Just ran speedtest:
Wifi = 97 Mbps down 9 (xfinity) LTE = 57 Mbps down (att)
Location = SF Bay Area
11 to 60 Mbps global coverage is totally acceptable speeds and if it holds up, would be a game changer.
Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps
231–240 of 607 posts
Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
LOL, try Verizon-level of rural infrastructure neglect. I paid for a guaranteed 3,300Kb/s down, 768Kb/s up. I usually got 900Kb/s down, and 150Kb/s up. to quote the linesman who had the shit job of patching together the literal 1930's(!) phone lines," I was told by corporate to absolutely not replace any lines unless they're taken out by a drunk or a tree. the cable on that spool I pull behind my truck is going to go…
Don't you have unlimited data plans in the US? Or local Wimax ISPs?
I can't speak for the rest of the nation, but a couple years ago the big ISPs in the midwest started phasing in 1tb data caps.
Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
People keep bringing that up as a common use case, but how do you propose that people in China or wartorn countries will get their hands on the modems they would need to use Starlink?
US government airdrops?
Do people not understand that satellite internet already exists today?
We don't drop satellite modems into war torn countries now, and we're not going to start doing that just because Elon Musk needs to check off one of his PR claims.
Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Even just as a reliable alternative Starlink would be a big boon to rural users Starlink is susceptible to cloud cover, rainstorms, lightning and other things that would interfere with signal quality (or render it unusable for periods of time). Seems buried lines (either POTS for DSL, Coax for Cable, or Fiber) is the best solution. We just need to figure out how to incentivize it being built.
As someone who lived 50 minutes inland in Florida, no way. Our DSL and cable options were limited, Comcast said they offered cable, but when they got to the line near the house, the signal was so poor they were unable to make it work without 50k in labor. Then ATT came with DSL, the connection has routine outages for hours at a time. There is a technician servicing the DSLAM pretty much every week, there is literally…
GPON done properly is much cheaper to operate than DSL or COAX, it's just longer cables, less equipment, less real state, less electricity consumption.
Digging cables is what's expensive. You can use telephone poles for fiber too, but it exposes it to more outages. You can secure the lines with steel cables but that ads cost, and if you are deploying to poles then you were looking for going cheap.
Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You can build out landlines far more easily than you can launch satellites; Each satellite costs SpaceX about $250K to build and $500K to launch and services thousands of customers. That same $750K might buy you a mile or so of trenching and cable. Many rural customers need multiple miles each.
That same $750K might buy you a mile or so of trenching and cable. If you want to make this about the economics... All studies on this topic report that it costs less than $250k/mile in metro areas, which cost more due to the need to get permits, plan around utility lines and existing infrastructure, dig into asphalt/sidewalk, and then repair the damage. In a rural area where you can just dig into dirt and not repair…
Your operational and marketing and capital costs apply to all ISP's, not just Starlink. The net present value of $6.25 monthly at a 3% interest rate for 20 years is $1100. For 50 years it's $2000. So that's your breakeven point. You might be able to wire up an entire town for less than $2K per customer but you certainly can't do rural customers for that.
Shotwell has said that Starlink will be competitive with $80/month internet.
Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
Larger amounts of people mean more chances of exposure. Being in urban environment means higher dependence on fragile supply chains- food security is totally dependent on JIT grocery store inventories. Rural homes, by virtue of being isolated, are easier to self isolate.
However, if you’re able to work from home, you can self-isolate pretty much anywhere, and drive wherever you need to get food. If urban environments start seriously breaking down due to a food supply chain problem, rural areas won’t be safe from desperate people. Anyway, both approaches have their pros and cons, but as someone who has a fairly severe back problem and not much inclination to try to live off the grid,…
A friend of mine who served in Afghanistan said that the Afghanis living in the mountains had no idea America had invaded and no idea about a war or 9/11. At first they had thought the Americans were Russians.
I think you over estimate how big America is and how remote some places can be.
Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps
#237Latency runs 31 mS to 70 mS in the speedtests shown. I don't buy their claims that you can game with >100 mS latency, that is not a good experience.
This is a great step forward for internet accessibility but I really wish they wouldn't oversell the capabilities before we're there.
Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps
#238Anyone complaining about this has never experienced the frustration of rural living when it comes to internet. This is absolutely amazing, and it will just get better. Even a reliable 10mbps would be a godsend in many places.
> Even a reliable 10mbps What are some applications that requires more than 10mbps speed in rural places?
WINDOWS 10 OS.
The amount of updates you have to download weekly is insane.
cripples my connection to do anything else for hours at a time. Have to switch to "metered connection" to trick it into thinking im connceted to internet on a smartphone with super expensive$$$ dataplan, so to leave any updates as 'frozen'.
(for a non tech saavy person, they would be driven nuts... every day their computer would just grind to a halt doing network stuff and not know why)
Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
My grandma in rural Arkansas would get 26.4 kbps over dialup. Cell service is passable outside so she could get a house mounted antenna but the data caps are so low it's not worth it. Sat internet was crazy expensive last time I checked. Also she refuses to learn computers so I gave up trying to get her internet but that's not related to this conversation.
There are ways to get unlimited service still, which is what my parents do. It's just a bit... hacky. Basically you get an LTE modem and SIM swap to it. The ROOTer mod of OpenWRT is specifically for using LTE modems and works quite well. There are some drawbacks, but it's certainly better than the 1.5 Mbps DSL alternative (which they keep as a backup / automatic failover). On AT&T (technically a tablet plan) it gets…
I know someone on that tablet plan (which, BTW, you can no longer get - go check ebay) who lost it by consistently hitting 1TB every month.
What's the Sprint plan?
Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of what you're saying isn't actually true here. Light moves significantly (47%) slower through optical fiber than through space. This drastically reduces the latency of long distance connections. We're talking NY round trip to Japan in the same time it takes NY roundtrip to the UK now. The cost of backhaul and ongoing maintenance of cables is a lot more than SpaceX launching their own satellites by an entire or…
>A lot of what you're saying isn't actually true here. You're talking latency not bandwidth. There is only so much spectrum to go around. My understanding is that there is only a certain amount of bandwidth to go around and there are diminishing returns on adding people beyond a set capacity. I am not arguing that fiber is faster, I'm arguing that fiber has is cheaper at the bandwidth/cost in more dense areas. I don'…
I worked for an ILEC providing cable/dsl/fiber service and just the rough napkin math around SpaceX's launch costs makes it look significantly cheaper.
Besides the whole digging and laying cable costs, last mile work is expensive. You have to employ huge crews. Construction crews constantly dig up & cut your infrastructure "by accident" and the cost of recovering the fines from them is as much as the fines pay out. Having to send an emergency crew of three guys out for 18 hours of work to re-splice a 72-ct fiber every other weekend adds up. That doesn't happen in space.