The prices aren’t competitive for metros.. what am I missing?
That this service is designed for customers who don't have other good internet options and are therefore somewhere between willing and _thrilled_ to pay $100 a month for good service.
Setting up Starlink
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Re: Setting up Starlink
#12Aside: The router design is as impractical as it is futuristic. The thing would fall over if you looked at it sideways, and the solitary LED on the front was hard to see unless in a dark room or looking closely, straight at it. Hopefully a 2nd iteration will be better! Wow, he's right about the shape of the router. It also looks like it forces the ethernet cable in front if you want to be able to see the LED, and the…
> I'm curious how practical it might be for on-board aircraft wi-fi
I suspect it'll work well for this scenario. My understanding is that the cruising speed of a plane is relatively slow compared to all the other motion involved (LEO satellites move fast!). The US Air Force is reportedly working with SpaceX to test Starlink in various conditions including in flight https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/air-force-testing-starli....
Re: Setting up Starlink
#13The prices aren’t competitive for metros.. what am I missing?
Isn't starlink a service aimed at areas that can't easily get the sort of internet service that's cheap to provide to metro areas (i.e. rural areas)?
Wouldn’t it be cheaper and more cost effective to cover those areas by 4G mobile phone network?
Re: Setting up Starlink
#14The prices aren’t competitive for metros.. what am I missing?
I live in the city center of a major city and the only wired provider available at my address peaks out at 0.3 Mbit/s upload during workdays.
4G is better, but not by much (given that apparently everyone of my neighbors has already switched to that in favor of the cable provider).
One of my neighbors has already pre-ordered Starlink.
Re: Setting up Starlink
#15The prices aren’t competitive for metros.. what am I missing?
Metro areas aren’t the target. There is a large, underserved market that doesn’t have access to broadband internet, and for those customers this is a breakthrough.
Also while we aren't really used to this being the case with ISP's, lots of products get cheaper from when they are first offered. I think they're pricing a bit higher to start off with to just make sure they don't join the giant heap of bankrupt satellite internet companies.
Re: Setting up Starlink
#16The prices aren’t competitive for metros.. what am I missing?
It would be interesting if they had a plan to promote using them as a redundant path, where the cost was lower unless you actually used it.
Re: Setting up Starlink
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't starlink a service aimed at areas that can't easily get the sort of internet service that's cheap to provide to metro areas (i.e. rural areas)?
Wouldn’t it be cheaper and more cost effective to cover those areas by 4G mobile phone network?
Have you seen what they do to install just a few blocks of 5G antennas? Ripping up pavement, trenching fiber and power. And that is just in a high density city.
Re: Setting up Starlink
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wouldn’t it be cheaper and more cost effective to cover those areas by 4G mobile phone network?
Have you seen what they do to install just a few blocks of 5G antennas? Ripping up pavement, trenching fiber and power. And that is just in a high density city.
4G does not require as dense a cell network as 5G.
Re: Setting up Starlink
#19Wow, I'm impressed! I thought it would take more than a decade to implement when it was announced, but it's here and it works. Just amazing. 100/16 Mbps is pretty decent I guess, hopefully it doesn't go down as the number of users goes up. The latency is great imo, 40ms using satellites? I don't think anyone has achieved that before. Would a bigger dish work better or not?
The latency may well be better than landlines in some cases. For instance, data from an edge cache in your city will be faster than starlink. But data from china? Starlink may win.
I wonder if it could improve gaming/video conferencing with people far away.
Re: Setting up Starlink
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't starlink a service aimed at areas that can't easily get the sort of internet service that's cheap to provide to metro areas (i.e. rural areas)?
Wouldn’t it be cheaper and more cost effective to cover those areas by 4G mobile phone network?
Have you tried using 4G as your only connection? Even carriers that provide “unlimited” transfer typically throttle your connection after a certain amount of usage.