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Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury

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

#331

Post by olyjohn »

chrisco255 wrote: post #65
anaganisk wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure you can't just launch satellites into orbit randomly without govt blessing it or stream data to ground stations legally (Eg: India doesn't like satellite phones), at a certain point Starlink could itself be the monopoly you dread.

Doubt it since there will probably always be lower latency and higher reliability on fiber connections.

I wish that was a good enough reason... because I wish fiber was everywhere. The truth is that most people won't care that much about 20-40ms of latency. I mean, people use 5g hotspots for their internet and are just happy as clams, ISPs are pushing for it, trying to get everybody on wireless connections. The benefits of fiber for customers doesn't outweigh the profits that wireless drives to ISPs.

And as anecdata, my Starlink connection that I've had since the beta days has been more reliable than Comcast or Centurylink that I've had at other places. I haven't even had weather cause an outage that I've noticed. It's at least good enough that most people won't care.

We are the only people who care, and understand why low latency and high speeds are important.

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

#332

Post by crispinb »

runarberg wrote: post #329
crispinb wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4g has very patchy coverage in rural Australia away from main roads. Satellite can be an OK option for some (we have a gov-subsidised option), but is unreliable and subject to lengthy outages and low monthly data caps. There are many other reasons to need decent connectivity - schooling and healthcare among them. > I have to question the decisions of someone that moves to an area without connection to the electricity…

I’m gonna ignore your personal insult and answer the actual claims in your post. > 4g has very patchy coverage in rural Australia This goes back to the claim in the original post. Starlink is an excuse not to rollout proper infrastructure. > schooling and healthcare Really? Are there honestly scenarios in the real world where people don’t have power but need to do school and healthcare via the internet. I find that h…

> I’m gonna ignore your personal insult

No insult, just a description of what you've posted (idiotically) here

> Starlink is an excuse not to rollout proper infrastructure.

That's ridiculous. Australia's infrastructure plans were laid out long before Starlink was conceived. They were then undermined by a right-wing gov. Invidividuals are then left by government inaction to do what they must. That involves (unfortunately) use of all kinds of less-than-ideal individualistic solutions like Starlink. It's not good for society, but, like private health care, it can be necessitated.

> Really? Are there honestly scenarios in the real world where people don’t have power but need to do school and healthcare via the internet. I find that hard to believe.

I don't care what you find hard to believe because of your limited experience of life. The solution to limited experience is either to gain more, or to refrain from judgement outside of your realms of competence.

> Remember it's a bandaid solution to your governments poor planning and infrastructure rollout of a core utility / service.

Agree. Like healthcare, it should be there. But again as with healthcare, when it's not, those with the means just have to go where they must. Whether that be health care mercenaries, or Starlink.

> Do you mind listing some of them?

I won't list them. The fact that you, clearly knowing literally nothing about this part of the world, still feel like doubling-down on your ignorance (a factual description, not an insult), makes you not worth enlightening.

Anyway, you're uninteresting and incurious. I shall block you.

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

#333

Post by olyjohn »

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.

Have you ever used HugesNet? I'd go back to my 1.5MBit DSL before I ever got that shit.

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

#334

Post by yazaddaruvala »

n8henrie wrote: post #326
yazaddaruvala wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s very unlikely you have 70mbps sustained usage. Typically it’s an average of peak per X mins. You likely could save money by sharing your Starlink with a neighbor and neither of you would have much noticeable impact to bandwidth. Your latency might get slightly worse because of possible “noisy neighbor” but gotta ask if that latency is worth the extra $.

No, I meant that's the average speed I get (so if we were splitting it I assume our speeds would each be half that when downloading / streaming simultaneously).

Yes technically, but I think you're unlikely to notice it in practice.

In the worst case, because of buffering, your Netflix video might take an extra 10 seconds to start and then you'd notice no interruptions (unless you're skipping back and forth). But even that worst case would be unlikely to really be an issue.

For example, are you ever interrupted by someone else in your household turning on another TV? It would be similar.

You wouldn't want to share with your neighbor if they are actively abusing this with torrents or some other constant high bandwidth activity, but ideally you'd pick a neighbor you already know well and can trust.

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

#335

Post by chrisco255 »

brokenkebaby wrote: post #105
chrisco255 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to believe that, but having seen my parents own street overlooked by cable providers for two decades despite the fact that it's no longer rural and surrounded by tens of thousands of suburban households that have mowed down all the orange groves and cow pastures, they still do not have cable internet as an option in 2023.

This is a strong indicator that existing providers enjoy artificially limited competition, i.e. licensing/regulations need to be revised

Sometimes it is purely a cost / benefit tradeoff analysis. The cable company even if a local monopoly should want my business. Although I suspect the local cable company did the original analysis back in the 90s and never factored for 25+ years of reliable revenue. And every year since some bean counter has looked at short term ROI. At any rate, I remember getting some relief when the first iPhone jailbreak was available and now for sure Starlink is a boon.

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

#336

Post by mlyle »

londons_explore wrote: post #288
cozzyd wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well 3 degrees wide means at best ~28 square degrees on the sky (pi * 3 * 3). But the problem is the other way. It looks like Starlink has 7 GHz total downlink bandwidth from satellite to customers. A cell may be ~300 sq km, but no way you can pipe all that bandwidth in adjacent cells due to interference (or... if you did, you'd probably lose in spectral efficiency). If we assume something like 10 Gbps/cell total dow…

Remember that if they are starting to get near capacity limits, they always have the option to make the antennas on the satellite larger, making the beams narrower, and reduce those 300 sq km cells down to say 30 sq km. In the current era of phased array antenna prices falling sharply, and assuming they're willing to go for a folding antenna, I think they could probably easily get a 10x antenna area boost without muc…

If you have 10x the antenna area, you need 10x the antenna elements with appropriate phasing... else you suffer from the thinned array curse and lose lots of power in side lobes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinned-array_curse

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

#337

Post by msh »

mschuster91 wrote: post #263
msh wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or bury the cables.

Burying high voltage transmission cables is extremely expensive [1] and usually only done when there is no other choice (such as being in an urban environment, near airports and the likes) as the loss due to capacitance is far greater than on poles. The exception to the "usually only" is, once again, our beloved "german redneck" government in Bavaria who insisted that the new North-South line Südlink got buried on Ba…

I think the comment I replied to was referring to normal powerlines for households. Individual solar+batteries is not going to replace high voltage lines.

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

#338

Post by pas »

mrguyorama wrote: post #293
voicedYoda wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such disappointing potential

Typical google seemed to think a politics and business problem was actually a technical one and then give up completely when it was clear they would actually have to make a real business investment to get what they wanted.

... still. It's unfathomable why they stopped. They could have singlehandedly created a new semi-national ISP, and they could have sold it off by now to focus on their core competency of launching new increasingly irrelevant messaging apps, rewriting GMail in slower and slower ways, and of course challenging the world, by boldly going where noone has dared going before, dropdown-by-dropdown sub-account-by-sub-account day-by-day they are inching closer to opening the gates of the insanity dimension, and the moment will come when God will get fed up because he/she can't find the fucking property/website/account in Google Analytics...

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

#339

Post by n8henrie »

yazaddaruvala wrote: post #334
n8henrie wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I meant that's the average speed I get (so if we were splitting it I assume our speeds would each be half that when downloading / streaming simultaneously).

Yes technically, but I think you're unlikely to notice it in practice. In the worst case, because of buffering, your Netflix video might take an extra 10 seconds to start and then you'd notice no interruptions (unless you're skipping back and forth). But even that worst case would be unlikely to really be an issue. For example, are you ever interrupted by someone else in your household turning on another TV? It would…

Small house, single TV. Yes, I pause / throttle high bandwidth activities when we're going to stream something as a family.

You're probably right though.

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

#340

Post by publicmenace »

shaklee3 wrote: post #268
publicmenace wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that’s how the RDOF program was designed. You have a number of years to meet your targets in exchange for the subsidies to help you do it.

if this was some kind of stunt pulled by the FCC, SpaceX can sue. but in reality, this was exactly by the book and SpaceX accepted it

You leftists are really something to behold. Undeterred by facts, I'm sure you will continue to spread bullshit on this website and refuse to acknowledge your errors.
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