5 ms·

> but the product itself is mediocre in both cost and implementation. Go compare it to what you will get for $150 per month from consumer grade geostationary b

> but the product itself is mediocre in both cost and implementation. Go compare it to what you will get for $150 per month from consumer grade geostationary based highly oversubscribed services. Viasat/Hughesnet/wild blue/etc. I could pull out my checkbook right now and start a contract for $6,000 per month on a 36mo term of dedicated SCPC geostationary capacity (requiring about $8500 of equipment at my site with a 1.8 meter dish, moderately powerful BUC and new modem) and not be able to come anywhere near matching the speeds and capability of my starlink terminal.

bcrl 4y ago
At least I can get service from the other providers. 2+ years on the waiting list and addresses in my area are now targeted for 2023.
- walrus01 4y ago
  I can see how that would be very frustrating, do you have any local options for WISPs?
  - tjr225 4y ago
    WISPs come with their own challenges; namely time and line of sight to another node on the network. Heck I about bought a schoolhouse in rural Michigan until the WISP got back to me and told me they couldn’t provide me service because of the trees in the yard.
    - walrus01 4y ago
      I've seen people erect light duty 60' towers suitable for the wind load of one 60cm ptp microwave dish for a link to a local wisp, can be $2500-4500 all in including shipping, foundation, concrete work, etc.
      - tjr225 4y ago
        That’s all fine and dandy; I’m happily on the west coast again instead. Happy it didn’t work out! That amount of uncertainty when buying a home and working from is not for me.
      - bcrl 4y ago
        It's pretty sad that people put that much money into towers when the cost of hooking a home up to fibre (even rural) is in the $1800-2500 ballpark.
        walrus01 4y ago
        Only if the fiber provider is in the same area doing a build to serve at minimum a few hundred other homes at roughly the same time. Some people who live in rural areas where they would need a 60-80 ft tower for wisp cpe or starlink may be in a place so far from existing ISP fiber that a new build purely aerial fiber construction project could run $300,000.
        bcrl 4y ago
        It's perfectly possible to do FTTH builds for 30-40 homes at a cost of $30-40k. Just make sure you know what you're doing and avoid getting fleeced by engineering consulting firms and high margin construction companies.
  - bcrl 4y ago
    I didn't want to put up a 100+ foot tower, so I started a rural FTTH ISP instead and ran my own fibre rather than pay the existing local WISP to give me crappy 5-10Mbps service. Still, there are lots of cottages and other rural homes we can't get to and are trying to get Starlink at. The entire region I'm in has been stop-sell for a long time, yet there are zero uplinks anywhere nearby. I'd be more than happy to host an uplink for where we have dark fibre back to a data center to help increase capacity in the region, but nobody ever answers emails at Starlink. It's kinda awful how bad they are at customer service.
    - walrus01 4y ago
      Starlink is only interested in colocation of their earth stations along major longhaul fiber routes, typically next to regen huts with existing Telco infrastructure. Just having dark fiber back to a medium or larger sized city isn't enough. The level3 Prosser, WA hut site and starlink equipment there is a good example.
KennyBlanken 4y ago
> Go compare it to what you will get for $150 per month from consumer grade geostationary based highly oversubscribed services. Viasat/Hughesnet/wild blue/etc. Aside from "it's not a good deal just because it's cheaper than a bad deal" - your point is completely irrelevant to terrible design choices that have little to do with cost. A permanently-attached cable on a very expensive outdoor device is mind-boggling levels of asinine, to the point that it seems done purposefully to help subsidize the service by making money off returned units with damaged cables. Or guarantee that units will eventually die; it sounds like Musk wants to shift to being a satellite backbone, not providing interwebs for plebs - and one great way to shift to that is to simply stop selling dishes to consumers and wait for the existing units to die of cable failure. (And before you jump all over me: yeeeeees, I'm aware that implementing a connector for the cable has costs. Starlink chose to cut those costs.) It's completely up Musk's alley to pull this sort of blatantly anti-consumer nonsense. His entire life he's been profiting off exploiting his customers. For example, in the case of paypal, blatantly stealing money from people's accounts for "suspicious" activity, and getting away with it because "paypal isn't a bank, neener neener."
- pedro2 4y ago
  Far from me to defend Musk but assholes have a place in society -- they just need to be monitored. Whatever the means he has used, he kickstarted (in the minds of consumers) at least three industries. Would I willingly give him money? No. Unless I had an RV :)
  - goodpoint 4y ago
    > he kickstarted (in the minds of consumers) at least three industries In reality he didn't.
    - steveoscaro 4y ago
      He didn't kickstart the stagnant commercial space launch industry? Really?
jimmySixDOF 4y ago
I worked for a while with PoP-in-a-Box container systems you could drop in anywhere and run. The ammount of effort tuning each partner satellite provider to work with voice & video with ultra low codecs etc was huge overhead in addition to the cost for SCPC service/equipment. People complaining about ease of use are totally missing how hard the equivalent was not so long ago. Yes, there were simple point plug and play suitcase mobile solutions like BGAN but only at a fraction of the bandwidth of a StarLink system.
- walrus01 4y ago
  That and a bgan terminal data has pricing from multiple dollars per megabyte transferred.

bcrl 4y ago

At least I can get service from the other providers. 2+ years on the waiting list and addresses in my area are now targeted for 2023.

walrus01 4y ago
I can see how that would be very frustrating, do you have any local options for WISPs?
- tjr225 4y ago
  WISPs come with their own challenges; namely time and line of sight to another node on the network. Heck I about bought a schoolhouse in rural Michigan until the WISP got back to me and told me they couldn’t provide me service because of the trees in the yard.
  - walrus01 4y ago
    I've seen people erect light duty 60' towers suitable for the wind load of one 60cm ptp microwave dish for a link to a local wisp, can be $2500-4500 all in including shipping, foundation, concrete work, etc.
    - tjr225 4y ago
      That’s all fine and dandy; I’m happily on the west coast again instead. Happy it didn’t work out! That amount of uncertainty when buying a home and working from is not for me.
    - bcrl 4y ago
      It's pretty sad that people put that much money into towers when the cost of hooking a home up to fibre (even rural) is in the $1800-2500 ballpark.
      - walrus01 4y ago
        Only if the fiber provider is in the same area doing a build to serve at minimum a few hundred other homes at roughly the same time. Some people who live in rural areas where they would need a 60-80 ft tower for wisp cpe or starlink may be in a place so far from existing ISP fiber that a new build purely aerial fiber construction project could run $300,000.
        bcrl 4y ago
        It's perfectly possible to do FTTH builds for 30-40 homes at a cost of $30-40k. Just make sure you know what you're doing and avoid getting fleeced by engineering consulting firms and high margin construction companies.
- bcrl 4y ago
  I didn't want to put up a 100+ foot tower, so I started a rural FTTH ISP instead and ran my own fibre rather than pay the existing local WISP to give me crappy 5-10Mbps service. Still, there are lots of cottages and other rural homes we can't get to and are trying to get Starlink at. The entire region I'm in has been stop-sell for a long time, yet there are zero uplinks anywhere nearby. I'd be more than happy to host an uplink for where we have dark fibre back to a data center to help increase capacity in the region, but nobody ever answers emails at Starlink. It's kinda awful how bad they are at customer service.
  - walrus01 4y ago
    Starlink is only interested in colocation of their earth stations along major longhaul fiber routes, typically next to regen huts with existing Telco infrastructure. Just having dark fiber back to a medium or larger sized city isn't enough. The level3 Prosser, WA hut site and starlink equipment there is a good example.

KennyBlanken 4y ago

> Go compare it to what you will get for $150 per month from consumer grade geostationary based highly oversubscribed services. Viasat/Hughesnet/wild blue/etc. Aside from "it's not a good deal just because it's cheaper than a bad deal" - your point is completely irrelevant to terrible design choices that have little to do with cost. A permanently-attached cable on a very expensive outdoor device is mind-boggling levels of asinine, to the point that it seems done purposefully to help subsidize the service by making money off returned units with damaged cables. Or guarantee that units will eventually die; it sounds like Musk wants to shift to being a satellite backbone, not providing interwebs for plebs - and one great way to shift to that is to simply stop selling dishes to consumers and wait for the existing units to die of cable failure. (And before you jump all over me: yeeeeees, I'm aware that implementing a connector for the cable has costs. Starlink chose to cut those costs.) It's completely up Musk's alley to pull this sort of blatantly anti-consumer nonsense. His entire life he's been profiting off exploiting his customers. For example, in the case of paypal, blatantly stealing money from people's accounts for "suspicious" activity, and getting away with it because "paypal isn't a bank, neener neener."

pedro2 4y ago
Far from me to defend Musk but assholes have a place in society -- they just need to be monitored. Whatever the means he has used, he kickstarted (in the minds of consumers) at least three industries. Would I willingly give him money? No. Unless I had an RV :)
- goodpoint 4y ago
  > he kickstarted (in the minds of consumers) at least three industries In reality he didn't.
  - steveoscaro 4y ago
    He didn't kickstart the stagnant commercial space launch industry? Really?

jimmySixDOF 4y ago

I worked for a while with PoP-in-a-Box container systems you could drop in anywhere and run. The ammount of effort tuning each partner satellite provider to work with voice & video with ultra low codecs etc was huge overhead in addition to the cost for SCPC service/equipment. People complaining about ease of use are totally missing how hard the equivalent was not so long ago. Yes, there were simple point plug and play suitcase mobile solutions like BGAN but only at a fraction of the bandwidth of a StarLink system.

walrus01 4y ago
That and a bgan terminal data has pricing from multiple dollars per megabyte transferred.