Why is this advertising-like stuff worth of hackernews?
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Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims
161–170 of 374 posts
Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Despite the hate on the promo What does "hate on the promo" mean?
Offering a "30 day free trial" doesn't really feel like a gift as much as it's an ad for the service trying to onboard customers. It's not a bad thing per se, just kind of in poor taste.
There were just a few hours between Elon accepting to do it on X, and the update being deployed, I think they can be forgiven for not having it super polished. However, they've also explained that it's 30 days for now, as the end of that approaches, they'll re-evaluate to see if an extension is warranted. I recall them also mentioning refunds or maybe account credits for affected people if they've happened to pay already.
Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
The only mobile provider in Costa Rica was government owned, hugely profitable, subsidized internet and landlines, and was mandated to provide internet to every single citizen. In urban areas, they had to make sure every single house had mobile coverage. And courts made them comply. Then came the US around year 2002 and forced the country to a free market, and paradise was lost. Everything is US level now (more expen…
There’s a reason the US has the largest economy in the world. It’s modern colonialism.
Oh yeah.
All of the 25 000 000 000 000 dollars the US generates a year is vacuumed right out of the palm trees of the third world.
Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
Surprised by this, I think it has the easiest setup experience I’ve had in years for ISP tech. What conditions were you operating in?
For the base subscription types, your account needs to be "activated" with the dish associated, and the address on your account has to match the rough location of the Starlink. This gives you a giant chicken-and-egg problem where you need the Internet to set the account location and perform account activation, but you don't have the Internet because you have a Starlink that's not set up yet. It's odd that Starlink do…
Strange, everything I've heard about the setup says that they do provide a captive portal for doing the initial setup stuff that needs a network connection.
Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
Surprised by this, I think it has the easiest setup experience I’ve had in years for ISP tech. What conditions were you operating in?
For the base subscription types, your account needs to be "activated" with the dish associated, and the address on your account has to match the rough location of the Starlink. This gives you a giant chicken-and-egg problem where you need the Internet to set the account location and perform account activation, but you don't have the Internet because you have a Starlink that's not set up yet. It's odd that Starlink do…
You can access the starlink.com site from none registered and unsubscribed units. But you need to use the Starlink provided DHCP/DNS servers to do it. Most people use other DNS settings on devices so the walled garden part might not work depending on user device config.
Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims
#166Despite the hate on the promo the tech they offer is still pretty cool. Only way I knew my in-laws were safe near Asheville was because one of their neighbors had starlink and a generator. Took a week for them to get power and cell phone service back and there is no way to get to them without a helicopter so if it wasn't for the product we would have just learned that they were alright.
In New Zealand we're very much natural disaster prone. I run a SaaS working out of home - we wired the house for generator backup and have a starlink unit that sits in a box exactly for this reason, even if the proverbial hits the fan for a week I can still keep on top of the business. Every couple of months the geny gets sparked up and everything tested. For a very small investment it's very comforting to know we've…
Wondering if solar/batteries would do the same thing as a generator but cleaner and also useful in general ?
Because I've thought about solving a similar scenario but just assumed solar/batteries would be the play here.
Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
> that lands at 7.2 mbps per person Which is ridiculously poor. This would simply create a digital divide further increasing inequality in rural areas.
>This would simply create a digital divide further increasing inequality in rural areas. Not sure what you mean? The more remote you get the better your bandwidth gets because you are sharing it with fewer people. This is the opposite of most ISPs which tend to ignore rural areas.
Its about giving slow satellite to rural areas as opposed to fibre.
Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims
#168It's nice that Musk and his companies always seem to be willing to provide free emergency services. Over various disasters they've provided free energy, internet, and cell service.
I can't believe people complain about charity when so many other companies do nothing. Same with Mr.Beast's charity acts. There's something wrong with people who do nothing and hate on other people doing charity.
Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
The bandwidth is limited on a per-cell basis, somewhere around 700Gbps max per cell. Actual capacity at any time is somewhat less. If everyone is actively using theirs, you might get single digit Mbps or less at cell capacity limits, even if there aren't bottlenecks elsewhere. It's fine , but it's highly dependent on having extremely low customer density. The system doesn't work well if everyone is using it all the t…
Yep, in a few years these dishes will be $600 paperweights. We need real rural broadband.
You can have real rural broadband today. You just need to be willing to pay for installation out of pocket.
When an ISP runs fiber to a new building (be it in a business park or rural farm), the math is almost entirely based on recuperating their installation costs - which they often pay for entirely out of their pocket. Your entire first contract term is usually just paying back the installation costs alone...
For some perspective, at a previous building we tried to bring fiber across the street into our office. The installation costs were too expensive to make the math work - so the ISP offered to split the installation costs 50/50 instead. Our half was over $94,000. This involved directional boring and the works, to go ~200ft to the right-of-way vault and into our MPOE.
One can only imagine the expense of running fiber (or any type of cable) out to the boonies. It's totally feasible - but the costs make it not palatable in reality.
Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 700Gbps max per cell > having extremely low customer density I think you need to define “extremely low” because 700gbps is plenty for several thousand people. And the question was specifically about everyone in rural areas switching. If you go by rural being That sounds fine considering standard consumer usage patterns mean you’ll get 10x that as an individual even in peak times. That’s also assuming maximum densit…
> that lands at 7.2 mbps per person Which is ridiculously poor. This would simply create a digital divide further increasing inequality in rural areas.
That number looks to be before multiplexing, so it's not that bad. If 10% of the people in the area are using the internet at the same time (as in are actively downloading at full speed, not just are scrolling through already downloaded content) it should go up to 72 mbps per person, and so on.