10 ms·

It looks like starting out they're going to prioritize rural Washington State. From the FAQ which is buried for some reason at https://www.starlink.com/main.16a

It looks like starting out they're going to prioritize rural Washington State. From the FAQ which is buried for some reason at https://www.starlink.com/main.16ae0a3588c339b10118.js https://www.starlink.com/main.16ae0a3588c339b10118.js. q:Who can participate in Starlink Beta? a:Starlink Beta will begin in the Northern United States and lower Canada, with those living in rural and/or remote communities in the Washington state area. Access to the Starlink Beta program will be driven by the user's location as well as the number of users in nearby areas. All beta testers must have a clear view of the northern sky to participate.

walrus01 6y ago
There's 4 starlink earth stations in Washington state. The starlink r&d team and office is also based in Redmond. 1. Redmond office site 2. North bend, colocated with CenturyLink long haul fiber hut 3. Brewster, commercial teleport facility, as a tenant, larger site is run by USEI. This is also a TT&C (tracking, telemetry and control) site for starlink space segment network operations. 4. Prosser, also colocated with CenturyLink fiber huts. It is also worth noting that one of the first major internet traffic exchange points which the starlink AS has joined is the SIX (Seattle internet exchange). It's my theory that their IP network and other common ISP-like infrastructure is the most fully developed in Seattle. If you take a look at their peeringdb page it will give you an idea of where they're publicly announcing availability for peeing and PNIs. Presently only Seattle. https://www.peeringdb.com/net/18747 https://www.peeringdb.com/net/18747
- starpilot 6y ago
  Hey, did you go to umich?
  - walrus01 6y ago
    Nope
waiseristy 6y ago
Rural Washington is a great test market, there are entire counties with only a single viable provider (Kittitas). Or counties in which there are NO viable broadband providers (Okanagan)
- walrus01 6y ago
  There's 3 small independent WISPs in kittitas county in addition to Charter cable in Ellensburg, and whatever Consolidated (the ILEC phone company) is doing. Definitely some more rural parts of kittitas the only thing you can get is a consumer-grade vsat terminal, but those are really quite small amounts of population. For okanogan, Google NCI datacom, they're a wisp that covers much of the county. But not out to the fringes. Okanogan county itself and the PUD have fiber along the highway all the way from Brewster to the Canadian border, with POPs in the towns along the way. Several WISPs make use of it. If you were using either of those counties as an example because you actually know people who are finding it difficult to get last-mile broadband, let me know and perhaps I can help put them in touch with the right people. If we were going to use a very rural Washington State location as an example of where starlink might do well, somewhere such as people who live on acreages outside of Republic might be a better example. Or somewhere like Stehekin. If I had to guess, the reason why Washington state is a good test market for them, is a combination of relatively low cost and easy to provision lit transport services they can buy from each earth station back to Seattle, reasonable driving times and hassle for people to come and go from the Redmond facility to the test sites for physical install and modification of equipment, and a fairly good sized base of consumers in very rural locations presently dependent on hughesnet/wildblue type cheap consumer VSAT.
  - waiseristy 6y ago
    Are WISPs really a viable broadband option? The pricing vs data caps that you get are pretty ridiculous, especially for rural customers And yes I do know people who have had problems in these counties. I also had an absolutely miserable experience using Charter due to their poor infrastructure in the valley. Internet on nights, weekends, holidays, etc. was unusable due to their high utilization of low bandwidth lines
rootsudo 6y ago
They emailed me saying to add my address. Seattle
- bronco21016 6y ago
  FWIW I got the same email in Michigan. I drove by the ground station here in Michigan recently and it’s coming along but it’s definitely not looking close. In a month they basically installed conduit, electrical, and a fence. I don’t currently see any radio gear.
  - walrus01 6y ago
    I don't suppose it would be too much to ask if you took some photos of that, and can share them?
    - bronco21016 6y ago
      https://postimg.cc/gallery/k6PhnPs https://postimg.cc/gallery/k6PhnPs Near Manistique, MI. (45.9086063, -86.4838231)
      - walrus01 6y ago
        Thanks, as with the other sites, that is a pre-existing, fairly typical intercity fiber regen hut it is colocated with.
- LeoPanthera 6y ago
  I got this email and I'm in the bay area, though admittedly up in the SC mountains. Not sure it means anything.
zamalek 6y ago
> prioritize rural It's worth pointing out that this will probably be something only people in rural areas will be interested in. "High speed" is in reference to the utter garbage available to these people. The throughput won't be close to what you can get from copper/fiber in an urban/suburban setting. If you want to stick it to Comcast+co, this is unlikely to help you cut your cable [internet]. We'll still need to vote and apply pressure to end this oligopoly.
- hedora 6y ago
  At least in the SF Bay Area, rural areas have better internet than the suburbs (not counting places covered with small ISP fiber to the premises). Example rural ISPs. East bay: https://www.unwiredltd.com/residential-internet.html https://www.unwiredltd.com/residential-internet.html (3 up, $50/mo, 6 up, $89/mo, 9mbps up, $129/mo, no caps) South bay: https://www.surfnetusa.com/services/ https://www.surfnetusa.com/services/ (Lots of plans: 5 up, $40/mo, or 18mbps up, $103/month, no caps) I’m paying comcast $80 for 6 up, 1TB cap. It’s nominally 75mbps down, but performance is sometimes too slow for netflix 1080p (3-6 mbps down) during prime time. They won’t sell me a cheaper plan.
  - corford 6y ago
    Tbh, none of those numbers look good from where I'm sitting. I pay €45/month for 80Mb down/20Mb up fibre. Granted I'm in a city (in Portugal). My parents in rural France pay €39/month for 20Mb down / 8Mb up. None of us have data caps
    - hosh 6y ago
      US broadband pricing is atrocious ... and people here don't even know it.
    - dahfizz 6y ago
      I get a symmetric gigabit fiber connection for $80 a month (€70). If I didn't need the bandwidth I can get 200/20 for $45/month. I'm on the US east coast. I think it highly depends on what's available in your area.
new_realist 6y ago
Rural Washington is a smart move; it’s mainly desert. Clouds aren’t great for satellite signals.
lgats 6y ago
More data from main.js parsed out: https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/hr4904/starlink_beta_faq_antenna_images/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/hr4904/starlink_b...
varshithr 6y ago
Listing all FAQs for reference: q:What is Starlink Beta? a:Starlink Beta is an opportunity to be an early user of the SpaceX's satellite internet system.The purpose of Starlink Beta is to gather feedback that will help us make decisions on how best to implement the system for Starlink's official launch. By design, the beta experience will be imperfect. Our goal is to incorporate feedback from a variety of users to ensure we build the best satellite broadband internet system possible. q:Who can participate in Starlink Beta? a:Starlink Beta will begin in the Northern United States and lower Canada, with those living in rural and/or remote communities in the Washington state area. Access to the Starlink Beta program will be driven by the user's location as well as the number of users in nearby areas. All beta testers must have a clear view of the northern sky to participate. q:Why do I need a clear view of the northern sky to be a beta tester? a:The Starlink system is currently made up of nearly 600 satellites orbiting the Earth that can provide internet service in a very specific range between 44 and 52 degrees north latitude. Your Starlink dish requires a clear view of the Northern sky in order to communicate with the Starlink satellites. Without the clear view, the Starlink dish cannot make a good connection and your service will be extremely poor. q:Can I document and share my Starlink Beta experience? a:No, unfortunately you cannot document or share your Starlink Beta experience publicly. Beta testers will be required to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement as a condition of their participation. q:How will my service quality be during Starlink Beta? a:During Starlink Beta, service will be intermittent as teams work to optimize the network. When connected, your service quality will be high, but your connection will not be consistent. This means it may support streaming video with some buffering, but likely is not suitable for gaming or work purposes. q:What is expected of me as a participant in Starlink Beta? a:Beta testers will provide feedback in the form of periodic short surveys over an 8 week period to help our teams improve every aspect of the service. q:Is there a cost to participating Starlink Beta? a:There is no cost to be a beta tester, aside from a $1 charge to help test the billing system. q:What will I receive as a Beta Tester? a:Your Starlink Kit will arrive via FedEx pre-assembled with a Starlink dish, router, power supply and mount depending on your dwelling type. Your Starlink Kit will require a signature for delivery, but you will be able to manage your delivery date and time through FedEx. q:How does Starlink internet work? a:Starlink will deliver high-speed broadband internet across the globe with a large, low-Earth constellation of relatively small but advanced satellites. Satellite internet works by sending information through the vacuum of space, where it travels nearly 50% faster than in fiber-optic cable. q:Most satellite internet services today come from single geostationary satellites that orbit the planet at about 35,000km, covering a fixed region of the Earth. Starlink, on the other hand, is a constellation of multiple satellites that orbit the planet much lower at about 550km, and cover the entire globe. a:Because the satellites are in a low orbit, the round-trip data time between the user and the satellite – also known as latency is much lower than with satellites in geostationary orbit. This enables Starlink to deliver services like online gaming that are usually not possible on other satellite broadband systems q:If I sign up to be a Beta Tester and I change my mind, can I cancel? a:Yes, you can cancel at any time
bawolff 6y ago
> lower Canada That's exciting. Internet could be a real game changer for the 1800's
dudus 6y ago
Can anyone explain why the northern sky? Are the satelites all in the same orbit? And if so shouldn't it be an orbit around the equator? Intuitively for me it should require a view of the southern sky. But I know very little about satelite orbits to be confident.
- Obi_Juan_Kenobi 6y ago
  I can explain it, but the most intuitive explanation comes from simply looking at the sats. https://satellitemap.space/indexA.html https://satellitemap.space/indexA.html (Try to ignore the closely bunched satellites; those haven't spread out yet.) They're all in an inclined orbit, with the orbital planes regularly staggered about Earth's axis. So, the simple way to consider this is that the distance between these orbits is greater at the equator than it is near the poles. An extreme to illustrate the point; if they were all polar orbits, all the orbits would intersect at the poles, providing coverage from all of the planes, whereas each location at the equator might be served by one or two orbital planes.

walrus01 6y ago

There's 4 starlink earth stations in Washington state. The starlink r&d team and office is also based in Redmond. 1. Redmond office site 2. North bend, colocated with CenturyLink long haul fiber hut 3. Brewster, commercial teleport facility, as a tenant, larger site is run by USEI. This is also a TT&C (tracking, telemetry and control) site for starlink space segment network operations. 4. Prosser, also colocated with CenturyLink fiber huts. It is also worth noting that one of the first major internet traffic exchange points which the starlink AS has joined is the SIX (Seattle internet exchange). It's my theory that their IP network and other common ISP-like infrastructure is the most fully developed in Seattle. If you take a look at their peeringdb page it will give you an idea of where they're publicly announcing availability for peeing and PNIs. Presently only Seattle. https://www.peeringdb.com/net/18747 https://www.peeringdb.com/net/18747

starpilot 6y ago
Hey, did you go to umich?
- walrus01 6y ago
  Nope

waiseristy 6y ago

Rural Washington is a great test market, there are entire counties with only a single viable provider (Kittitas). Or counties in which there are NO viable broadband providers (Okanagan)

walrus01 6y ago
There's 3 small independent WISPs in kittitas county in addition to Charter cable in Ellensburg, and whatever Consolidated (the ILEC phone company) is doing. Definitely some more rural parts of kittitas the only thing you can get is a consumer-grade vsat terminal, but those are really quite small amounts of population. For okanogan, Google NCI datacom, they're a wisp that covers much of the county. But not out to the fringes. Okanogan county itself and the PUD have fiber along the highway all the way from Brewster to the Canadian border, with POPs in the towns along the way. Several WISPs make use of it. If you were using either of those counties as an example because you actually know people who are finding it difficult to get last-mile broadband, let me know and perhaps I can help put them in touch with the right people. If we were going to use a very rural Washington State location as an example of where starlink might do well, somewhere such as people who live on acreages outside of Republic might be a better example. Or somewhere like Stehekin. If I had to guess, the reason why Washington state is a good test market for them, is a combination of relatively low cost and easy to provision lit transport services they can buy from each earth station back to Seattle, reasonable driving times and hassle for people to come and go from the Redmond facility to the test sites for physical install and modification of equipment, and a fairly good sized base of consumers in very rural locations presently dependent on hughesnet/wildblue type cheap consumer VSAT.
- waiseristy 6y ago
  Are WISPs really a viable broadband option? The pricing vs data caps that you get are pretty ridiculous, especially for rural customers And yes I do know people who have had problems in these counties. I also had an absolutely miserable experience using Charter due to their poor infrastructure in the valley. Internet on nights, weekends, holidays, etc. was unusable due to their high utilization of low bandwidth lines

rootsudo 6y ago

They emailed me saying to add my address. Seattle

bronco21016 6y ago
FWIW I got the same email in Michigan. I drove by the ground station here in Michigan recently and it’s coming along but it’s definitely not looking close. In a month they basically installed conduit, electrical, and a fence. I don’t currently see any radio gear.
- walrus01 6y ago
  I don't suppose it would be too much to ask if you took some photos of that, and can share them?
  - bronco21016 6y ago
    https://postimg.cc/gallery/k6PhnPs https://postimg.cc/gallery/k6PhnPs Near Manistique, MI. (45.9086063, -86.4838231)
    - walrus01 6y ago
      Thanks, as with the other sites, that is a pre-existing, fairly typical intercity fiber regen hut it is colocated with.
LeoPanthera 6y ago
I got this email and I'm in the bay area, though admittedly up in the SC mountains. Not sure it means anything.

zamalek 6y ago

> prioritize rural It's worth pointing out that this will probably be something only people in rural areas will be interested in. "High speed" is in reference to the utter garbage available to these people. The throughput won't be close to what you can get from copper/fiber in an urban/suburban setting. If you want to stick it to Comcast+co, this is unlikely to help you cut your cable [internet]. We'll still need to vote and apply pressure to end this oligopoly.

hedora 6y ago
At least in the SF Bay Area, rural areas have better internet than the suburbs (not counting places covered with small ISP fiber to the premises). Example rural ISPs. East bay: https://www.unwiredltd.com/residential-internet.html https://www.unwiredltd.com/residential-internet.html (3 up, $50/mo, 6 up, $89/mo, 9mbps up, $129/mo, no caps) South bay: https://www.surfnetusa.com/services/ https://www.surfnetusa.com/services/ (Lots of plans: 5 up, $40/mo, or 18mbps up, $103/month, no caps) I’m paying comcast $80 for 6 up, 1TB cap. It’s nominally 75mbps down, but performance is sometimes too slow for netflix 1080p (3-6 mbps down) during prime time. They won’t sell me a cheaper plan.
- corford 6y ago
  Tbh, none of those numbers look good from where I'm sitting. I pay €45/month for 80Mb down/20Mb up fibre. Granted I'm in a city (in Portugal). My parents in rural France pay €39/month for 20Mb down / 8Mb up. None of us have data caps
  - hosh 6y ago
    US broadband pricing is atrocious ... and people here don't even know it.
  - dahfizz 6y ago
    I get a symmetric gigabit fiber connection for $80 a month (€70). If I didn't need the bandwidth I can get 200/20 for $45/month. I'm on the US east coast. I think it highly depends on what's available in your area.

new_realist 6y ago

Rural Washington is a smart move; it’s mainly desert. Clouds aren’t great for satellite signals.

lgats 6y ago

More data from main.js parsed out: https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/hr4904/starlink_beta_faq_antenna_images/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/hr4904/starlink_b...

varshithr 6y ago

Listing all FAQs for reference: q:What is Starlink Beta? a:Starlink Beta is an opportunity to be an early user of the SpaceX's satellite internet system.The purpose of Starlink Beta is to gather feedback that will help us make decisions on how best to implement the system for Starlink's official launch. By design, the beta experience will be imperfect. Our goal is to incorporate feedback from a variety of users to ensure we build the best satellite broadband internet system possible. q:Who can participate in Starlink Beta? a:Starlink Beta will begin in the Northern United States and lower Canada, with those living in rural and/or remote communities in the Washington state area. Access to the Starlink Beta program will be driven by the user's location as well as the number of users in nearby areas. All beta testers must have a clear view of the northern sky to participate. q:Why do I need a clear view of the northern sky to be a beta tester? a:The Starlink system is currently made up of nearly 600 satellites orbiting the Earth that can provide internet service in a very specific range between 44 and 52 degrees north latitude. Your Starlink dish requires a clear view of the Northern sky in order to communicate with the Starlink satellites. Without the clear view, the Starlink dish cannot make a good connection and your service will be extremely poor. q:Can I document and share my Starlink Beta experience? a:No, unfortunately you cannot document or share your Starlink Beta experience publicly. Beta testers will be required to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement as a condition of their participation. q:How will my service quality be during Starlink Beta? a:During Starlink Beta, service will be intermittent as teams work to optimize the network. When connected, your service quality will be high, but your connection will not be consistent. This means it may support streaming video with some buffering, but likely is not suitable for gaming or work purposes. q:What is expected of me as a participant in Starlink Beta? a:Beta testers will provide feedback in the form of periodic short surveys over an 8 week period to help our teams improve every aspect of the service. q:Is there a cost to participating Starlink Beta? a:There is no cost to be a beta tester, aside from a $1 charge to help test the billing system. q:What will I receive as a Beta Tester? a:Your Starlink Kit will arrive via FedEx pre-assembled with a Starlink dish, router, power supply and mount depending on your dwelling type. Your Starlink Kit will require a signature for delivery, but you will be able to manage your delivery date and time through FedEx. q:How does Starlink internet work? a:Starlink will deliver high-speed broadband internet across the globe with a large, low-Earth constellation of relatively small but advanced satellites. Satellite internet works by sending information through the vacuum of space, where it travels nearly 50% faster than in fiber-optic cable. q:Most satellite internet services today come from single geostationary satellites that orbit the planet at about 35,000km, covering a fixed region of the Earth. Starlink, on the other hand, is a constellation of multiple satellites that orbit the planet much lower at about 550km, and cover the entire globe. a:Because the satellites are in a low orbit, the round-trip data time between the user and the satellite – also known as latency is much lower than with satellites in geostationary orbit. This enables Starlink to deliver services like online gaming that are usually not possible on other satellite broadband systems q:If I sign up to be a Beta Tester and I change my mind, can I cancel? a:Yes, you can cancel at any time

bawolff 6y ago

> lower Canada That's exciting. Internet could be a real game changer for the 1800's

dudus 6y ago

Can anyone explain why the northern sky? Are the satelites all in the same orbit? And if so shouldn't it be an orbit around the equator? Intuitively for me it should require a view of the southern sky. But I know very little about satelite orbits to be confident.

Obi_Juan_Kenobi 6y ago
I can explain it, but the most intuitive explanation comes from simply looking at the sats. https://satellitemap.space/indexA.html https://satellitemap.space/indexA.html (Try to ignore the closely bunched satellites; those haven't spread out yet.) They're all in an inclined orbit, with the orbital planes regularly staggered about Earth's axis. So, the simple way to consider this is that the distance between these orbits is greater at the equator than it is near the poles. An extreme to illustrate the point; if they were all polar orbits, all the orbits would intersect at the poles, providing coverage from all of the planes, whereas each location at the equator might be served by one or two orbital planes.