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Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims

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Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims

#291

Post by s1artibartfast »

grecy wrote: post #251
s1artibartfast wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's crazy. There are huge differences is costs and use cases.A generator is $500, and mine can run for 24hrs on 5 gallons of gas. A 5kw solar system is about $25k to 35k in my area before batteries.

> A 5kW solar system is about $25k to 35k in my area before batteries. Do you live on the moon? Earlier this year I installed a 7.8kW system in Canada for $13k CAD all in, inc the inverter and labor. (Then I got a $5k subsidy to bring it to $8k out of pocket.) It’s cheaper now, panel prices fall every month.

California - the moon might be cheaper. The whole system here is corrupt due to regulatory capture.

There are high permitting costs, high cost hardware requirements, and high cost of labor.

The state requires a 4 years of training to become a solar installer, so there is little competition.

Also, with every new house required by law to have solar, installers know they have a captive market and are milking it for all it is worth.

I dont think we have yet seen the cost impact of the new Tariffs on Chinese solar panels and batteries, so it will keep going up.

Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims

#292

Post by seadan83 »

inemesitaffia wrote: post #262
seadan83 wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Respectfully, it might be a start that is now too late to be useful. Cell coverage is back in a lot of areas. Those in the cut off areas (via land transit) can't get the equipment anyways, and to boot any cost is a complete barrier. As far as regional centers not devastated, those would be functioning cell towers? This disaster largely incurred four issues: (1) mud slides and flooding that killed people, (2) washed o…

Cell coverage isn't fully back, in some cases it's backhauled over SATCOM, and people are carrying help with Mules and helicopters so the road story is nonsense. Starlink was available ages ago. This offering was requested by people on the ground.

What part of "the road story" is nonsense exactly? Washed out roads and cut off communities AFAIK is obviously an issue. There are only so many helicopters. Are you implying each and every one were able to get water, food, evac all adequately via helicopter in a timely manner?

> This offering was requested by people on the ground

I agree. Though, I just don't see there being scale behind it. Is it still worthwhile? Sure. Meaningful at scale? I would want to see the data for that claim.

Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims

#293

Post by CorrectHorseBat »

Retric wrote: post #278
CorrectHorseBat wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well no, that's my whole point. Because you're sharing the medium you'll get interference if multiple satellites service the same area. >And that’s before considering how few people would pick Starlink when they can use cheap fiber. Obviously we're talking about how dense an area Startlink can service on its own.

> Because you're sharing the medium you'll get interference if multiple satellites service the same area I’m going to simplify because you seem to misunderstand what’s going on. Your eyes allow you to see a clear image of your surroundings because photons come from even slightly different angles aren’t interfering with each other. Starlink uses a phased array antenna to achieve a similar effect where satellites in di…

I'm not at all misunderstanding what's going on, I know what phased array antennas are. It's not really like our eyes, we cannot perceive phase differences in light. A phased array is (at theoretically best) like a satellite dish which can move without actually having to physically move.

>Starlink uses a phased array antenna to achieve a similar effect where satellites in different locations broadcasting on the same frequency can be clearly distinguished by two base stations physically next to each other

If by next to each other you mean several km apart, yes. edit: Ok, I didn't think of that, if the satellites are far away from each other it'll work indeed since it's both the sender and receiver which have directivity. That indeed would make it scale better.

Sure the technology can be improved, but there's only so much you can do at several hundreds of km distance and the sizes of antennas you have. Especially with mobile phones which are small and power limited I really don't see how it could work in anything but very low density areas.

Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims

#294

Post by seadan83 »

inemesitaffia wrote: post #247
seadan83 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My folks in the area just got power and data a day ago. That seems like a gotchya, how can you do anything for setup without power nor internet access? This kinda feels like musk offering to help the Thai kids trapped in a cave. The "pedo" guy pointed out the offer of help was useless. If you have internet access to set up payment, then you have internet access... Am I missing something? That and a lot of folks in Ap…

When you turn on the device, when it's brand new you get an hour free Internet to set it up. Now you get 30 days. You can get a full refund on the hardware if you use it for under 30 days

That does raise the utility - thank you for conveying that info.

Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims

#295

Post by inemesitaffia »

seadan83 wrote: post #292
inemesitaffia wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cell coverage isn't fully back, in some cases it's backhauled over SATCOM, and people are carrying help with Mules and helicopters so the road story is nonsense. Starlink was available ages ago. This offering was requested by people on the ground.

What part of "the road story" is nonsense exactly? Washed out roads and cut off communities AFAIK is obviously an issue. There are only so many helicopters. Are you implying each and every one were able to get water, food, evac all adequately via helicopter in a timely manner? > This offering was requested by people on the ground I agree. Though, I just don't see there being scale behind it. Is it still worthwhile? S…

You aren't dismissing the scale. You're dismissing the entire effort.

There's people with pack mules delivering aid. Including starlink receivers. Without collaboration with SpaceX

Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims

#296

Post by inemesitaffia »

seadan83 wrote: post #289
inemesitaffia wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might not have meaning for you, but someone on the ground had a real need and asked for it. These people can't get Internet via WiFi or cellular and you know it. This is concern trolling at best

Asteroid stated earlier: "At worse this is nice gesture " I mostly wanted to correct that to say at worse it is a non gesture. Somewhat helping a couple hundred people out of a million plus, is not quite the "nice" gesture. Particularly a relatively poor population. IDK, a pedantic debate of "nice and meaningful" vs "nice but not significant" is not interesting. Non-gesture I would equate to the latter. It is not lik…

The devices were in immediately the storm passed. Not X days later. The people who brought them in are the ones who asked for it because they have activation issues.

The world and Asheville doesn't exist only for you. And as I've pointed out a lot of those towers are backhauled over starlink. They could very well have received those texts over it before fiber was restored.

Even today, days later, there's people asking for starlink to be delivered because x town is down

Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims

#297

Post by inemesitaffia »

svnt wrote: post #283
inemesitaffia wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actual charity addressing a particular expressed and asked for need. Someone who had dishes asked for this. It's not a wouldn't this be nice gift. Someone needed this enough to ask for this

Ok, I went and looked and the free 30-day trial was already in place weeks before the natural disaster: https://www.cnet.com/home/internet/starlink-internet-review/ They didn’t do anything but offer the same deal they would to anyone else.

You don't know what you're talking about because you're not familiar with the service.

That's a 30 day trial where you pay for the product and service in full and get a full refund if you don't like it.

It's nothing like what's being offered right now where people are complaining about activation issues and the service just works.

Usually you get an hour free on new devices. Now it's 30 days

Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims

#298

Post by inemesitaffia »

svnt wrote: post #282
inemesitaffia wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you donate anything you have an immediate real or opportunity cost. You can't take that away.

If you donate something that is spare capacity on infrastructure that has a marginal cost of the data outflow from your servers on earth, and the customer has to buy aging hardware that you are also sitting on inventory of, and that hardware is ASP $300-$600, it is not a donation. It is extremely likely that your marginal costs for that month are only internet transit/egress to the tune of less than $0.05 per GB, and…

Like I said elsewhere, this is something someone asked for. They valued it enough to ask for it. The fact that you don't see that or value it like they do doesn't change things.

Starlink users are growing not receding. The devices have other places they can make money today.

You can talk margins all you want. Opportunity costs exist. So does fixed cost amortization.

Lots of these people already bought the hardware, and we're having difficulty paying for service. Imagine giving up $100+/dish guaranteed and someone talking about cents on the Internet.

Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims

#299

Post by thepasswordis »

dotnet00 wrote: post #164
bri3d wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They do. You turn the dish on and the signup process is available.

Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims

#300

Post by seadan83 »

seadan83 wrote: post #218
Spivak wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree. Giving the equipment out for free*, 30 days free, and no return charge would smell of true disaster relief rather than promo. * perhaps equipment charge after 30 days, or a half off on the equipment after 30 days. Those would very feel reasonable.

I have learned now from other replies that there is a free return. 2 of 3 criteria I stipulated are met.

Units being donated meets the first criteria, though that still relies on a donation. The logistics of returning the equipment is then also complicated too..

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