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Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps

arstechnica.com

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Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps

#471

Post by justinclift »

choeger wrote: post #284
medion wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Australia I moved to a very rural place, buying a house based on where I could get wireless broadband as part of our nationwide broadband rollout - I now live in a beautiful remote place overlooking the ocean with 50/20mbps Internet. Before here, I lived in another rural place near the ocean, however there was no broadband and 4G was too expensive. I ended up making friends with someone who had a 1gbps fibrelink 1…

Ok you got me with "overlooking the ocean". I will admit, I was a little bit envious. But then I recalled the great Terry Pratchett quote that you are living on a continent where pretty much every animal, except for maybe some sheep, is equipped with some venom and actively trying to kill you. Plus some of the plants. So I guess it's fair play.

Heh Heh Heh. Well, Isaac Butterfields response applies:

https://youtu.be/t1uZZ_xRYvQ?t=153

Snakes and spiders are pretty much it. Snakes are very rare to see unless you travel to the bush. Spiders though, are common outside.

Once you've learned not to turn over rocks in your garden (with your bare hands anyway), you're fine. :)

Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps

#472

Post by shaklee3 »

bargl wrote: post #85
jedberg wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're in Silicon Valley then you probably get GREAT cell service You'd think so, but we have the same problems as everyone else. In fact, I get much better reception in Sacramento and Las Vegas than in the Bay Area.

No, you don't have the same problems as everywhere else. You said it took 10 years to get fiber, there are rural places where that's not an option. There are places where there is no sewer and houses must have septic. There are places where there is no water and houses must have wells / rain capture. Those are the target audience for this technology. Not people who are waiting to go from 60 -> 100 -> 1000 Mbps. This…

The problem is that the target audience you refer to doesn't have the amount of money it takes to sustain a system like this. Otherwise any of the existing satellite providers could continue to launch more and more satellites and serve very expensive internet to them. Starlink will be just as much, or more expensive.

Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps

#473

Post by BenjiWiebe »

jsperson wrote: post #34
BitwiseFool wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd switch to Starlink JUST to spite Comcast.

While I totally agree with your sentiments, there is a large section of the population that don’t even have the bad option of Comcast. I hope they put some curbs on adoption by those who have alternatives. Source: farm owner in the middle of nowhere KS. We have fixed wireless, but if it was hilly here we’d be stuck with Hughes and their geosynchronous satellites. The latency is huge - the speed of light isn’t fast en…

Fellow middle of Kansas guy here. Check for fixed wireless in the area. We just got KwiKom which handily beats CenturyLink DSL on price, speed, and latency. And our neighbors couldn't even get DSL.

Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps

#474

Post by BenjiWiebe »

jsperson wrote: post #34
BitwiseFool wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd switch to Starlink JUST to spite Comcast.

While I totally agree with your sentiments, there is a large section of the population that don’t even have the bad option of Comcast. I hope they put some curbs on adoption by those who have alternatives. Source: farm owner in the middle of nowhere KS. We have fixed wireless, but if it was hilly here we’d be stuck with Hughes and their geosynchronous satellites. The latency is huge - the speed of light isn’t fast en…

Oh I see you already mentioned fixed wireless. You aren't me, by any chance?

Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps

#475

Post by shaklee3 »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #468
shaklee3 wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's not. So far you don't know anything about the price or the actual speeds that will be offered. So far all we know is that the latency numbers that were promised of sub 20ms are clearly not going to happen.

> So far all we know is that the latency numbers that were promised of sub 20ms are clearly not going to happen. What? How do we 'know' that? This is only a beta, and we don't know how carefully the testing was done, and we don't know how far away the servers were from the ground stations. And some users already managed results of 20ms.

Because the speed tests show it, and there are no inter satellite links. In fact, because of the limited coverage in a very specific area, is highly likely that what you're seeing is on the lower end of latency for the final system since they will have more hops.

Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps

#476

Post by oh_sigh »

xenadu02 wrote: post #25
jasonpeacock wrote: post #12

Honestly, this is just awesome. It's a working demonstration of high-speed satellite internet, showing this approach is a viable solution for "anywhere on Earth" internet. For all those people who don't have broadband available, this will be life-changing. It'll only get better from here, welcome to the future :) (and remember that perfect is the enemy of good)

Having this kind of network is a good thing but the idea that any kind of satellite or wireless can replace wires is just fantasy. Delivering just 10Mbps to 100 million customers is over 900 Tbps. There is absolutely no way a satellite network can clear that kind of downlink bandwidth. And that's just a tiny fraction of the market. Physical cables/fiber represent several orders of magnitude more capacity and always w…

10Mbps to 100 million customers equating to 900 Tbps would be more akin to serving 1 billion customers, since on average someone isn't even close to saturating their bandwidth.

Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps

#477

Post by shaklee3 »

asldkjaslkdj wrote: post #57
bargl wrote: post #45

Starlink internet is not meant to replace hard line internet. There is no getting around the physics of cable being so much cheaper/easier. Even terrestrial cell towers are more efficient and cheaper than satellites. This is 100% meant to supplement existing infrastructure not to replace it. You will almost always get cheaper and faster internet (for both you and the company providing internet) over a cable to your h…

I think you're underestimating the number of people that live in places where cell companies don't want to be arsed to build a tower.

I think you're overestimating how much those people are willing to pay.

Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps

#478

Post by BenjiWiebe »

codecamper wrote: post #138

aykm?? wasted the sky with this ugly crap for what we already have with 4g? somebody please kick Elon in the nuts for me.

There isn't a usable 4G signal everywhere. Not even everywhere in the US. On my 2 mile commute in Kansas, there's about 1 mile where I cannot even place calls or send texts, much less use data.

Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps

#479

Post by shaklee3 »

bargl wrote: post #69
xutopia wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the price is 5 times cheaper though... what then?

There is a set capacity for these satellites, they can accomodate X number of users per satellite which would be a region (I'm making an educated guess) about the size of New Jersey. I think the size is larger than that which means fewer users but I'm trying to ballpark during my lunch break. So if they expect to have 10,000 users (again ballpark) in New Jersey, but they instead get 40,000 they'll increase their cost…

What you said at the end is not true. It does not have a relatively uniform signal at all areas of the earth (on purpose, since they know where the customers are), and it's not a benefit to be standing capacity where nobody lives.

Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps

#480

Post by oh_sigh »

e12e wrote: post #150
jliptzin wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your math assumes all 100 million customers will be downloading at 10Mbps at the same time, all the time. Obviously that is not the case.

Not "all the time", but at any one time - at the same time (eg: watching superbowl - but of course any kind of multicast/broadcast is a little different). At any rate, it's mostly about the bandwidth each satellite has to route. I don't know what the likely number of subscribers for any one LEO sattelite will be? Will it really be on the order of 100 million not also served by 4g cellular, dsl and other broadband? Sa…

Maybe there could be a "broadcast" mode where starlink users can "tune in" to a fixed number of "channels" which broadcast extremely popular content.
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