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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

#341

Post by shaklee3 »

publicmenace wrote: post #272
shaklee3 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> 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 Again wrong. SpaceX in fact has already appealed the decision to the full Commission. But the chairwoman can legally just sit on that petition for a very long time. And SpaceX can’t sue in court until the FCC makes a decision on that, since you have to exhaust administrative remedies…

SpaceX was lucky to get an award for RDOF at all given that when they applied there was virtually no evidence that they could serve what they promised, and the FCC even made a special stipulation for constellations that did not exist/were unproven so they could bid. SpaceX would not have even been allowed to bid, but their pressure on the FCC allowed them to. So they were given a chance, and lo and behold, they did not and are not meeting their obligations. The FCC is entirely in the right to sit on the appeal until SpaceX proves that they can provide the service they signed up for.

I'm not sure why you're calling me a leftist or what politics have anything to do with this topic. The FCC has been unusually nice to SpaceX over the years to the point where virtually all other satellite companies were suing because they were being given preferential treatment on things that the FCC never allowed before. Now that the playing field is fair (well, not quite since nobody else in the space got RDOF money), SpaceX isn't so magical.

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

#342

Post by nucleardog »

dougmwne wrote: post #6

We have a cottage where we are considering getting starlink at. This service still seems like a game changer to me. If 4g is also available, running a router with dual-wan sounds like a great option to mitigate connection dropouts. We will try that. If you’re really serious about living in the back of beyond and your income depends on your ability to be on zoom calls, then it’s a small price to pay.

I live in one of the most heavily populated areas of Canada. Almost 20% of the population of the whole country is within an hour of my house. I live directly on a fairly major highway. Utilities are above ground and right at the end of my driveway.

Local internet options are 5mbit DSL, 10 mbit fixed wireless, or 25 mbit fixed LTE.

If this were a “cottage” in the vacation home sense I’d say “Starlink is generally reliable enough”, but we’ve got two people working from home here.

We’ve got the Starlink as the primary (fast) connection and pay another $60USD/mo for the 25mbit fixed LTE as a backup. Missing a day of work due to an outage would pay for about a year of the LTE connection so it seems like some relatively cheap insurance.

I do end up falling back on it relatively frequently when the Starlink isn’t “out” but the service is degraded enough that things like video calls are have a lot of short (1-2s) stutters or high latency. I could do probably live with it, but it’s there anyway so I use it.

On the other end though, Starlink _also_ saved my ass when the whole region was without power for over a week. Cell tower dropped after about an hour and the LTE went out. Starlink relies on no local infrastructure so got the generator fired up and worked through the entire week without any real issue.

If you’re planning to WFH in the “boonies” you’re basically describing my current setup and it’s been very solid. Can definitely recommend.

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

#343

Post by publicmenace »

shaklee3 wrote: post #341
publicmenace wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Again wrong. SpaceX in fact has already appealed the decision to the full Commission. But the chairwoman can legally just sit on that petition for a very long time. And SpaceX can’t sue in court until the FCC makes a decision on that, since you have to exhaust administrative remedies…

SpaceX was lucky to get an award for RDOF at all given that when they applied there was virtually no evidence that they could serve what they promised, and the FCC even made a special stipulation for constellations that did not exist/were unproven so they could bid. SpaceX would not have even been allowed to bid, but their pressure on the FCC allowed them to. So they were given a chance, and lo and behold, they did n…

[dead]

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

#344

Post by happytiger »

ghaff wrote: post #266
411111111111111 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The population density is a correlated number, but it's not necessarily an issue, which makes this into one of my pet peeves. You could have a gigantic nation which is completely centralized into one city, giving you a super low population density on paper. It's not the case in any of your example, so not really an issue here. Nonetheless...

For that matter, Australia as a whole--like some other low density areas like Alaska--actually has fairly concentrated population centers.

Yes, absolutely true. I think there’s something like 8M people just in NSW and the majority are Sydney.

Only trying to provide context for the economics of density in places like Singapore and the a Netherlands, not necessarily prove the opposite use case. I just wanted to highlight a contrasting factor that is very important for fiber and other high speed service viability. There are many others!

These criticisms are totally valid.

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

#345

Post by kccqzy »

registeredcorn wrote: post #228
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.

Any idea why India doesn't like sat phones? I've never heard of this.

Might be the same reason China doesn't like satellite phones: the lack of government control over information available to its citizens.

I watched a documentary about the 2008 earthquake in China; one city was completely cut off from the outside world in, and only one person in the whole city had a satellite phone—the mayor.

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

#346

Post by throwaway4aday »

shaklee3 wrote: post #227
throwaway4aday wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also doesn't mean that it will always be slow. There's another launch scheduled for this month and more to come after that. SpaceX is also launching satellites for many other internet competitors. As long as progress continues at this pace, rural customers will eventually have all the options they could want. Many people here are complaining about lack of infrastructure, look up!

launching more satellites has a tremendous cost, but a small, incremental capacity improvement since most of the capacity is stranded over water at any time.

Which is why the new generation of satellites are larger and more capable.

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

#347

Post by fundad »

londons_explore wrote: post #265
fundad wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sweet government money!

It was $1B that they were expected to get... Thats substantially more revenue than they were going to collect from all their US based users in a whole year!

His companies are quintessential products of the money printer and low interest Musk has said says as much when he blames his performance on the fed rate rises. For a luxury car company, of all things.
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