Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury • Hacker News Board

Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury

#311

Post by jonathankoren » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 8:14 PM UTC

lazide wrote: post #111

jonathankoren wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a rural town. I explicitly said “urban”.

Starlink has more than enough customers picking up rural users. Urban is not their primary (or secondary) use case.

I see that my comment has revealed that many people don't bother to read for comprehension before responding.

My comment was that no matter how many rural customers you get, there just isn't enough people to make the per customer cost cheap, simply because the denominator is so small. Further more, Starlink et al. can never grow the pie (i.e. increase the denominator) because no one in an urban environment wants it.

My god. This isn't even a controversial statement, yet... woosh!

Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury

#312

Post by yazaddaruvala » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 8:28 PM UTC

n8henrie wrote: post #290

yazaddaruvala wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know if the issue of congestion is bandwidth, or if its bound by satellite to ground connections? If its the latter, have you tried finding a neighbor or two and paying $60 each or $40 each?

Not sure I understand your question. Both speed and usage would be an issue; I average ~70 mbps during the day but drop to ~40 overnight, not much to share before I'm close to our ISP's 6 (which was about half the price, no caps). I'm also at about 80% of the usage cap.

It’s very unlikely you have 70mbps sustained usage. Typically it’s an average of peak per X mins.

You likely could save money by sharing your Starlink with a neighbor and neither of you would have much noticeable impact to bandwidth. Your latency might get slightly worse because of possible “noisy neighbor” but gotta ask if that latency is worth the extra $.

Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury

#313

Post by kobalsky » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 8:33 PM UTC

shaklee3 wrote: post #49

lazzlazzlazz wrote: post #7

So Starlink has been so effective and so popular that — utterly unsurprisingly — it is becoming more congested and they're raising rates. This is good news and not bad. It's a strong sign that the model fundamentally works and they will be able to fund continuous improvements to meet strong demand.

no, it's not a strong sign of that. it's a strong sign that with VC money and government money you can offer unrealistic service at unrealistic prices. but when you need to start showing that you are profitable and launching satellites to maintain the current network is also expensive, both your service and prices start to get more in line with what everybody else already had. The honeymoon phase of starlink is over.…

> but when you need to start showing that you are profitable and launching satellites to maintain the current network is also expensive, both your service and prices start to get more in line with what everybody else already had.

starlink is a project worth billions with years of planning, there's no fake it till you make it in that league

do you seriously think this is something they stumbled onto? they are rising the prices because they can, it's not a non-profit.

even the article mentions that the service is within stated expectations.

Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury

#314

Post by matbilodeau » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 8:35 PM UTC

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #204

davidy123 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I am in rural(ish) Canada. A community got together and with regional and national funding created https://fibreargenteuil.ca/en/ It was intense, they had to fight, sometimes publicly, tooth and nail with the utility pole controllers. But I'm typing this from fast, reliable (knock the nearest of many trees) fibre internet with very reasonable (all things considered, though I wish they had a more basic tier for d…

One of the awful things I found here in (quasi-rural, near Hamilton) Ontario is this phenomenon: 1. No broadband from any of Rogers, Bell, Cogeco, etc. for multiple decades, and no real local offerings; despite being only a few km from a major centre 2. Nothing seems to be happening, so some local companies start offering point-to-point wireless services which fill a hole. They start putting up antenaes and stringing…

Just a reminder https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-crtc-sides-...

Law has been modified recently https://www.canada.ca/en/radio-television-telecommunications...

Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury

#315

Post by teekert » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 8:38 PM UTC

contravariant wrote: post #219

hcks wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yeah, the famous Netherlands outback’s. Nearly 20km away from the nearest city.

If you're 20km away from the nearest city you're not in the Netherlands.

Yeah, I am 1 hour of biking away from a train station haha, we call it rural.

Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury

#316

Post by kobalsky » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 8:38 PM UTC

realusername wrote: post #102

fomine3 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Japan, Starlink price is continuously down (now $50) because only richer techy people (of course they have fiber and live in metropolis) buy it and they don't use much. FTTH coverage is really comprehensive even in very rural area, so there are very few residential practical use case. It would be excellent for camping. It seems that it practically priced.

It's pretty much the same in France, standard internet cost is about 35€ and fiber is being deployed at record speed, I live in the countryside (real countryside, 50 inhabitants village) and I have access to fiber. I'm not sure starlink has a future in this kind of environment outside of niche applications. Their business model is difficult in my opinion, they both need a lot of customers from rich countries to recou…

> real countryside, 50 inhabitants village) and I have access to fiber

small town and fast internet? it's my dream come true

Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury

#317

Post by crispinb » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 8:58 PM UTC

nikcub wrote: post #230

crispinb wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's a bandaid solution to your governments poor planning and infrastructure rollout .. Well yes, but a needed bandaid. That's what happens when governments vacate their role - individuals are left to manage on their own (and the devil take the hindmost). Australian here like you. Generally appalled by the NBN debacle. Starlink's beyond my means, but if I had a remote job I'd find it a godsend where I live (rural N…

Australia has a real problem with getting the last ~2% of residents connected. SkyMuster cost $2B and has 100k connections - so $20k per connection.

It's very patchy though even for those in urban areas. Fixed wireless has been way over-used in areas that could easily have been wired.

And SkyMuster is supposed to be a last resort, but is pushed anywhere local topography offers a mild inconvenience for fixed wireless. I'm 4km from a village, and 30km from Lismore - hardly the back of beyond.

And the NBNCo is just an old-style Telco: bloated with plushly-remunerated suits, utterly indifferent to users, and grossly inefficient. Before I knew how bad it was I tried to get signed up with SkyMuster. It never happened. I had multiple appointments made by NBN with different contractors, none of whom knew anything about the other appointments. It never actually happened and I ended up cancelling the whole thing and making my own arrangements.

Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury

#318

Post by crispinb » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 9:04 PM UTC

melbournegrad wrote: post #173

crispinb wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's a bandaid solution to your governments poor planning and infrastructure rollout .. Well yes, but a needed bandaid. That's what happens when governments vacate their role - individuals are left to manage on their own (and the devil take the hindmost). Australian here like you. Generally appalled by the NBN debacle. Starlink's beyond my means, but if I had a remote job I'd find it a godsend where I live (rural N…

I don't want to get off topic but the NBN hasn't even worked. I'm only offered wireless in my apartment 4km from the CBD, currently 1.7 Mbps

Yes, fixed wireless has been vastly overused. Presumably when NBN were short of budget for an area, or where there weren't enough wealthy folk calling their pet MP.

Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury

#319

Post by shaklee3 » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 9:12 PM UTC

kobalsky wrote: post #313

shaklee3 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no, it's not a strong sign of that. it's a strong sign that with VC money and government money you can offer unrealistic service at unrealistic prices. but when you need to start showing that you are profitable and launching satellites to maintain the current network is also expensive, both your service and prices start to get more in line with what everybody else already had. The honeymoon phase of starlink is over.…

> but when you need to start showing that you are profitable and launching satellites to maintain the current network is also expensive, both your service and prices start to get more in line with what everybody else already had. starlink is a project worth billions with years of planning, there's no fake it till you make it in that league do you seriously think this is something they stumbled onto? they are rising t…

I think you are missing/ignoring most of the history of starlink. You can look at my post history to read more if you'd like. Virtually everything starlink had promised from the start has turned out to either be lies or missed the mark significantly. This isn't just me speculating, the Ookla data shows that both their latency is significantly higher than Musk said, and it's also slower now that they've added more customers. This also has nothing to do with the lack of ISL; the latencies are higher in areas that wouldn't even benefit from ISL. It's purely due to network congestion, which again, is something everyone involved in this industry knew would happen.

Starlink is still not profitable. Musk and Shotwell have hinted at this or directly said it. It requires an immense amount of money to fund the engineering, support, and launches to keep even the current number of subscribers they have.

While Starlink is "successful" by your definition, you have both Oneweb and TeleSat's lightspeed both being relative failures. This isn't because they were worse systems. In fact, Telesat's was supposed to have the best bandwidth economics. But it failed largely because it didn't get the funding SX gets due to Musk, and they realized the economics of a LEO constellation are nearly impossible to sustain.

What you're seeing right now is an ISP that's akin to Uber or Lyft. Are they profitable? No, but they're around and they're big names. Your rides are subsidized from VC money hoping one or the other will lose and the other can raise prices.

Starlink is raising prices because they have to. Not because "they can". They are decreasing prices in unfilled areas just to use the capacity that is otherwise completely stranded. Once those areas fill, wash, rinse, repeat.

Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury

#320

Post by vic-traill » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 10:05 PM UTC

bcrl wrote: post #223

oogali wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's somewhat similar to what happened in the US during the initial timeframe of DSL. Regional Bell says your DSL is $60-120/month. Your local ISP buys a circuit to a DSL aggregator (Covad, Northpoint, Rhythms, etc) and starts offering DSL for $50/month (their cost was $25-30/month). After increase in customers, regional Bell says "we're offering $29.95/month for 6 months to new customers". ISPs nationwide start lo…

Here in Canada the CRTC ordered incumbents to file tariffs and phase II cost studies for aggregated FTTP a few weeks ago by April 23rd. That is in part due to the new CRTC chairperson and the new policy directive that came into effect early in February. The CRTC quickly rejected the incumbents' "woe is us, we can't do that" letters last week. The 6 largest Canadian independent ISPs sold out to the large industry play…

A bit of backstory: Ian Scott, former chairperson of the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), allegedly held solo/ex parte meetings with Incumbents while a review of a 2019 CRTC decision that reduced fees the big telecoms would be able to charge smaller internet service providers for access to their broadband networks, was underway [0].

That 2019 decision was reversed in 2021.

[0] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-crtc-chair-...