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Surveys: More Americans Want Starlink Than 5G Home Internet
- pixl97 6y agoBecause the modis operandi of telcos has been "I have altered the deal, pray I don't alter it further" for as long as they have existed.
- greggyb 6y agoFYI, it's 'modus operandi'. (: Agree wholeheartedly with the typical stance of large telcos in the US.
- mindslight 6y agoThe spokesperson for Verizon was literally the voice of Darth Vader. IMO coop-owned fiber is the best answer in the US. Low ping, truly no caps, and generally costs less than the incumbent monopoly. With everyone having done so much tele* over the past year, now is the time to push for it in your community.
- pixl97 6y agoI worked for Cox when one of the first cities in Louisiana voted for municipal broadband. We had terrible service in the city and were not going to spend the few million to fix it. After the city had that vote, in one day they established a 2 million dollar legal and advertising fund to stop the city. And they did hold them up in court for years. I got out of that industry pretty quick.
- Loughla 6y agoIt comes down to data caps, in my experience. Especially in rural areas. My current options: Dial-up (the 'high speed' option offered by big telco [F** you AT&T]): No cap, $50/mo Satellite: 15gb/mo cap, $80/mo Cell: "No cap", but throttled to 1x at 2gb/mo/line. $138/mo for 2 lines. Thank Satan/God/Buddha/Whoever, the local ISP secured a rural internet grant to run fiber past our house this year.
- jointpdf 6y agoMildly interesting fact: the USDA issues grants for broadband development (in the US, obviously): https://www.usda.gov/reconnect https://www.usda.gov/reconnect
- sandworm101 6y ago>> the local ISP secured a rural internet grant Not Satan. The federal government who setup the grants. The state government who licensed the experts who did the work. The local governments who issued the permits and made sure they didn't cut into anything. And the IRS who collected the taxes that paid for the grants. All hail our functioning socialist system.
- beaconstudios 6y ago"socialism is when the government does stuff. And it's more socialism the more stuff it does. And if it does a real lot of stuff then it's communism"
- toomuchtodo 6y agoI have Starlink and a T-Mobile 5G home device (largish gray cylinder). T-Mobile: $50/month. No data caps. ~40-50mb/s down, ~5-10mb/s up. Intermittent connectivity drops (30-60 seconds at a time) and stalls. Line of sight to the tower. Device indicates I'm on LTE as 5G hasn't been enabled yet (either on the device or tower). Starlink: $100/month. No data caps. ~100mb/s down and up. No intermittency or stalls. Kids love watching Dishy acquire satellites. If your budget affords it, I would recommend Starlink.
- minitoar 6y agoT-mobile is capped sort of, once you hit like 50 GB you are throttled to worthless speeds.
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- mumblemumble 6y agoI'm not surprised. Consumers have been subjected to at good 20 years now of being conditioned to associate anything that matches the pattern /\dG/ with increasingly exaggerated, hypoxic, and unbelievable sales pitches. The only reason US telcos haven't been properly called on their BS is that people (understandably) don't see taking their money and going home as a realistic option.
- MattGaiser 6y agoMy grandparents had cellular internet until they moved closer to the city. It was unreliable and they kept on altering the prices and what was in the deal.
- blackrock 6y agoIf it costs $100/month, and you can get local streaming TV service from it too, then this can compete with cable tv.
- zero_deg_kevin 6y agoI do expect SpaceX to eventually start acting like a legacy communications provider. They don’t seem to be right now, which makes them the most compelling choice on the market for me.
- dhagz 6y agoJust wait until their in-home boxes start crapping out because the software burned out the RAM from writing too many logs.
- tweenagedream 6y agoGenerally RAM doesn't burn out, so I don't think that will be the reason. My guess it will be around capacity, though if the LEO ISP market has multiple players all covering the same areas, there is a chance we don't fall into the market segmentation we have now since there will be multiple options.
- zero_deg_kevin 6y agoIf what you described were even possible, I’d buy a new Dishy McFuckface every month if it meant never talking to Centurylink again.
- fogihujy 6y agoWouldn't decent 5G coverage require a large amounts of masts? Starlink just seems more reasonable for areas with low populations and large distances.
- mumblemumble 6y agoIf it's true that 5G has a range of only ~300m, then, in the area where I grew up, we'd probably have needed one tower for every 1-2 houses. So yeah, seems like an urban tech to me. In rural areas, it would degrade into a Rube Goldberg version of fiber.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mason55 6y agoThere are multiple versions of 5G. Some are fast and have a short range (think 1gbps) others are slower but have longer range. I’m in a rural/urban transition area and we have a solid 5G signal that gives me 200mbps on my phone.
- freebuju 6y ago> 200mbps So 4G speeds then .. (assuming the phone used is a modern device)
- superkuh 6y agoNeither Starlink nor wireless telco mobile services are home internet. They are home web+. If an ISP does not give you an ipv4 address it is not an ISP. It's a web service provider (WSP).
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- freeone3000 6y agoWhat protocols are you thinking of that don't work over ipv6? Everything from ftp to gopher to ssh works fine. Every IPv4 address created has been assigned. There have been at least two rounds of clawbacks. The current mode of operation is to buy blocks from Ethiopia, since they're IPv6-first. There's really no need for a new internet connection to be assigned an IPv4 address.
- superkuh 6y agoParticipating in peer to peer networks and hosting from home to start. Pretty much anything that involves talking directly to other humans instead of having to go through a corporation requires having an internet routable address and ports. It'd be great if ipv6 were adopted, but it isn't. Only having an ipv6 address effectively cuts you off from 99% of the internet. All that's left is big corporate websites.
- freeone3000 6y agoIPv6 is internet-routable. You seem to be objecting to a different thing than the IP version used. Maybe the use of CGNAT, or the non-persistent assignment of IPv6 addresses? (The first is a IPv4 thing, the second also a thing under IPv4.) DynDNS is a very workable solution to counteract non-static assignment of addresses. EDIT in reply to EDIT: Gee, if only there were some wide-scale home internet use adoption giving everyone an IPv6 address in order to ensure it's supported.
- mindslight 6y agoIt's prudent to assume that every ISP surveils your naive traffic, so native IPv4 service isn't good for much anyway. A VPN (whether consumer or self-hosted VPS) will add a mere $5/mo to the cost. Providing the physical layer is what's important.
- Nathanael_M 6y agoIn Northern Ontario where I'm located, I think the local rural ISP's are going to die out pretty quickly. They all rely on huge government grants to build towers that will provide shoddy internet to 100 people. We're getting more and more clients ordering Starlink dishes and if the numbers are anything like what they're saying they're getting it's not even a competition.
- dreamcompiler 6y ago5G is mostly an advertising gimmick at this point. I've studied the 5G engineering documentation and there are some good ideas in there but it's not going to give most consumers anything fundamentally better than what they have now, even when it's built out. And even then it won't help rural consumers get better internet. And since it's coming from the cell providers everybody expects they'll just game it as yet another monopolistic revenue extraction tool. Contrast with Starlink which will help rural consumers get better internet and introduce real competition into the marketplace, and the advantage is clear.
- tengbretson 6y agoAt this point, 5G just seems like a gimmick for selling you internet connected devices that you can't unplug.
- olah_1 6y agoI don’t know a single person that ever asked for speeds faster than 4G on their phone. The jump from 3G to 4G solved all complaints I heard. Improved coverage? Yes I’ve heard that a lot. It seems like 5G is being pushed for other reasons. Corporate growth, ability to sell more surveillance data, etc.
- zamadatix 6y agoMost 5G hype cycle I hear isn't about the phones though. I mean yeah it's mentioned when the latest top end phone has it but it's not really where the hype is directed.
- DebtDeflation 6y agoHad an interesting experience with Comcast recently. They send me an email stating that I have exceeded the 1.2TB monthly cap on my Unlimited plan, but that I can upgrade to a Truly Unlimited plan for another $25/mo. I go to their website and apparently the upgrade is $30/mo if I want to use my own equipment but $25/mo if I use theirs. That makes no sense, but whatever. I sign up. A few days later their integrated modem/wireless router shows up. I forget about it. A week or so after that, late morning on a weekday, my internet goes down. I was in the middle of a work Zoom and my kids were on Zoom for school. Terrible timing. Turns out, Comcast turned off my internet until I connected the new equipment and signed up for the "new" service. I was pretty livid. Researched Starlink. Hmm, 100-150Mb/s. Let me see what I'm getting from Comcast.....run a speed test.....389Mb/s. Oh well, guess I'm staying.
- hnburnsy 6y agoCan you just plug in your networking great into the Comcast box and ignore their wifi?
- DebtDeflation 6y agoNo, they literally turned off my internet, putting me into their walled garden. Any outbound connection attempt was redirected to their captive portal telling me to install the new gear and activate my new service.