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If you can get high speed, low latency, affordable internet access another way then Starlink probably isn't for you. We've just moved to a place where our only

by mprev 5y ago

If you can get high speed, low latency, affordable internet access another way then Starlink probably isn't for you. We've just moved to a place where our only other option was a £400 a month leased line delivering synchronous 100Mbps. For less than a quarter of that, Starlink gives us roughly 120-150Mbps down, around 7Mbps up, and pings around the 30 ms mark. Upload is slow but workable for now. It's easy to complain for clout when you don't actually need the service. But if you don't have another affordable option, Starlink is remarkable. I keep having to remind myself that I'm running a business from my rural home via space. And, sure, there are elements that aren't perfect (the cable on our dish isn't replaceable unless you want to manually splice wires, but reports on the Starlink subreddit say that Starlink will send you a new dish if the cable gets damaged). The power draw is around the same as a fairly typical lightbulb from 20 years ago, so I can totally live with that. I know it's frustrating for people who can't get Starlink, especially if they know someone who wants transfer their dish to them, but that's the price of avoiding oversubscription. If you can take the Starlink dish off your roof and still post your videos complaining about Starlink then you were never the target customer anyway.

pirate787 5y ago
Agree 100%. My community is in the DC metro area and despite our relatively ex-urban setting, the corrupt local and state government has failed us. Subsidies badly misspent and monopoly policies that stifle land-based competition. Probably 25-30% (thousands of households) have no access to true broadband, just unreliable DSL from a bankrupt provider that once put our state representative on payroll. We're all clamoring for Starlink.
- reportingsjr 5y ago
  Starlink won't work well for the sort of sprawling exurbs you live in, fyi. It can't support a very high density of dishes due to RF bandwidth limitations. Starlink's key markets are fairly spread out rural areas, not infrastructure expensive exurbs and suburbs.
  - cozzyd 5y ago
    Exactly, terrestrial wireless (i.e. LTE) is the correct technological solution for anything denser than rural.
gambiting 5y ago
>> The power draw is around the same as a fairly typical lightbulb from 20 years ago, so I can totally live with that. Since you mentioned pounds, I just want to address the power consumption part. At averaged 100W power usage, the system will use 2.4kWh of electricity every day. In UK the energy prices are absolutely exploding - with the government estimating that the "average" consumer will be paying 28p/kWh of electricity from April. At that price, you are talking £20 a month in JUST ELECTRICITY to keep the system running. That's more than some basic broadband offers in this country on a per month basis. Yes I know that's not an option for you. But damn, £20 worth of electricity a month just to keep my internet router running? That's crazy.
- mprev 5y ago
  Yeah, I get that it's not insignificant but it's not just a router, it's also uploading my packets to a fast moving object around 340 miles away. I'd like for it to be less but I'd also like for Openreach to put a green cabinet near my house and give me VDSL. To put it in context, my PC isn't on 24 hrs a day but it's almost certainly drawing at least 250W for the 9 or 10 hours it is on. It's just a cost of working from home.
  - vel0city 5y ago
    > almost certainly drawing at least 250W You should throw a meter on it and actually check. My recent-ish Ryzen 2600 desktop, 1070 GPU, and 27" monitor use <100W when not doing something like intense gaming. Even then, under intense gaming its often between 300-500W of usage. YMMV, obviously.
    - seized 5y ago
      If he has older monitors or multiple monitors that can be significant load. My older Dell Ultrasharp 24" monitors are around 80-100 watts each last I measured.
- Androider 5y ago
  For comparison, my US bill is currently 9.5c/kWh, which is 7p/kWh. Your UK price is 4x that of mine! The SpaceX office where the dish was designed is just down the road from here, so I can totally see the engineers thinking "What's the big deal, it's only 100W? That's a few dollars a month."
mr90210 5y ago
£400! Wow. I pay 36 euros for 500mbps in the south of Europe.
- mprev 5y ago
  In a rural area where the telco had to blow a dedicated fibre line specifically to your property?

by mprev 5y ago

pirate787 5y ago

Agree 100%. My community is in the DC metro area and despite our relatively ex-urban setting, the corrupt local and state government has failed us. Subsidies badly misspent and monopoly policies that stifle land-based competition. Probably 25-30% (thousands of households) have no access to true broadband, just unreliable DSL from a bankrupt provider that once put our state representative on payroll. We're all clamoring for Starlink.

reportingsjr 5y ago
Starlink won't work well for the sort of sprawling exurbs you live in, fyi. It can't support a very high density of dishes due to RF bandwidth limitations. Starlink's key markets are fairly spread out rural areas, not infrastructure expensive exurbs and suburbs.
- cozzyd 5y ago
  Exactly, terrestrial wireless (i.e. LTE) is the correct technological solution for anything denser than rural.

gambiting 5y ago

>> The power draw is around the same as a fairly typical lightbulb from 20 years ago, so I can totally live with that. Since you mentioned pounds, I just want to address the power consumption part. At averaged 100W power usage, the system will use 2.4kWh of electricity every day. In UK the energy prices are absolutely exploding - with the government estimating that the "average" consumer will be paying 28p/kWh of electricity from April. At that price, you are talking £20 a month in JUST ELECTRICITY to keep the system running. That's more than some basic broadband offers in this country on a per month basis. Yes I know that's not an option for you. But damn, £20 worth of electricity a month just to keep my internet router running? That's crazy.

mprev 5y ago
Yeah, I get that it's not insignificant but it's not just a router, it's also uploading my packets to a fast moving object around 340 miles away. I'd like for it to be less but I'd also like for Openreach to put a green cabinet near my house and give me VDSL. To put it in context, my PC isn't on 24 hrs a day but it's almost certainly drawing at least 250W for the 9 or 10 hours it is on. It's just a cost of working from home.
- vel0city 5y ago
  > almost certainly drawing at least 250W You should throw a meter on it and actually check. My recent-ish Ryzen 2600 desktop, 1070 GPU, and 27" monitor use <100W when not doing something like intense gaming. Even then, under intense gaming its often between 300-500W of usage. YMMV, obviously.
  - seized 5y ago
    If he has older monitors or multiple monitors that can be significant load. My older Dell Ultrasharp 24" monitors are around 80-100 watts each last I measured.
Androider 5y ago
For comparison, my US bill is currently 9.5c/kWh, which is 7p/kWh. Your UK price is 4x that of mine! The SpaceX office where the dish was designed is just down the road from here, so I can totally see the engineers thinking "What's the big deal, it's only 100W? That's a few dollars a month."

mr90210 5y ago

£400! Wow. I pay 36 euros for 500mbps in the south of Europe.

mprev 5y ago
In a rural area where the telco had to blow a dedicated fibre line specifically to your property?