31 ms·

Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

• radres 6y ago
  I see that some people think we can do much better in latency. But you need to realize an information will never, never ever, travel from Europe to US West under 30 ms. Why? Light travels from Berlin to SF in 30 milliseconds. That is absolute minimum you can do. This is not even roundtrip time. So when Starlink tells you it will be 20 ms, just think about 20 ms to where? To the nearest satellite? Sure.
  • fy20 6y ago
    There probably are routes where RTT time for Starlink is faster than the RTT over a dedicated fibre optic link. Fibre optic links need to follow geographical and political constraints, which these do not. These satellites are at an altitude of 560km, so it's not hard to imagine there are some places where it could be faster to use Starlink (say Spain - Turkey). You also need to consider the speed of light in the atmosphere is faster than fibre optic cables by around 40%. However if there is a need for something like that, then it's probably already going via satellite. For the average consumer these will probably be faster for Western US - EU just because there are less hops and less companies involved (as I understand the backhaul isn't yet going between satellites).
  • rlt 6y ago
    I think it’s implied that’s 20 ms to geographically close destinations on the internet rather than within their own network. Online gaming is mostly where this matters. I don’t know much about this but I assume most games have geographically diverse set of game servers so no matter where you are (within limits) latency isn’t terrible.
• sf_rob 6y ago
  I believe that this is new. I received an email from them about opening orders by address on a first come first serve basis with $99 deposit.
  • timbit42 6y ago
    They started this about a week ago.
    • sf_rob 6y ago
      Thanks! It was new to me and I didn't see any posts at a glance. Guess I'll leave it because there's momentum.
• thorwasdfasdf 6y ago
  100$ a month. Plus a 600$ fee to buy the hardware. i think they said 50mbps - 150mpbs It's a little on the pricey side but at least, as far I know, it's not comcast or at&t.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • joezydeco 6y ago
    What's the currrent word on data caps? Unlimited for now?
    • kodah 6y ago
      Unlimited for now but they've hinted they could cap them later.
      • tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
        If I was them, I'd offer uncapped Internet, but prioritize based on past bandwidth usage if there is congestion. So if you use a lot of bandwidth, you still get full speed at night, but during peak times, other users get priority and your connection becomes slower. Bonus points if they only take bandwidth usage during peaks into account, incentivizing customers to move bulk transfers to off-peak hours when the traffic is effectively free.
  • kortilla 6y ago
    It’s not really meant to compete with cable/fiber. This is for people stuck with geo stationary trash, dsl, microwave relay, etc. It’s a massive market and can take SpaceX to a trillion dollar company easily without ever stealing a cable customer.
    • wkcmp 6y ago
      Great insight, and I agree. With a lot of family and some friends in rural parts of the U.S., the weak internet and cable connections are detrimental to any sort of internet-based tech.
• betwixthewires 6y ago
  This is great. I'm glad this project is coming along fast. I'm hoping some time soon that the fixed location requirement is lifted, or at the very least they allow users to sign up to it as a sort of mobile service. I know it isn't handheld, but for people who move around a lot and especially who work in remote outdoor situations, the ability to move around with this service would be amazing. I'm sure at some point, when they do have the satellite to satellite links in the sky and there aren't ground station bottlenecks they will. High speed internet on the oceans or for travelers in rural areas is an untouched market.
  • junon 6y ago
    My understanding is that limitation is mostly technical and managerial at this point, to help manage things in the early stages. I would too imagine this being eliminated later on.
    • walrus01 6y ago
      They intentionally need to populate a certain number of terminals into specific geographic areas to test, measure and refine how time-sharing contention and the equivalent of TDMA is being setup. Each terminal has a GPS receiver in it and reports home with its location.
      • stefan_ 6y ago
        That sounds like more conspiracy theories. For all we know it has a GPS receiver as a precise reference clock.
        • walrus01 6y ago
          no, quite literally, if you move a beta terminal from your designated service location, it won't work. I know at least 4 people who also have beta terminals who have tried it. It depends on the size of your 'cell' - some people have been able to go a few km away, some people report it doesn't work even a few hundred meters away from their house. When you sign up for the beta you have to specify your street address and also click on an aerial map where you intend to install it. And of course a GPS receiver is useful for timing.
• robomartin 6y ago
  Many years ago I played a very small part in this adventure. It's great to finally see it coming online.
• 2pEXgD0fZ5cF 6y ago
  Has anyone analysed Starlink in terms of jitter and packet loss yet? Seems like every source so far only shows average ping and down/up speed.
  • tylerscott 6y ago
    Anecdotal for sure but our connection has been fairly consistent. We do experience the occasional 10 second disconnect every so often. SSH over Starlink has me reach for my DSL for those use cases. If you want specific numbers, I can pull whatever data.
    • throwaway888abc 6y ago
      Try Mosh (https://mosh.org/ https://mosh.org/) if you can for those SSH drop outs. Did you tested/used anything like Zoom, Google Meet, Face Time, Signal, Whatsapp ? How is the beta experience ? Usable ? Can you comment please ? Thank you
• geerlingguy 6y ago
  I was able to place an actual order just last week in St. Louis, MO. I will be using it and doing some tests in an area that actually has cable Internet (though spotty, and until very recently was limited to less than 20 Mbps up, no matter how much you paid). But you have to realize, when you look at the $600 initial cost and $100 monthly fee—this will bring 100+ Mbps down and 15+ Mbps up to so many places (even in suburbs) where people couldn't get more than 10/2 or so for any price. I already know a few people who don't even live in rural parts who would happily pay triple just to get off their junk DSL or flaky Cable connection, even with Starlink in beta. They are already used to spotty Internet, so Starlink is a massive improvement even if it's spotty (which it hasn't been, according to these users).
  • samstave 6y ago
    UH??? Serious Question: So are the early adopters subsidizing the masses down the line? i.e. so at $100/mo + $600 start-up/set-up fee -- thats for early adopters ... so the "african farmer who can pay <$1/mo for the service can afford it... and corporate subscriptions are obv going to be big bulk data contacts? And the encryption policy? The Privacy policy? The data-mining-of-location-history policy? Yeah, it's a Nope from me dawg... And I folow Elon closely, and I like a lot of what he says and stands for - but he is at the behest of the USG - Starlink must not be trusted.
    • jedimastert 6y ago
      > And the encryption policy? The Privacy policy? The data-mining-of-location-history policy? What's the difference between this and any other ISP?
      • teej 6y ago
        Many folks don’t know or forgot that there are ISPs in the US that do deep packet inspection and inject banner ads into http traffic.
        • hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
• jiveturkey 6y ago
  ? link says limited pre orders
  • sf_rob 6y ago
    I could have definitely phrased the title better. The point being that they are out of limited Beta and rolling our first come first serve by region.
• tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
  Any idea on pricing? I wonder how many people would switch over if it was priced ~$10 higher than a Comcast plan, just to avoid having to deal with Comcast. I hope this ubiquitous competition will force prices for wired Internet down and customer service quality up. And if it is able to scale, this will be a VERY attractive offer in underdeveloped countries like Germany. (Germany may be a first world country, but the Internet access options sure don't feel that way.) Will Starlink offer mobile solutions? I could see this being a game changer for Internet on ships or for temporary use in extremely remote locations where a sat phone at eye-watering prices were the only options right now.
  • zamadatix 6y ago
    $499 to get the equipment and $99/m for service. Right now service is locked to the cell you purchase in. The intent is to allow mobility eventually.
    • thrwn_frthr_awy 6y ago
      Keep in mind the $99 is the price for the beta. I’m not sure if they’ve confirmed the non-beta price.
    • reustle 6y ago
      It feels weird that I pay some small SaaS products more than this. You'd think slinging a few hundred satellites into space would be a more difficult / expensive endeavor.
      • boardwaalk 6y ago
        SpaceX is way in the red on this right now. But I'm sure they've done the math on how much profit they can extract from the constellation in the long term.
        • swarnie_ 6y ago
          Yep - Profit and loss are pretty much meaningless while investors are still willingly to fling cash at them faster then they can spend it.
• gojomo 6y ago
  "Starlink is not yet available in your area" - for San Francisco :( (Guessing they're prioritizing places with few other options.)
• tylerscott 6y ago
  Satisfied Starlink user here. It beats the pants off our DSL connection though there are still some hiccups. Outside DSL, all we had available were the high orbiting Hughes, etc. I’m stoked to see more folks have this as an option.
  • 0xffff2 6y ago
    As a Hughesnet customer without even the option of DSL, I'm always sad/jealous when I see these comments. I would gladly pay $100/month for DSL!
• systemvoltage 6y ago
  I am not sure if this is wishful thinking but can Starlink lead to growth of smaller communities that are self-sustaining (produce their own renewable electricity, food, etc) that cannot simply exist due to connectivity constraints? I have a dream of the world where we live in 1-10k population small towns littered around the globe, connected through starlink and public ways, and the idea of cities would become obsolete. No more traffic jams and NIMBYs and other nonsense. Better policies suited to those neighborhoods and better politicians. Unique culture would flourish in each community based on its dynamics. Utopia in my imaginary mind, what are the downsides?
  • junon 6y ago
    Not sure how any of that magically creates better politicians, and it's worth mentioning that some people really enjoy large cities and the idea of a megalopolis. However, I do agree that Starlink could be the answer to impoverished areas not having readily available internet. This is something I hope to see change as a result, as it would really reinforce some of the early sentiments Elon put out a long while ago.
    • systemvoltage 6y ago
      That's true, I also like some aspects of large cities, especially on the East coast (NYC). I was thinking that better politicians because of conciousness of the community towards its own governance, we already do that but very poorly. I don't even know who the politicians are in my own county. No idea what they do and I don't know if we have a local newspaper in our county. May be I should engage in town halls and local politics.
      • junon 6y ago
        I find that the smaller areas tend to have worse politicians as there are less to choose from. I can see it being both ways. Plus, not many politicians in the US at least really seem to care about the thoughts or even the well-being of their constituents. If anything, it's the access to information that would result in better education which would thus (hopefully) result in more informed voters. That would be the real win, in my opinion.
• rudedogg 6y ago
  Linus Tech Tips recently did a video about Starlink: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fh1a2K9ZgNA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fh1a2K9ZgNA
• H8crilA 6y ago
  Does anyone know how many users can be supported per dense area? Would this make sense in a city of 10k? 100k? 1M? Generally speaking Starlink goes against one of the main ideas in 5G, namely that of small cells.
  • tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
    Compared to other satellite Internet solutions, I believe Starlink has much smaller "cells". Obviously nowhere near as small as terrestrial 5G in dense areas.
• walrus01 6y ago
  I have been using a starlink beta terminal for 3 months now, ask me whatever you want. Day job is senior network engineer for a regional-sized (4 US states) fiber based ISP. My most important message to everyone reading this is that it's not intended to compete with properly implemented wireline based services. It's going to absolutely blow away consumer-grade highly oversubscribed, bottom of the barrel ku and ka band geostationary satellite services (hughesnet, viasat in the USA, xplornet in Canada), and any WISP that can't keep up with a 150 Mbps figure. And eventually for really hard to reach places in the developing world, and much of the same offshore/aviation/maritime industry that right now pays tons of money to Inmarsat.
  • IgorPartola 6y ago
    One of the big issues I’ve had with anything but wired ISPs is latency. They specifically talk about 20-40ms latency being expected in most locations, but don’t specify to where. I currently get about 20 +/- 4 ms from me to 8.8.8.8 consistently. Is their latency to my first hop? Also, what is their IPv6 support like? Can I get a routable /60 or similar? Static IPv4/IPv6? And do you need to use their router or can you hook in anything you want? Bandwidth limits? Any other restrictions, either via their TOS or through some kind of firewall? Is this experience ever going to approach something like fiber or even cable?
    • walrus01 6y ago
      a. absolute lowest latency I've seen to a major IX point in seattle is about 15.8ms. More often it's 22-23ms. On a longer term, averages between 20-30ms. That's for the combined total of four 550km paths through space plus terrestrial latency from their earth station to seattle. Keep in mind that on something like a DOCSIS3 cable coax last mile segment can have a minimum latency of 12-16ms from just the cablemodem to the local CMTS in the neighborhood, so that's actually really good. It's not as good as fiber but it's significantly better than many other options. One has to account for the need for the antenna/modem to modulate and apply FEC on the Tx at both my CPE antenna and the spacex earth station on the other end (at least a few ms). b. no ipv6 yet. They have people who know what they are doing for neteng so I am sure it is planned. c. all IPs are in cgnat IP space right now. Nobody is getting a discrete dhcp-assigned public ipv4 /32 yet. You can hook up whatever router you want, anything you plug into the PoE injector that is an ordinary 1000BaseT 1500 mtu DHCP client will be given an address. The router they hand out is a very bare bones 802.11ac 2x2 MIMO thing that is based on openwrt. restrictions, you can't move it from your designated service location. That's part of the beta TOS. Using it, it is a real 150 Mbps down x 16.5 Mbps up. I have put non technical guest users on it doing various things and from their perspective it cannot be distinguished from the separate terrestrial connection at the same location.
• secfirstmd 6y ago
  I'm currently in the middle of trying to help loads of human rights defenders in Myanmar plan to deal with the internet shut downs that are happening. Satellite stuff like Iridium is too crazily expensive to be useful. I really wish some thing like this was available.
  • zachberger 6y ago
    How can someone help you out with this? I think this is really important work.
    • secfirstmd 6y ago
      Drop me a mail at the email in my bio!
  • cma 6y ago
    Wouldn't these be easily visible from the sky? They need clear line of site. It seems like it would be like putting out "come arrest me" smoke signals.
    • ericd 6y ago
      They could probably be camouflaged with something that doesn’t attenuate signal much?
  • aero-glide2 6y ago
    Starlink will always follow local regulations. Its easy for the government to triangulate the location of user terminals.
    • Clewza313 6y ago
      Starlink will follow local regulations when there's money to be made locally, but what's their incentive to comply with places like Myanmar or North Korea, where the regime is going to prohibit Starlink anyway?
  • 6y ago
• trestenhortz 6y ago
  It was covered recently on Linus Techtips: https://youtu.be/Fh1a2K9ZgNA https://youtu.be/Fh1a2K9ZgNA
• joubert 6y ago
  Not available in my part of Los Angeles.
  • imoverclocked 6y ago
    Same thing for me in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
• encryptluks2 6y ago
  $99 upfront... could take 6 months (maybe more for shipment). Did Gamestop CEO get promoted to Starkink CEO?
• Jedd 6y ago
  I put a pre-order in a week ago, after the status changed a couple of days earlier (from 'please give us your email address so we can advise you' to 'we have a limited offering per region' - which is what's showing now). I'm about 250km north-west of Sydney, Australia, currently limited to a 25/5Mbps satellite circuit, with 600+ms RTT. I'm paying AUD$80 pcm, and have a data cap of 80 / 150 GB (peak/off-peak). Between 17:00 and 23:00 the effective service drops down to about 5Mbps down. Starlink in AU will cost ~ AUD$140 pcm, 30ms RTT, and likely give me 100 / 20 Mbps, with no cap (at least until the heavy-feeders come in and ruin that arrangement for the rest of us). (EDIT - plus AUD $700 once the order is processed later this year, for the equipment.) I believe some regions - eg, Norfolk Island - have already max'd out their pre-order quotas though. EDIT: fixed typo of MB -> GB
  • gibybo 6y ago
    >25/5Mbps satellite circuit >data cap of 80 / 150 MB So if you had the full 25 mbps available, you would hit your peak cap in 26 seconds? Do you only use it for email/text based applications?
    • Jedd 6y ago
      Yikes, and thanks for picking that up. I meant 80 / 150 GB -- I'll correct my earlier post.
• supernova87a 6y ago
  Note, it says you cannot take your Starlink to a different address (or I suppose, put it on a boat, plane, RV, etc): https://www.starlink.com/faq https://www.starlink.com/faq "Can I travel with Starlink, or move it to a different address? Starlink satellites are scheduled to send internet down to all users within a designated area on the ground. This designated area is referred to as a cell. Your Starlink is assigned to a single cell. If you move your Starlink outside of its assigned cell, a satellite will not be scheduled to serve your Starlink and you will not receive internet. This is constrained by geometry and is not arbitrary geofencing." Although, whether this is a technical limitation of the bandwidth/footprint, or an operational strategy is someone more knowledgeable's guess. Does it have to do with how many beams they choose to / can create from the satellite antenna array? And only certain cells with concentrated users are "enabled" for service? Until more satellites come? Do they actually lock your subscriber ID (?) to the particular cell and would deny it if it appeared an an incorrect cell, or is it as they say literally, as long as a cell is served, you could be one of the "all users" within the cell? So many questions.
  • ttul 6y ago
    I will test this.
    • 6nf 6y ago
      Thank you. I suspect this is more of a CYA clause in practice
    • cmason 6y ago
      I’d be really interested to know how much motion the current terminal can tolerate? Does it lock at the slightest vibration or only if moving at vehicle speed? I’m thinking about putting it on a boat at anchor or at a dock. Thanks
      • ianai 6y ago
        People have tested it. It’s about a 90 mile radius. It’s a hard limit of having limited satellites service a large (90 mile) radius.
• nuker 6y ago
  Whats one satellite bandwidth? If a sat flies over a city with, say, 100k subscribers, and 10% is watching 4k video on Netflix? There gonna be limits, right?
  • celsoazevedo 6y ago
    > If a sat flies over a city "Musk said there will be plenty of bandwidth in areas with low population densities and that there will be some customers in big cities. But he cautioned against expecting that everyone in a big city would be able to use Starlink. "The challenge for anything that is space-based is that the size of the cell is gigantic... it's not good for high-density situations," Musk said." https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/03/musk-says-starlink-isnt-for-big-cities-wont-be-huge-threat-to-telcos/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/03/musk-... Essentially, it's not aimed at people that live in cities and have access to other alternatives.
    • edgyquant 6y ago
      Other than the cool factor I’m not sure why you’d want it in a city. I get gigabit for 60$ a month and star link will never match the latency I get due to physics. If it was cheap enough I’d love to get it for traveling but it should be used for things like that not to replace your inner city connection.
      • toast0 6y ago
        Depends on where in the city. If I were closer to the city, I could probably get something better from Comcast, but CenturyLink bonded vdsl2 is 80Mbps down/10Mbps up, 20 ms round trip to PPPoE concentrator, $60ish/month. Starlink seems to have maybe better upload and comparable download and latency, and won't go down when the DSLAM (or whatever it's called for vdsl) loses utility power, like my centurylink service does or 2-4 hours later like the cell towers do.
      • whatthesmack 6y ago
        Backup internet. I live in a remote, medium-sized city and need an internet link that constantly works. Comcast usually fills that need, but there are occasional outages. T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T's fixed internet offerings are not available where I am. Starlink is what I've been waiting for :)
• chasd00 6y ago
  It would be cool if billing was usage based. Like I have a cabin but I’m not there all the time.
  • aero-glide2 6y ago
    You could just pay for the months you are there.
• AlexDanger 6y ago
  I'm a big believer in Starlink and SpaceX generally. It annoys me that I can not invest in these big bold innovations directly. Has anyone thought about how to invest indirectly on the belief that Starlink will succeed? For instance, are there satellite equipment suppliers or other upstream supplier who stand to profit with Starlink's success? Likewise, who might fail based on Starlink's success? Should I be shorting Satellite based ISPs?
  • system2 6y ago
    I was looking for starlink IPO. There is some good news I read for the last few months. I think it would succeed more than Tesla since it is more global and affordable. https://observer.com/2021/02/spacex-secret-funds-starlink-ipo-plan-elon-musk/ https://observer.com/2021/02/spacex-secret-funds-starlink-ip...
  • syedkarim 6y ago
    There are dozens of custom ICs from STMicroelectronics in each terminal. ST is a public company; NYSE:STM The terminal is also using a large amount of high-frequency substrate. That could be Rogers, but maybe one of the much cheaper Chinese materials. But I don’t think a position should be taken based on what’s inside of a terminal. The real play is in shorting the entire satellite industry. Every existing satellite operators stands to lose from Starlink’s success. Maybe not SiriusXM. Crazy that their net income is still increasing every year. Intelsat’s cost per bit is much higher than Starlink’s. They also have much less system capacity. EchoStar owns HughesNet. NASDAQ: SATS Eutelsat: same as Intelsat, but with less debt on their books. SES: Wild card among legacy satellite operators, as they have a new, high capacity (O3B mPower) system in the works. Viasat’s 3-terabit GEO system should be competitive from a cost-perspective, but latency will be much worse. If price is the same as Starlink, they will lose on quality of connectivity/latency. Iridium, GlobalStar, Orbcomm. Public companies that focus on narrowband/low bitrate/IoT communications. Much of the use cases can be solved with a Starlink terminal and an IoT hub/gateway, rather than going directly from a small sensor to a satellite. There are a few public GEO operators in Asia; they’ll have the same problem as the European and American operators. There’s virtually nothing that these companies can do to compete. They are all procurement specialists, rather than being engineering-led/driven. Most importantly, they all pay full price for launch, whereas SpaceX gets it for not much more than gas-money. And SpaceX can get way more cash than anyone else at a much cheaper price. It’s tough to fight against that kind of war chest.
• marc__1 6y ago
  Maybe naive question, but what are the tech and/or economical hurdles that impede 'edge' nodes to become satellites now that Starlink is approaching a large scale?
  • aero-glide2 6y ago
    what do edge nodes mean here? The user terminals?
• partiallypro 6y ago
  I pre-ordered and will probably not get it until July/August, I'm pretty excited about it. One thing I noticed when pre-ordering is that it didn't offer to sell me roof mount, which I'll need... I hope I can buy this later? I know they sell them but it wasn't an add on for the pre-order.
  • aero-glide2 6y ago
    Preorder just puts you in the queue. Yes you can buy it later.
    • partiallypro 6y ago
      I had assumed so but the email/confirmation said it would immediately ship and I'd be charged when it became available.
• blackoil 6y ago
  It seems people getting most value of it are rich people from developed countries with dysfunctional monopolies. People in developing countries (my exp. in India/China and SEA) already have access to decent 4G at much better prices. Most people without not covered will not be able to afford it anyway.
  • walrus01 6y ago
    You clearly have not seen how much of Nepal is currently dependent on very costly geostationary satellite. Fiber and terrestrial point to point high capacity microwave isn't everywhere. Or how much of Indonesia in remote places is dependent on satellite.
    • blackoil 6y ago
      What will the percentage, in terms of population? I have been to big cities in both countries and small villages in India and never had a major connectivity issue in last 2-3 years. Remote hills/jungle may not have any coverage but feasible market in those areas is miniscule.
      • walrus01 6y ago
        Look at the combined annual revenue in billions of intelsat, eutelsat, ses, arabsat, yahsat, russia's geostationary gazprom, amos spacecom and other geostationary satellite owners. plus the revenue of the various latin america geostationary sat owners. The market is there, worldwide.
• ramosu 6y ago
  It seems to be available here in Brazil (São Paulo). Interesting, but too expensive for me to try (and I don't think I really need it).
• perryizgr8 6y ago
  Good video demonstrating setup and first use: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-nQOIZ1IwY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-nQOIZ1IwY
• kyleblarson 6y ago
  I live in a remote town in the North Cascades in Washington State in the US and know about a dozen folks who have had Starlink for a few months now. I'm lucky enough to have line of sight to a tower on a mountain 6 miles away so I can have consistent service from a local ISP and haven't had to rely on sats. But it's a game changer for those who aren't as lucky as I. It still drops a lot which obviously causes problems for those on VPN's but it's so much better than Centurylink, the only previous non sat option. Areas that were previously only weekend homes for skiers and snowmobilers are now feasible for remote workers, which is a double edged sword given that our area has boomed significantly since COVID hit. A lot of local folk are now worried that our area will turn into the next Jackson Hole or Sun Valley as real estate prices skyrocket and longtime locals are priced out. I've seen the Starlink satellite train in the early morning sky a few times while walking the dog and it's pretty trippy.
  • aero-glide2 6y ago
    They are launching new sats every 2 weeks, so by the end of the year there should be no drops.
  • mike_d 6y ago
    > A lot of local folk are now worried that our area will turn into the next Jackson Hole or Sun Valley as real estate prices skyrocket and longtime locals are priced out. You can calm their fears by reminding them that Starlink is rolling out _nationwide_, so remote workers are going to move to lots of different places.
  • walrus01 6y ago
    I am at about your same latitude and have seen 3-4 hour periods with as low as 0.08% packet loss to seattle. There is already 'full' make before break satellite hand off coverage at our latitude. If your neighbors are using terminals with tree obstruction on any side they may see much more loss than that. Things have also been a lot better since Jan 15 or so, as satellite density increases.
• awb 6y ago
  Pricing looks like $499 for hardware, $50 shipping and $99/mo for service. I had trouble getting fast internet at a rural location and ended up going with T-Mobile Home Internet for $50/mo and no setup fee. They claim 50mbps but ours typically exceeds 100mbps with unlimited data so no complaints so far. I’m not affiliated with either company, just interesting to see the new internet offerings available to rural homes.
• smaudet 6y ago
  We should be banning this nonsense... All this talk of uplink on the roads...for what? Uploading cat vids? Going into the wilderness and not cord cutting? Spying on people? So your phone has an excuse to be on more often? There are no real justifiable applications to this tech, and it comes at real cost, to our scientific understanding of the universe, to our general ability to appreciate nature, and even arguably to our ability to transition to new tech (what's the realistic upgrade scenario here, so far nobody has successfully safely pulled a junked satellite out of orbit, not to mention the issue of space junk), all so some geeks can play vidya games in the woods? Fuck. That.
• sinak 6y ago
  A lot of people seem to think that Starlink will compete with Comcast/Cox/Spectrum/etc in suburban areas. But it won't. Starlink is great, and people are right to be excited about it as an option for signal in truly rural areas. But it simply won't have the capacity necessary to serve a meaningful number of users in any kind of semi-dense application. Starlink is like a 4G/5G cellular network except there's no way to increase capacity in a specific area. That makes it great at covering areas with very low population density, but absolutely terrible for even medium-density zones. If you're stuck in a suburban or exurban area with terrible options for broadband, your best option is likely a 4G or 5G router. There a number of different truly unlimited plans out there (e.g. Calyx). If signal isn't good enough indoors, you can purchase outdoor MIMO antennas to get better results. Starlink is great if you're in area with very low population density. That's a lot of the US, but not a lot of the US population.
• yalogin 6y ago
  I don’t understand how this can be low latency and how the throughput and bandwidth can be high. Can someone knowledgeable explain it?
  • gonesilent 6y ago
    Low earth orbit, 1000 sats up now, 20k+ planned.
• nickt 6y ago
  Recently discussed here, conventional ISPs moaning about Starlink. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26085577 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26085577
• irwwwan 6y ago
  Can't wait for it!
• tren 6y ago
  Anyone know how to contact support through the web interface? In the FAQ it says it's possible to do so when you're logged in -- somehow by changing my shipping address the service address got screwed up.
• 40four 6y ago
  ”Starlink satellites are over 60 times closer to Earth than traditional satellites” Goodness! I really need to learn more about satellites! For some reason that statement really strikes me. I wonder what the ‘band’ of distance from earth most satellites fall into. The range of area a satellite can orbit earth must be pretty wide if this is the case. Now I need to look up what is the closest & furthest distance a small object can reasonably orbit earth. I mean, now that I think of it, the moon is a satellite. How far is the moon? Dang it, I’m realizing I really take all these things for granted. I just realized my reading TODO list for the weekend :)
  • Plutoberth 6y ago
    Starlink roughly orbits at 1200km. The most common orbit for internet sats is geostationary orbit, which means that the satellite is stationary with regards to an observer on Earth. It works because a satellite on a circular orbit at that height moves at the same speed as the rotation of Earth. This way you can have a simple, pointed antenna and not an obscenely expensive phased array like Starlink. That being said, GEO is only 36000km,so I'm not sure where the "60 times" figure comes from...
    • nickik 6y ago
      They are orbiting at 550 km, 1200km was the original constellation plan that was later changed.
    • twicetwice 6y ago
      Starlink currently orbits at 550 km. 550*60=33000 so that puts it slightly more than 60 times closer than GEO. There are other shells planned at different heights, but the current satellites, and ones launched in the near future, are all orbiting at 550km. Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink -- in the table of launches there's a column for orbit height.
      • Plutoberth 6y ago
        Right - thanks for the correction.
• xbmcuser 6y ago
  The biggest thing Starlink will bring is competition now people will be shocked at how the older ISP's are suddenly able to provide better speeds for cheaper and no download upload limits. Just like it area where google fiber was introduced.
  • 88840-8855 6y ago
    This will be true for the first 1-2 years or so. Once more people can be reached, marginal cost for new customers will go down and consequently the prices of the package. There is a big difference between delivering some hardware to 10k people vs. 400mio people. I will not be surprised if Starlink manages to be price-competetive within the next 3 to 5 years.
  • thebigspacefuck 6y ago
    I’m of the opinion people like to massively overpay for their Internet and speeds paid for are underused. I’m on 25Mbps at $40/month. I was on 75Mbps for a bit and I don’t notice the difference except if I’m downloading a 90 GB game or something. My ISP could probably give me 200Mbps and neither of us would notice. Still waiting on the killer app for fast Internet. Surprisingly TMobile’s 5G on the iPhone 12 is giving my dad 60Mbps download and he’s on a cheap unlimited data plan so I’m wondering if that’s what is going to put more pressure on existing ISPs. 5G adoption has probably been kind of low so those speeds may not hold.
  • 0xffff2 6y ago
    The primary ISPs competing with Starlink are geo-stationary satellite internet providers. They can't compete with Starlink just based on the speed of light delays inherent to being in GEO. Once I can get Starlink, Hughesnet can offer their service for free and I'll still be more than happy to tell them where to shove their dish.
• mothsonasloth 6y ago
  I live on the Western Isles of Scotland I tried random places near me to see if they show up on Starlink The nearest one to me is Stornoway (the main town on Harris) I am about 50 miles away from it Would this solution work? Currently I am happy with my 4G internet but always interested to try something else. https://www.google.com/maps/place/57%C2%B038'54.0%22N+7%C2%B014'49.9%22W/@57.648337,-7.2493827,17z/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x0:0x0!7e2!8m2!3d57.6483367!4d-7.2471936 https://www.google.com/maps/place/57%C2%B038'54.0%22N+7%C2%B... Also the Satellite doesn't look like it would do well in a coastal area with saltwater.
  • andrewaylett 6y ago
    Try using a Plus Code? The link you sent is 9C9MRJ9C+XP (visible in the left panel of Google Maps when you click on a location) which isn't on land and is rejected by the Starlink website, but "V84R+RR Isle of Scalpay" (the nearest land) gives me the same pricing as I see for my location in Edinburgh. So I suspect you'd be fine.
    • mothsonasloth 6y ago
      Thanks, I sent the wrong link (updated) The plus code for my area returns nothing, however for a satellite that is ~500km above me, surely subscribing to a location that is 27 miles away from me won't make a difference?
      • andrewaylett 6y ago
        No idea why the Starlink website won't recognise the short Plus Code, especially when it shortens the full code if I put that in :P. Your area code is "9C9J", making your full code "9C9JJQX3+84". As an aside, plus codes should be wonderful things but the tooling isn't particularly well built out -- this is the first application I've seen using them that's not Google Maps, and it's not worked as well as I'd hoped it would :(. In this case, the geocoder for the area hasn't done what it ought to have done. And I fear that while the full codes don't need a geocoder, short codes might be generally susceptible to incompatible geocoders leading to incompatibilities between implementations. Which is what we seem to be seeing here.
• pkaye 6y ago
  Which countries are they approved and accepting customers?
  • unionpivo 6y ago
    I could order one form Slovenia. Says to expect it in 2022. I could see addresses in Poland and Slovakia, but I didn't try order there since I don't live there :)
• ncmncm 6y ago
  For people hoping to get overseas latency better than fiber: not now, and probably never without a huge premium. When they finally get inter-satellite comms, low-latency transport will probably be reserved for huge-premium tier accounts. For everybody else, you can assume the satellites will aggressively dump packets to the nearest downlink terminal to feed into fiber. After they get laser links going, when there is no downlink terminal in view, packets might move to the next satellite ahead or behind on the same orbit, and then, if possible, down, or repeat. There will be no attempt to send packets to satellites in other orbits. They might sometimes delay traffic so as not to match performance of their premium tier, if it would otherwise be reliably fast. For future super-high-premium tier accounts, packets will step through satellites to get to a terminal near the destination, and downlink there. Packets sent via this route will arrive whole milliseconds ahead of terrestrial fiber. Despite small amounts of traffic bouncing between orbit tracks, these accounts will constitute a substantial fraction of Starlink's total revenue. In the eventual future, we can expect satellites to carry a few TB of on-board storage to proxy blockbuster media properties; and, to broadcast select real-time traffic, e.g. World Cup video. These will be done mainly to free up bandwidth. Those are my predictions. If yours differ, explain.
• awaaz 6y ago
  Curious to see how this plays out in a country like mine (India) where the government loves [1] to shut off Internet access on the flimsiest of excuses. Everything from entire states (like Kashmir), to few localities (farmer protests around Delhi) have had their mobile Internet access switched off because the government likes to curtail communication when it suits them. [1] https://www.indiatoday.in/diu/story/more-than-400-internet-lockdowns-in-last-4-years-in-india-average-cost-of-each-shutdown-rs-2-crore-hour-1766025-2021-02-04 https://www.indiatoday.in/diu/story/more-than-400-internet-l...
  • sien 6y ago
    Great point. It'll be interesting to see what China does.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • josefx 6y ago
      Musk has quite a bit of money invested in China, so it will be more interesting what he does when China wants to integrate Starlink into the great firewall.
  • noisy_boy 6y ago
    Probably will ban its usage in the name of national security.
    • sn41 6y ago
      It is sad how 2021 looks in comparison to 2000. The future looked a lot better then. I hope no one writes a "Vision 2030" pamphlet.
  • shellfishgene 6y ago
    Currently the traffic runs through a local base station, so it's not really an different from other ISPs when it comes to government control?
  • 6y ago
• wanttocommentt 6y ago
  How does it work with geo-blocking? Especially in areas where the internet is restricted, or even shut off, by the government.
• unionpivo 6y ago
  They are accepting orders from outside USA. I was able to order one for Slovenia. It says it will come in 2022. I generally have 2 questions. 1) Will there be local ground stations all over the world ? Or will it depend on laser interconnect only? 2) A lot of countries have local laws about ISP's. Our politicians are currently too busy making us look like idiots on world stage, but other countries generally expect ISPs to comply. Not sure how they intend to handle that.
  • shawabawa3 6y ago
    Honestly based on Tesla's self driving pre order strategy, I fully expect them to have no plans to roll out to Slovenia but are taking pre-orders anyway
• Abimelex 6y ago
  I'm not supporting this project due to space pollution and hope others will do the same. If starlink is gonna be a success they will start more of this insane projects. let's stop it here.
  • ssijak 6y ago
    There is no way that in 100 years there would not be hundreds of thousands of satellites in earth orbit, with or without starlink
• mcot2 6y ago
  Hopefully you can now move your Starlink around. Being pinned to one address greatly reduces the value of Starlink to me. I had planned to use it off-grid with an RV trailer setup.
• pascalmahe 6y ago
  I've heard that this will be a disaster for amateur astronomy. Yet Starlink is claiming that their mitigation techniques will avoid the problem [0]. I can't tell if their claim is sound. Can someone with expertise weigh in? 0:https://www.spacex.com/updates/starlink-update-04-28-2020/index.html https://www.spacex.com/updates/starlink-update-04-28-2020/in...
  • ianai 6y ago
    On this, I wonder if those satellites could be equipped with some astronomical devices and grant some kind of public access? Maybe just a download link of recent raw data from an antenna.
  • bryanlarsen 6y ago
    Both can be true. The original Starlink satellites were horrible for astronomy. Astronomers complained and Starlink implemented some fairly effective mitigation measures like a shade and less reflective routes while orbit raising.
  • mchusma 6y ago
    There is a cohort of astronomers that don't want earths orbit filled with humans. It's sort of a naturalistic argument, effectively that they will lose their ability to take photos of what they want. On the margin, it's good for people like SpaceX to try and do what they can to minimize negative externalities. But I think that we as a race should not cater to them for a few reasons: 1) there is no precident for "owning" the sky above you to infinity, it's an odd position legally 2) there is another cohort of people that want to expand consciousness who are impeded by this NIMOP (Not In My Orbital Plane) crowd. We can fit a quadrillion humans comfortably on rotating space habitats. This seems like a better goal under most moral systems than retaining the right to take pretty pictures. 3) any loss of "science" due to the loss of ground based sensors would be more than offset by having a robust space presence.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  • 6y ago
• algorithm314 6y ago
  What most people don't understand, is that Starlink is a military first service. Their primary customer is the US military. The most obvious application is UAVs where latency is critical. The consumer part is probably just marketing. It doesn't make much economic sense. Imagine they wanted to launch 1000s of classified military satellites. Everyone would be opposed.
  • BiasRegularizer 6y ago
    While this may be amongst the long term goals, I don't think it's useful for military applications yet until laser com is fully online. Currently there is no sat to sat com, so there's is always ground station within sight of a sat. Unless SpaceX places a ground station near a conflict zone, military can't utilize it much yet.
  • ema 6y ago
    I have no idea if this number is realistic but lets say the US military pays 10 billion dollar a year for this. The consumer price is about a thousand dollar a year so they would need about 10 million customers to get the same revenue. If the whole system has enough bandwidth to support that many consumers I don't think it's just for marketing.
  • scyzoryk_xyz 6y ago
    This is something that is fascinating to me about really all of Musk's businesses - they all seem to be in some way misrepresenting themselves to the general public. And they all actually rely on insights into how governments have to spend at an enormous scale. And all of them make things that are of extreme strategic importance on a global scale. Like I'm not one for conspiracy bullshit, but there must be a deeper story going on behind the scenes. Right?
    • csunbird 6y ago
      I mean, customers from all over the world using an USA ISP for their internet access, which can be tapped easily to gather mass surveillance data is a very valid reason to be paranoid :)
• rq1 6y ago
  Is the service accessible from underdeveloped or isolated regions like in Africa?
• whylo 6y ago
  Interesting snippet from the terms of service: > For Services provided on Mars, or in transit to Mars via Starship or other spacecraft, the parties recognize Mars as a free planet and that no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities. Accordingly, Disputes will be settled through self-governing principles, established in good faith, at the time of Martian settlement.
  • sschueller 6y ago
    So whom ever gets there first makes the rules? However if this is not suppped to be a joke then this is absolutely insane. There is no way humans, other then maybe a few austranouts will make it to mars in the next 20 years by which this service will be obsolete or no longer exist. Edit: If HN is still around in 20 years I will be asking you to reconsider your down votes.
    • toxik 6y ago
      If a bit of sci-fi in your ToS makes people actually read them, what’s the harm?
    • rthomas6 6y ago
      Applicability aside, how else could it even work, other than colony self-governance? Otherwise what's to stop one country from just claiming the whole planet when they get there? You could still have colonies ruled by certain countries, the way I read the sentence.
    • CivBase 6y ago
      > However if this is not suppped to be a joke then this is absolutely insane. I'm not sure how to interpret it as anything other than a joke. Humans might make it to Mars in the next 20 years, but the idea that we will have established a colony there along with an array of Starlink satellites to provide internet service and, presumably, a means of connecting the Martian internet back to Earth's... well, that's over-ambitious even by Musk's standards.
    • spamtarget 6y ago
• xigurat 6y ago
  But you can't reserve from Cuba or Venezuela. If the government of USA really wanted to overthrown those governments would let Starlink do business there providing an alternative internet to the state controlled internet.
• steveharman 6y ago
  We often lose our satellite TV signal in poor weather (bad rain). I wonder how Starlink is affected in similar conditions?
• peter_retief 6y ago
  Does it seriously only support ipv4, no ipv6? That will be a deal breaker for me.
• belzebalex 6y ago
  I've seen the figure of 130W used by the ground station. 100W is a lot, from memory 4G cell towers are only ~10W. What's the kind of RF exposure you get around a ground station? Is SpaceX giving recommendations around where to place the ground station (eg: not on the top of your house)?
• raus22 6y ago
  Here in Denmark I can't pay for the deposit because we have extra security steps when paying with credit card... and they did not implement it.
• dreen 6y ago
  What's the actual upload speed in good conditions?
• williesleg 6y ago
  Fuck Comcast, Verizon and Spectrum. That should give Musk a huge market share.
• m101 6y ago
  Hi hackernews, I have a couple of questions on the potential to undermine existing telcos. 1) what is the theoretical capacity near term of the network in terms of # users per unit area and bit rate per unit area? What do you think the maximum single connection speed using the spectrum they have available? 2) is there potential to increase that capacity in the future? To what level? Perhaps they can develop multi-dish base stations which connect to many satellites at once? Beam forming? Multiple frequencies? 3) is there potential for starlink to offer more density by linking to space in one location and installing a cell phone tower to spread the connection locally? This has potential to drastically cut the cost to the user (standard hardware) and also increase density, but it requires fast single location connectivity to space. 4) has there been an analysis done of which existing telco customers starlink could potentially steal? Which telcos are most exposed? How many customers are in the group that would switch? 5) have you guys considered starlink from the perspective of zero marginal cost per customer acquired, Vs standard cable is high marginal cost per customer acquired? Said another way - all of starlink costs are upfront whether they have 1 customer or 1m customers, but standard telcos need to decide on investing in cable spend on a per customer basis. From this viewpoint have you guys thought about which customers normal telcos will decide to let go to starlink and not invest in new infrastructure in the face of starlink competition? 6) is it likely that Musk is sandbagging the potential capabilities of starlink in order to put cable/Telco companies at ease of the threat in case they look for regulatory protections? 7) have you guys compared starlink services to software services and what the implications of this might be? Software is all upfront in development and then zero marginal. Sounds like starlink may be quite similar. The other telcos are not in this position however (see #5 above). Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!
• cody3222 6y ago
  Could this theoretically put an end to China's firewall?
  • _ph_ 6y ago
    Most likely not. At minimum China will require the local regulations to be observed if SpaceX wants to sell Starlink services to Chinese citizens. Also, currently ground-based stations are required so the filtering could be implemented there.
  • GOONIMMUNE 6y ago
    I don't think so. Either Musk will change Starlink to comply with the great firewall (giving starlink access to a market of over a billion people), or China will ban Starlink terminals (which would be sort of like the current situation- Chinese citizens can get around the firewall with a VPN, but doing so is illegal)
  • bryanlarsen 6y ago
    No. Starlink relies on base stations which would need to be located within a couple of hundred of kilometres of the customer. It also relies on RF licenses which it needs to receive from every country in which it operates.
• ankurpatel 6y ago
  This is just hype created as part of SpaceX and marketing it as sci-fi tech. Satellite internet has been there for a long time. They are unreliable in bad weather and best for rural areas where there is no internet connection or slow option. For $99/month it is very expensive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_Internet_access#Interference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_Internet_access#Inte...
  • nyolfen 6y ago
    not with <50ms ping: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/starlink-tests.jpg https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/starl...
    • ankurpatel 6y ago
      Only time will tell.
• minusSeven 6y ago
  So it costs 99$ a month. I guess by Western standards that low but in India I pay roughly 50$ for 3 months 150mbps internet at 600gb per month. The 1 tb per month package costs 60$ for 3months. I guess they won't be launching anytime soon in India, but I guess it can used in remote parts of India where there is no internet connectivity for miles. Still rather expensive though.
• b1gtuna 6y ago
  How hard / difficult is it to change the service address? For example, if I go on a week long vacation to Miami, can I change the address before I get on the flight, and have it ready to use when I check in to the hotel..?
• Roark66 6y ago
  I went to the site to see the prices... 100eur per month for 50-150Mbit connection? There are no data caps at the moment. I bet there will be soon. That is quite a bit more than people pay for their Internet access around here. I'm out in the countryside and I pay 20EUR per month for unlimited download LTE (15-25Mbps - I have a diy directional antenna to get the service where I am, without it I would get 1mb).I sure miss my 150MBit (soon to be upgraded to gig) fiber Internet I used to have when I lived in a city, but I wouldn't pay 5 times more for 5 times the throughput. It is not like the faster connection will actually be that many more times useful to an average remote worker/home user. When reliable, low latency uncapped 10MBit cheap Internet is available it is very hard to justify paying many times more for faster access. I'm glad they are developing this network so people who have no other connectivity can use it, but I wish they offer something comparable to rural LTE in price (and consequently speed probably).
  • mholm 6y ago
    Starlink seems to be priced more for the American market, where internet access to your home generally costs about $40-50 USD/mo, and cell service (with ~20gb of data, aka 'unlimited') generally costs about $35-$70/mo. For a lot of people, this will replace one of those, AND be available anywhere you can put the antenna.
    • 93po 6y ago
      And the American market where an ISP will charge you $10,000 to actually lay fiber to your house so you can get service
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • 0xffff2 6y ago
    >I'm out in the countryside and I pay 20EUR per month for unlimited download LTE You're simply not the target market. I live in the American countryside, where cell service of any kind is a distant memory several miles before I make it to my driveway. I pay $900/month to rent a second house in town because I'm fully remote but my current slow GEO satellite internet at home isn't suitable for remote work. $100/month for broadband internet is a phenomenal deal for me.
• cambaceres 6y ago
  Do anyone know if I can choose to only use (and pay for) Starlink like a couple of months at a time? I want it for my rural summer house that is used like 3 months a year. Would be like 400 dollar /month if I have to pay all year.
• CivBase 6y ago
  I'm pretty pumped for the Starlink rollout even though my current ISP provides better service at a lower rate. I work remotely, so a quality internet service is a big concern for me when looking for a new home. Once Starlink is available, I don't have to worry so much about that. It also provides many ISPs with much-needed competition, even at that price point. Even though my parents live in a suburb which should have good connectivity options, they pay almost as much as a Starlink subscription for lower bandwidths plus a data cap.
• mehdix 6y ago
  Would they open it to a country such as Iran? It will disrupt censorship and access contol efforts of the government. I read the gov have recently assembled a task force to find a "solution" for this upcoming problem. I'd guess it'll be difficult to spot the receivers, since a large number of the will be deployed at any corner of the country, due to low price, high mobility and ease of installation and use. Obviously they can't sell hardware there, however it will be smuggled. They can sell subscription though, if they accept crypto. I wonder whether they will consider it?
• VectorLock 6y ago
  When will they be generally available if I preorder now? I'd love to have Starlink for camping excursions this summer in areas where I can't even get cell service.
• z3rgl1ng 6y ago
  Am I crazy or is Starlink a scam? An analysis by Cohen found the full 11k cluster could only support 500k-1.5m customers. https://www.lightreading.com/4g3gwifi/starlinks-network-faces-significant-limitations-analysts-find/d/d-id/764159 https://www.lightreading.com/4g3gwifi/starlinks-network-face...
• hedora 6y ago
  Near Silicon Valley: > THANK YOU FOR YOUR INTEREST IN ORDERING STARLINK! Starlink is not yet available in your area but as we launch more satellites, we continue to expand our coverage area. Please check back for future availability in your area. To keep track of future Starlink launches and other SpaceX news, sign up for updates at spacex.com :-(
• calebm 6y ago
  Just placed a pre-order in north Georgia. Right now, tethering cellular is my best option. The local ISP is like 3Mb/s, and Hughesnet has a really low datacap.
• dang 6y ago
  Threads are paginated for performance reasons (yes we're working on it), so to see the rest of the comments you need to click More at the bottom of the page, or like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26174915&p=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26174915&p=2 (If you've already seen a bunch of these, I apologize for the annoying repetition.)