251–258 of 258 posts
1. Used more power than all my other appliances/devices combined. 2. I dropped signal every few minutes. Didn't impact streaming/downloads but did make calls basically untenable. Given my work, this made StarLink a step back despite the dramatic increase in speeds.
100W continuous draw is around $15 a month in power alone - this buys you unlimited 5G in many places around the world.
Believe me, if I could buy unlimited 5G (or 4G, my phone is old) for $15/mo here in the US I'd be doing it. I'm paying $10/mo for 1GB.
Hence Starlink in South East Asia is priced so high up that it's basically useless for 99.9% of population.
If you can get high speed, low latency, affordable internet access another way then Starlink probably isn't for you. We've just moved to a place where our only other option was a £400 a month leased line delivering synchronous 100Mbps. For less than a quarter of that, Starlink gives us roughly 120-150Mbps down, around 7Mbps up, and pings around the 30 ms mark. Upload is slow but workable for now. It's easy to complai…
£400! Wow. I pay 36 euros for 500mbps in the south of Europe.
But the real embarrassment is the satellites. They should been covered in an antireflective coating, the kind you can get for $20 at any hardware store. But the engineers didn't bother, even though they knew about Iridium flares:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_flare
Why would they make such a simple, obvious mistake? Let's look at some options:
A) They didn't know (casts doubt on the competence of the engineers and the adequacy of their engineering process)
B) They couldn't solve it (I just did, this is a red herring)
C) They didn't care (casts doubt on their relationship with science, environmentalists and members of the public who don't want to see satellites when they look at the stars)
D) They wanted people to see the satellites in the sky as free advertising (ding ding)
Corporate greed runs the show now. And other countries will copy this bad behavior because once again, a US corporation didn't lead by setting a good example.
If we want to see real change in the world, we need to start by NOT supporting bad actors. Don't buy Starlink. Tell your friends why.
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Seriously though this is achievable with consumer hardware[0], as long as you have line-of-sight or close enough to it. [0]: https://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-300Mbps-dual-polarized-direct...
And check out Ubiquiti and Mikrotik for more hardware that does this sort of thing.
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The Internet does not work without IPv4. It’s either CGNAT or ponying up $60 per IPv4 address.
And yet ever more people only have IPv6... and last I checked IPv6 server support is around 99% these days ?
Only 28% of Alexa top 1000 sites support IPv6.
Very, very few, if any, consumers of commercial ISPs have only IPv6 access.
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That just seems crazy. Why?
The FCCs primary concern is devices not interfering with each other. Part of that is cutting up areas geographically and by spectrum, so you know that the 100MHz FM station in one area won't over lap with another's and both can transmit. My guess would be that mobile transmitters are required to fill out paperwork about how they won't interfere anywhere in the US. I could be wrong though. "Requires separate approvals…
Starlink itself cares about positioning to avoid overcrowding and also any satellite tasking/scheduling/whatever.
Good article, ones like these need to become the canonical reviews. Lots of stuff for the Starlink engineers to be embarrassed about. But the real embarrassment is the satellites. They should been covered in an antireflective coating, the kind you can get for $20 at any hardware store. But the engineers didn't bother, even though they knew about Iridium flares: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_flare Why would…
I grew up in a region with exceptionally low light pollution, staring at the stars and Milky Way in awe, and feel great sorrow for people who don't get to see them. The idea that there will always be a satellite glaring somewhere in the sky now, diminishing that sense of natural wonder, is one of the great tragedies of the modern world IMHO.
But I'm not going to sit here and tell people what to buy. Starlink has great tech, and I do want everyone in the world to have affordable internet access. It's up to each of us to do our own research and vote with our dollars for products that are sustainable, equitable, etc. I think we all want to do better and fix our mistakes, rather than live in the shame of any dishonorable behavior we may have had in the past.