same as water or electricity..

It’s the ‘go away’ price quote. If someone was desperate enough they were willing to pay it, they’d figure out how to do it (probably), but really don’t want to.

I got a similar quote from PG&E to run power to a remote lot once, with the caveat that ‘maybe’ they could do it.

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

#303

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 6:31 PM UTC

1970-01-01 wrote: post #245

throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #197

> I would love to ask the Starlink support team for more information since I own the equipment, but I can't because there's no email address, phone number, chat, or other way to message support That seals it. Better to buy HughesNet or similar. It may be slower but at least you can get support.

https://support.starlink.com/tickets https://support.starlink.com/create-support-ticket But don't take my word for it. Or do, because you've clearly settled on a decision without researching the problem.

[deleted]

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

#304

Post by yencabulator » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 6:32 PM UTC

stuaxo wrote: post #199

lazzlazzlazz wrote: post #7

So Starlink has been so effective and so popular that — utterly unsurprisingly — it is becoming more congested and they're raising rates. This is good news and not bad. It's a strong sign that the model fundamentally works and they will be able to fund continuous improvements to meet strong demand.

Honestly don't understand why people didn't see this one coming. Congestion seemed like an obvious outcome from the point they announced the idea of internet via satellite ?

Honestly don't understand why people don't understand that the Starlink slogan was "better than nothing".

Starlink is still magnitudes better than my previous as-expensive point-to-point wifi, which was capped at 10 Mbps at best and was nearly unusable 7-9pm every night.

If you can get something better than Starlink, then you should.

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

#305

Post by marcyb5st » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 6:53 PM UTC

thfuran wrote: post #189

marcyb5st wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

And here I am in the US in a metro area with a population of over a million and I can't get fiber despite AT&T having come door to door hawking their service on the premise that they were installing fiber. Clearly there's just not enough people in my area and it's impossible.

Ouch. Sorry to hear that. I remember speaking with colleagues in various parts of the US (mostly Seattle and Silicon valley areas) and I was shocked by how expensive and relatively low quality internet and mobile connections compared to most of western Europe. I guess having de-facto cartels in AT&T, Verizon, ... that don't encroach in each other territory is a terrible thing

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

#306

Post by thfuran » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 6:55 PM UTC

notafraudster wrote: post #119

rnk wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are talking about America. We decided everybody should get electricity and they got it with rural electrification. Should everyone lose the right to have electricity connections because you think it's too hard? Somehow other countries can do this with the US can't? We could decide just like we did for electricity that everyone should have 100 meg internet to their house.

Unfortunately there seems to be a bipartisan political consensus against the most profitable and useful elements of the New Deal (WPA, TVA, REA, CWA) which would be almost mandatory to go whole hog on this kind of infrastructure proposal, and as we've learned over the last 40 years public-private partnerships are thin gruel as a replacement.

The US seems to have totally lost the ability to produce infrastructure at sane cost, which may be contributing to the decreased support for infrastructure projects.

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

#307

Post by marcyb5st » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 7:06 PM UTC

guenthert wrote: post #289

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, consumers in Austria and Germany have by far the shittiest internet in all of EU. That's what you get when you let your corrupt politicians sell your national infrastructure and customer base to private monopolists who will rentseek you instead of competing and investing in infrastructure. I remember walking into an A1 shop browsing for internet offers for my new apartment and the lady working there straight up…

Just a few years ago our office (two floors, Fortune 500 company, more than 100 people on site) had a 100Mbps connection to the Internet (and a dedicated 1Gbps to a branch office). We had video conferences, mirrored OSS and back'ed up over the 'net. The dedicated link was at times a bottleneck, but I don't recall that the link to the Internet ever was. With the shift to cloud computing, at least in the awkward hybrid…

Honestly, I don't saturate my connection 99% of the time. I could have done that 10/15 years ago when I used to torrent a lot.

The download part is great because now it's faster to buy a game on steam for instance and download it than getting in the car, driving to the closest store to purchase a physical copy and bring it home.

Regarding the upload, I built a small utility that stores the videos from the cameras I have at home to the cloud in a rolling window (I didn't want to pay the service from the cameras provider). So at any time I am uploading something like 7 1080p streams (it's more bursty as I chunk the streams every 10 minutes and upload the resulting files). So, while 1Gb is still an overkill, once you have the bandwidth you find uses for it.

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

#308

Post by nickserv » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 7:16 PM UTC

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.

Here I am in Marseille, 3rd city in France, with shitty ADSL... Sure I can choose between 4 carriers, but none offer fiber.

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

#309

Post by olyjohn » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 7:24 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #134

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 ap…

Somehow we managed to get power and POTS lines to pretty much everybody. Hell, the 2700 foot mountain peak behind my house has power run to it. This bullshit that we can't run fiber or some other networking to every house.

It's not that it's economically infeasible. It's that it's just not as profitable for the ISPs as running a smaller, closer network in a populated area. So they won't do it. Why would they care about covering a huge area that doesn't make as much money? All they care about is money over all else.

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

#310

Post by Casteil » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 8:06 PM UTC

Jedd wrote: post #182

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…

Also Australian - based in Hunter Valley (~ 200km north-west of Sydney). Definitely rural. I replaced our Skymesh (geo-stationary) satellite (the only barely viable alternative) two years ago with Starlink. Skymesh gave me ~600ms RTT to Sydney servers, and maybe 25Mbps down (at 3am, clear sky, etc). Data cap was around 120GB / month, IIRC. Pricing was probably 75% of what I'm paying for Starlink now. We can kinda sor…

>I replaced our Skymesh (geo-stationary) satellite (the only barely viable alternative) two years ago with Starlink. Skymesh gave me ~600ms RTT to Sydney servers, and maybe 25Mbps down (at 3am, clear sky, etc). Data cap was around 120GB / month, IIRC. Pricing was probably 75% of what I'm paying for Starlink now.

...what about Starlink's performance over the last 2 years?