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I'll go as far as to say that Starlink is now so good i honestly believe it's going to change the other industries and not just its own. As an example I've bee

I'll go as far as to say that Starlink is now so good i honestly believe it's going to change the other industries and not just its own. As an example I've been looking at properties outside of suburbia since testing a friends Starlink terminal. I know i can get proper broadband on par with cable anywhere. It's changed my personal long term future plans. I think it's going to change a lot of things.

the_arun 5y ago
Isn’t starlink internet connection expensive atm? $99 per month plus one time h/w costs?
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  Not just expensive. IIRC, the receiving dish and associated gear burns 120W or something like that.
  - XorNot 5y ago
    Living with more space though, you can offset that with solar pretty easily.
  - bobsmooth 5y ago
    That's still only around $100 a year in electricity assuming 10 cents/kWh.
    - Sebb767 5y ago
      In Germany, regular prices scratch 30 cents/kWh, so you're looking at another 25€ a month just to run the dish. A regular unlimited Gigabit Uplink runs 40€-80€ a month, with hardware included and a power usage in the range of 10W. But, unfortunately, anywhere you have a Garden large enough to host starlink, you probably won't have anything near that speed available, so it's still pretty competitive. :(
- AnotherGoodName 5y ago
  It's not a replacement for suburban internet. It's a way to pay just 50% more (in Australian pricing) for something that offers way more options.
- shepherdjerred 5y ago
  That's not terrible. I pay something like $140/mo for 1gbps (in reality I've never seen speeds >300mbps) with no data cap. $100 for ~100mbps with no data cap is reasonable to me.
  - psyclobe 5y ago
    You know you can like get them to fix that right?
    - sgillen 5y ago
      How? In the fine print for most of these contracts it says something like “up to 1Gb, actual rates may vary based on network load” or something similar.
    - colpabar 5y ago
      how?
    - psyclobe 5y ago
      Call them up, say you are not getting the speeds, then when the tech shows up, simply don't let him leave until you can verify a speed test at that rate. If you get a good tech they will help you, you may get a dud, in which case you simply have to call them up and work the system again. It's totally doable, I've done it dozens of times at every dwelling I've inhabited. I'm currently on their 1GB plan, and I do get 1.4Gbps down (they recently upped their provisioning rate, and with a newer modem with 1 2GB link on it, with a suitable router [I run the UDM Pro] it works).
- llamataboot 5y ago
  about the same as comcast in the US...
- mattrighetti 5y ago
  In Italy an average Gbps fiber connection costs about 25€ (about 28$) per month which is insanely cheap compared to other countries. This also means that, at least for us, 99$ (88€) per month for such a thing is a lot more at the end of the year (+756€). I hope they’ll eventually adjust that price for different markets because at the moment it’s not even competitive in my area.
  - walrus01 5y ago
    it's not meant to be competitive in areas that have existing reliable and competitively priced terrestrial wire line infrastructure (fiber, docsis3 or docsis3.1 on coax cable, short reach VDSL2 or g.fast on old copper phone lines, short reach WISPs capable of 150Mbps+). it's for areas that have none of the previously mentioned last mile access technologies available to each house.
- NavinF 5y ago
  That’s not expensive. I get 1gbps for ~$100/mo in the bay area, but if I lived a few miles further from the city I’d get 10mbps DSL over wet string regardless of how much I’m willing to pay.
  - danans 5y ago
    FYI Sonic is now offering 10GB/s for $40/month in parts of the Bay Area.
    - thelittleone 5y ago
      10GB/s or 10gb/s?
      - danans 5y ago
        I stand corrected, it's Gb/s
- Jedd 5y ago
  In Australia, it's $140 / month, plus the capex of $700 for the dish, which obviously won't work on any other provider. I suspect resale on that device, if the carrier allows it, would be reasonable, but I don't expect I'd be moving away from this service. People are comparing (sub)urban US multi-carrier options, or heavily populated countries (like Italy), that have much cheaper pricing. It's not surprising that terrestrial services there are better spec'd and cheaper. For me (in AU) it's compelling because I otherwise have an option of a 3G yagi / booster (nearest tower is 15km away, service is awful normally, but unusable in storms, frequently highly contended, etc), dial-up (there's very few places that still offer such a service, and just the landline connection fee is $40 / month to start with), or geo-stationary satellite (what I've just moved away from after 2+ years, which has > 600ms RTT to the nearest capital city, and a max downstream of 25Mbps, which is also frequently highly contended during peak times. The 100W / hour usage is frustrating, and claims of electricity being 'just 10c / kWh' are quaint, I guess coming from well serviced parts of EU / US? Here most people are up for 30c (AUD) / kWh, and if on ToU that can go up to 60c during peak (2pm through 8pm). I've got solar, so on average I'm powering this 'for free' 25% of the time.
  - walrus01 5y ago
    rough calculation in US dollars, if a starlink terminal is 100W constant load and electricity costs $0.30 per kWh, it would be about a $22.32 extra on the monthly electrical bill. in your case about $16.74 if you subtract 25% for the estimate of benefit from your solar (grid tied?) kWh going back to the grid
    - Jedd 5y ago
      That sounds about right. For the average Australian user, it means you add ~ $200-350 / year to your effective ISP cost. Not end of world for most, but certainly not trivial for all, either. The regrettable history of Australian internet provisioning (specifically our national broadband network) and electricity pricing (specifically the rorts and corruption, and higher-than-rest-of-world pricing) are described much more eloquently by others.
  - djtango 5y ago
- mod 5y ago
  I pay like $94/month for DSL in a rural area. That includes a (mandatory) land line, and I'm "guaranteed" 10/1 Mbps--which I don't get. The only other options, until Starlink launches in my area, are traditional satellites. My neighbor previously had one of those, and he had an 8GB cap per MONTH. Plus the ping time averaged like 600ms. I'm not even mad about the price of $94. Internet is way, way worth it. The quality of the connection sucks, though. I would pay $200 for Starlink once it's reliable. I'm not actually sure what my limit is, but it's pretty high, because rural internet is painful
  - walrus01 5y ago
    the economics of consumer grade oversubscribed geostationary are terrible - it costs something like $200 million to build and launch a 5500 kg satellite into geo orbit, it'll almost certainly die in 15 years (Standard lifespan), and its aggregate capacity is TINY actual dedicated 1:1 geostationary network capacity costs at a minimum $1600 per Mbps per month each direction (eg: 2 Mbps down x 0.5 Mbps up circuit would easily be $3500/mo)
runarberg 5y ago
Question: How is starlink going to be a game changer in ways publicly funded infrastructure (either traditional cables or cables + 5G towers) aren’t? Your anecdote doesn’t really cover “game changer” since land outside of suburbia is pretty either scarce, big and expensive, underdeveloped, etc. and not many people want to live there (and I doubt fast broadband is the only thing holding people back). I honestly don’t think starlink is useful for that many people. Personally I would categorize it as a quality of life improvement for a small group of wealthy individuals (and maybe even smaller number of industrial workers which work onsite in remote locations). I have a hard time seeing it doing anything more.
- walrus01 5y ago
  there are a number of rural areas in the USA that politically show very low likelihood of getting something like a proper last mile broadband service built by wireline infrastructure any time soon (fiber and GPON or active ethernet). some rural counties in eastern WA are the exception.
  - runarberg 5y ago
    Under-served rural areas in the USA tend to be pretty poor, and as is starlink (or starlink-like) internet is pretty expensive both for the service fee and hardware requirements. Perhaps the price will come down as operators proliferate and this will be affordable for these communities. But I still fail to see how this is a game changer. Serving these communities with traditional infrastructure and maybe a 5G tower is very possible today, and frankly not that expensive for a country like USA. I think you undercount the political feasibility a bit. Politicians in the USA make a huge buzz about serving rural communities, infrastructure is a political buzzword at the moment. A good politician could easily capitalize on rural broadband. They don’t even have to be that well intentioned since they could take some lobby money from the telecom companies and bid out the infrastructure build out with conveniently specific requirements for contractors their family just so happens to own stock in.
    - Dylan16807 5y ago
tschwimmer 5y ago
What are the chances of Starlink getting worse as adoption grows and available bandwidth gets saturated?
- LeoPanthera 5y ago
  You're only competing with your neighbors, since different regions connect to different ground stations. If you live in a rural location it's unlikely the user density will ever be high enough to cause a problem. If you live in a dense metro area it will probably fill up very quickly - but then again Starlink is not really designed for those locations, which probably already have good connectivity.
- shaklee3 5y ago
  100%. they're nowhere near the satellite/user ratio they're planning.
tyrfing 5y ago
This shift is already happening, look at property values over the last 1-2 years. My guess is that enough rich people moving into the middle of nowhere will cause the government to pay for terrestrial solutions ("incentivize") within the next 10 or so years.
- walrus01 5y ago
  If enough rich people move to rural counties and get involved in politics, they can create public utility districts to build open access dark fiber which 3rd party ISPs can ride on.
caf 5y ago
Wouldn't you want to wait for at least two providers before rearchitecting your life around a product like that?
Psychlist 5y ago
There's not enough satellites to be useful yet, terrestrial astronomy is still possible. They'd need to have ten times the current number to stop it, and that's not due to happen for a few years. I reckon if they put their mind to it they could cause enough pollution to make cellphones unusable, maybe even open-air wifi. They're smart, I'm sure they have the technology, they could make the whole EM spectrum so dirty the whole sky would glow.
ghaff 5y ago
My brother just rebuilt a house up in Maine. Previously the house had 1Mbps (with a tailwind) DSL. They wouldn't even reinstall it and houses further down the road couldn't get it at all. You could get a Verizon hotspot (and ration data). But Starlink is pretty good. Video streaming does stutter a bit--you're better off downloading. I could actually work up there which I couldn't really with the old DSL.

the_arun 5y ago

Isn’t starlink internet connection expensive atm? $99 per month plus one time h/w costs?

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
Not just expensive. IIRC, the receiving dish and associated gear burns 120W or something like that.
- XorNot 5y ago
  Living with more space though, you can offset that with solar pretty easily.
- bobsmooth 5y ago
  That's still only around $100 a year in electricity assuming 10 cents/kWh.
  - Sebb767 5y ago
    In Germany, regular prices scratch 30 cents/kWh, so you're looking at another 25€ a month just to run the dish. A regular unlimited Gigabit Uplink runs 40€-80€ a month, with hardware included and a power usage in the range of 10W. But, unfortunately, anywhere you have a Garden large enough to host starlink, you probably won't have anything near that speed available, so it's still pretty competitive. :(
AnotherGoodName 5y ago
It's not a replacement for suburban internet. It's a way to pay just 50% more (in Australian pricing) for something that offers way more options.
shepherdjerred 5y ago
That's not terrible. I pay something like $140/mo for 1gbps (in reality I've never seen speeds >300mbps) with no data cap. $100 for ~100mbps with no data cap is reasonable to me.
- psyclobe 5y ago
  You know you can like get them to fix that right?
  - sgillen 5y ago
    How? In the fine print for most of these contracts it says something like “up to 1Gb, actual rates may vary based on network load” or something similar.
  - colpabar 5y ago
    how?
  - psyclobe 5y ago
    Call them up, say you are not getting the speeds, then when the tech shows up, simply don't let him leave until you can verify a speed test at that rate. If you get a good tech they will help you, you may get a dud, in which case you simply have to call them up and work the system again. It's totally doable, I've done it dozens of times at every dwelling I've inhabited. I'm currently on their 1GB plan, and I do get 1.4Gbps down (they recently upped their provisioning rate, and with a newer modem with 1 2GB link on it, with a suitable router [I run the UDM Pro] it works).
llamataboot 5y ago
about the same as comcast in the US...
mattrighetti 5y ago
In Italy an average Gbps fiber connection costs about 25€ (about 28$) per month which is insanely cheap compared to other countries. This also means that, at least for us, 99$ (88€) per month for such a thing is a lot more at the end of the year (+756€). I hope they’ll eventually adjust that price for different markets because at the moment it’s not even competitive in my area.
- walrus01 5y ago
  it's not meant to be competitive in areas that have existing reliable and competitively priced terrestrial wire line infrastructure (fiber, docsis3 or docsis3.1 on coax cable, short reach VDSL2 or g.fast on old copper phone lines, short reach WISPs capable of 150Mbps+). it's for areas that have none of the previously mentioned last mile access technologies available to each house.
NavinF 5y ago
That’s not expensive. I get 1gbps for ~$100/mo in the bay area, but if I lived a few miles further from the city I’d get 10mbps DSL over wet string regardless of how much I’m willing to pay.
- danans 5y ago
  FYI Sonic is now offering 10GB/s for $40/month in parts of the Bay Area.
  - thelittleone 5y ago
    10GB/s or 10gb/s?
    - danans 5y ago
      I stand corrected, it's Gb/s
Jedd 5y ago
In Australia, it's $140 / month, plus the capex of $700 for the dish, which obviously won't work on any other provider. I suspect resale on that device, if the carrier allows it, would be reasonable, but I don't expect I'd be moving away from this service. People are comparing (sub)urban US multi-carrier options, or heavily populated countries (like Italy), that have much cheaper pricing. It's not surprising that terrestrial services there are better spec'd and cheaper. For me (in AU) it's compelling because I otherwise have an option of a 3G yagi / booster (nearest tower is 15km away, service is awful normally, but unusable in storms, frequently highly contended, etc), dial-up (there's very few places that still offer such a service, and just the landline connection fee is $40 / month to start with), or geo-stationary satellite (what I've just moved away from after 2+ years, which has > 600ms RTT to the nearest capital city, and a max downstream of 25Mbps, which is also frequently highly contended during peak times. The 100W / hour usage is frustrating, and claims of electricity being 'just 10c / kWh' are quaint, I guess coming from well serviced parts of EU / US? Here most people are up for 30c (AUD) / kWh, and if on ToU that can go up to 60c during peak (2pm through 8pm). I've got solar, so on average I'm powering this 'for free' 25% of the time.
- walrus01 5y ago
  rough calculation in US dollars, if a starlink terminal is 100W constant load and electricity costs $0.30 per kWh, it would be about a $22.32 extra on the monthly electrical bill. in your case about $16.74 if you subtract 25% for the estimate of benefit from your solar (grid tied?) kWh going back to the grid
  - Jedd 5y ago
    That sounds about right. For the average Australian user, it means you add ~ $200-350 / year to your effective ISP cost. Not end of world for most, but certainly not trivial for all, either. The regrettable history of Australian internet provisioning (specifically our national broadband network) and electricity pricing (specifically the rorts and corruption, and higher-than-rest-of-world pricing) are described much more eloquently by others.
- djtango 5y ago
mod 5y ago
I pay like $94/month for DSL in a rural area. That includes a (mandatory) land line, and I'm "guaranteed" 10/1 Mbps--which I don't get. The only other options, until Starlink launches in my area, are traditional satellites. My neighbor previously had one of those, and he had an 8GB cap per MONTH. Plus the ping time averaged like 600ms. I'm not even mad about the price of $94. Internet is way, way worth it. The quality of the connection sucks, though. I would pay $200 for Starlink once it's reliable. I'm not actually sure what my limit is, but it's pretty high, because rural internet is painful
- walrus01 5y ago
  the economics of consumer grade oversubscribed geostationary are terrible - it costs something like $200 million to build and launch a 5500 kg satellite into geo orbit, it'll almost certainly die in 15 years (Standard lifespan), and its aggregate capacity is TINY actual dedicated 1:1 geostationary network capacity costs at a minimum $1600 per Mbps per month each direction (eg: 2 Mbps down x 0.5 Mbps up circuit would easily be $3500/mo)

runarberg 5y ago

Question: How is starlink going to be a game changer in ways publicly funded infrastructure (either traditional cables or cables + 5G towers) aren’t? Your anecdote doesn’t really cover “game changer” since land outside of suburbia is pretty either scarce, big and expensive, underdeveloped, etc. and not many people want to live there (and I doubt fast broadband is the only thing holding people back). I honestly don’t think starlink is useful for that many people. Personally I would categorize it as a quality of life improvement for a small group of wealthy individuals (and maybe even smaller number of industrial workers which work onsite in remote locations). I have a hard time seeing it doing anything more.

walrus01 5y ago
there are a number of rural areas in the USA that politically show very low likelihood of getting something like a proper last mile broadband service built by wireline infrastructure any time soon (fiber and GPON or active ethernet). some rural counties in eastern WA are the exception.
- runarberg 5y ago
  Under-served rural areas in the USA tend to be pretty poor, and as is starlink (or starlink-like) internet is pretty expensive both for the service fee and hardware requirements. Perhaps the price will come down as operators proliferate and this will be affordable for these communities. But I still fail to see how this is a game changer. Serving these communities with traditional infrastructure and maybe a 5G tower is very possible today, and frankly not that expensive for a country like USA. I think you undercount the political feasibility a bit. Politicians in the USA make a huge buzz about serving rural communities, infrastructure is a political buzzword at the moment. A good politician could easily capitalize on rural broadband. They don’t even have to be that well intentioned since they could take some lobby money from the telecom companies and bid out the infrastructure build out with conveniently specific requirements for contractors their family just so happens to own stock in.
  - Dylan16807 5y ago

tschwimmer 5y ago

What are the chances of Starlink getting worse as adoption grows and available bandwidth gets saturated?

LeoPanthera 5y ago
You're only competing with your neighbors, since different regions connect to different ground stations. If you live in a rural location it's unlikely the user density will ever be high enough to cause a problem. If you live in a dense metro area it will probably fill up very quickly - but then again Starlink is not really designed for those locations, which probably already have good connectivity.
shaklee3 5y ago
100%. they're nowhere near the satellite/user ratio they're planning.

tyrfing 5y ago

This shift is already happening, look at property values over the last 1-2 years. My guess is that enough rich people moving into the middle of nowhere will cause the government to pay for terrestrial solutions ("incentivize") within the next 10 or so years.

walrus01 5y ago
If enough rich people move to rural counties and get involved in politics, they can create public utility districts to build open access dark fiber which 3rd party ISPs can ride on.

caf 5y ago

Wouldn't you want to wait for at least two providers before rearchitecting your life around a product like that?

Psychlist 5y ago

There's not enough satellites to be useful yet, terrestrial astronomy is still possible. They'd need to have ten times the current number to stop it, and that's not due to happen for a few years. I reckon if they put their mind to it they could cause enough pollution to make cellphones unusable, maybe even open-air wifi. They're smart, I'm sure they have the technology, they could make the whole EM spectrum so dirty the whole sky would glow.

ghaff 5y ago

My brother just rebuilt a house up in Maine. Previously the house had 1Mbps (with a tailwind) DSL. They wouldn't even reinstall it and houses further down the road couldn't get it at all. You could get a Verizon hotspot (and ration data). But Starlink is pretty good. Video streaming does stutter a bit--you're better off downloading. I could actually work up there which I couldn't really with the old DSL.