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It would be nice if Starlink could honour their existing obligations as a priority first. I have reserved Starlink here in Canada nearly two years ago and recei

• schappim 4y ago
  Perhaps it is not a client hardware issue, but a lack of coverage at your latitude.
  • langsoul-com 4y ago
    Could be regulation and legal issues as well. Probs is.
    • francislavoie 4y ago
      I know many Canadians (including family) who've gotten theirs. That's not the issue in this case.
  • FireBeyond 4y ago
    Seems like offering a $25,000/mo aviation service (which could be at almost any latitude) might be pretty risky, in that case. For $25,000/mo, customers are going to expect connectivity.
    • usefulcat 4y ago
      For aviation, they'll get connectivity most of the time; it will just flake out occasionally. The real question is, what are the prices of the services they're competing against? I'll bet those prices are higher.
      • FireBeyond 4y ago
        ViaSat charges $14K/mo for their top tier service. And the only coverage failure I've had while traveling, with ViaSat, is for an hour or so on polar routes (for me, SEA - DOH/DXB).
        • Thlom 4y ago
          Inmarsat will launch two satellites in HEO next year to provide coverage for the arctic. Should improve coverage in higher latitudes for the merged company.
      • drusepth 4y ago
        According to this Viasat brochure [1], their top global (not regional) plan is $14k/mo with speeds ranging 20-40Mbps, or approx. $466 per 1Mbps. Comparatively, $25k/mo for 350Mbps would average $71 per 1Mbps, or ~6x cheaper for the speed. We'll see how the actual speed (and reliability) shake out in practice, though. [1] https://viasat.widen.net/s/clgfbt6sdz/1487977_business_aviation_ds_brochure_web-3 https://viasat.widen.net/s/clgfbt6sdz/1487977_business_aviat...
    • Retric 4y ago
      $25,000/mo for 350 Mbps and no download limits is extremely cheap compared to Viasat. In the short term Airlines could probably save money setting this up alongside existing services. Though Viasat isn’t going to be able to survive this kind of competition for long.
      • shaklee3 4y ago
        viasat can offer the same speeds for that price, and they do on business jets.
        • Retric 4y ago
          On business jets it’s less of an issue, but for commercial operations monthly upload/download limits are a much larger issue than maximum bandwidth.
• luxuryballs 4y ago
  is it non-refundable?
  • walrus01 4y ago
    It's only a fully refundable $150 deposit until your terminal is actually ready to ship. Assuming we're talking about fixed address residential service here and not the RV de-prioritized service which anyone can order at any time.
• socialismisok 4y ago
  Having been a Tesla owner for a decade, give or take, I think the motto for Musk's companies may as well be "over promise and under deliver"
  • HyperSane 4y ago
    • socialismisok 4y ago
      Absolutely. I mean, your post is glib to the point of reductiveness, but Musk has habitually lied about Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Company, the Hyperloop, Neural Link and just about every venture he's been in. It's not hard to find a half dozen lies about each of those companies, to say nothing of his social media presence. I'd happily float an innovator an occasional overreach. But it's dozens and dozens of times now and people still buy it.
      • HyperSane 4y ago
        "your post is glib to the point of reductiveness" How so? He lies constantly about many things. He is essentially a con artist at this point.
    • georgeg23 4y ago
      It's because his companies are fundamentally built on a lie that started in 2002: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career
  • meling 4y ago
    I’m not making excuses for Tesla’s many misgivings, but they did honor the pre-order price for my model Y, even though new orders were more than 10% higher.
    • snek_case 4y ago
      They also own 2/3 of the US EV market (with all remaining automakers combined making the remaining third), but people love to shit on them all the time. Tesla is driving the EV revolution while the rest of the auto industry drags its feet.
• pram 4y ago
  Same with everything they do it seems. I put in an order for solar panels from Tesla in March and the install date is now April 2023.
• zulban 4y ago
  > Shouldn't providing down payment legally guarantee to buy a service at original said price? Why would it? What does your contract say? It sounds like you just gave a company your money and got nothing legally binding in exchange. Don't do that.
  • MichaelCollins 4y ago
    Preorders and reservations of unreleased products are for people who like to get screwed, or for people with so much money they don't care if they get screwed. I know people who preorder AAA games, the game turns out to be crap and they complain about it. "Ugh, I can't believe I preordered this crap." Then a year later they're doing it again... "Doctor, it hurts when I poke my eye!" Uh, then stop doing that.
    • freetime2 4y ago
      Preorders seem entirely reasonable to me for things that are likely to be in short supply after launch. I recently pre-ordered an iPhone and was happy to receive one promptly after they started shipping. Games seem to be a fairly meaningless thing to pre-order in a world of digital downloads - but I could see the reason behind pre-ordering some limited edition release, for example. Obviously you need to be careful, know what your options are to cancel, and make sure you trust the company - especially if they require a deposit. But for me getting something a couple of weeks or months earlier than I would otherwise be able to is a benefit that I am often willing to assume some amount of risk for.
      • NotACop182 4y ago
• cammikebrown 4y ago
  I wish. Stern Pinball has been doing this too (accepting deposits and then raising the price before delivery).
• dirtyid 4y ago
  It seems inevitable Starlink will prioritize profitable commercial ventures first. Industry is going to find more data intensive applications and squeeze out residential use.
  • kjksf 4y ago
    The way Starlink works SpaceX has no means to prioritize airplanes over residential. If you wait for service in residential area it's because it's oversubscribed and SpaceX has to put more satellites in orbit or build more ground station. Those satellites are the same that support airplanes so they benefit all use cases. The issue is coverage i.e. bandwidth per area. The way Starlink works is that bandwidth (satellites) is more or less uniformly distributed over area. They can't just add one satellite over a city in Canada to provide more service there. To double available bandwidth in Canada they have to double the number of Satellites. Airplanes (and boats) don't compete for bandwidth with residential because most of the time they are over areas without other Starlink users. The antennas are not the same so it's not like an airplane antenna fights with residential antenna. If anything, making more money boats and airplanes helps SpaceX build satellites and antennas faster so this service is a win for residential as well.
    • adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
      they absolutely can prioritize some antennas over others.
    • mlindner 4y ago
      They already prioritize business service over residential service and residential service over RV/residential+roaming service. This just adds another priority above business service.
• modeless 4y ago
  It's a refundable deposit, not a down payment. There is no obligation on either side. There is too much demand and the service is oversubscribed in populated areas. Planes spend a lot of time in areas that aren't populated, so it makes perfect sense that they can offer service to planes before people in oversubscribed regions. They are working as hard as they possibly can to get Starship working, which will enable Starlink V2, to dramatically increase capacity and get you service. And the revenue from serving planes is going to help them get there without going bankrupt first.
  • shaklee3 4y ago
    > Planes spend a lot of time in areas that aren't populate no, planes spend most of their time in populated areas. specifically near major airports, and the WiFi needs to work on the ground as well.
    • TheRealPomax 4y ago
      Yet again, we hit the "that depends entirely on where you live". On Vancouver Island, planes spend most of their time nowhere near populated areas, but between populated areas. Not that you'd need internet on those flights, but let's also not pretend there's only one type of plane flying one type of route with one type of customer in one type of setting (or even only one of those restrictions).
      • shaklee3 4y ago
        I've done route planning for internet service. the vast, vast majority of the time they're in busy areas. you're talking about outliers.
        • TheRealPomax 4y ago
          You've done route planning for internet service, or route planning for US/Canada domestic in-flight internet service? Because there's a lot of nothing in between successive towns in rural Canada and the US.
• mdasen 4y ago
  I understand the frustration, but I don't think that ignoring aviation would help Starlink serve you faster. I know, anytime a company launches something new while you're waiting for something else, it feels like they're prioritizing that over you. That's often not really how things work. Going with aviation could give them cash flow to be able to move faster while not really using up capacity in your area. Personally, I think that Starlink should pursue deprioritization of heavy users. Note, that's not a bandwidth cap or limit. If there's excess network capacity, there's no reason to prevent a user from using it. However, when there's congestion, I think it makes sense to give priority to lower-usage users. I think it would be reasonable to do this in stages. The average US household uses about 350GB/mo (according to data made available by T-Mobile US and Comcast/Xfinity). Given that Starlink has capacity constraints and given that they are serving as a bit of an internet lifeline to people without other options, it seems reasonable that they could have staged deprioritization maybe like this: first 250GB/mo is full-speed; next 250GB at 80% speed when there is congestion such that their usage would be reducing speeds for others; next 500GB at 60% speed when congested; next 1TB at 40% speed; next 2TB at 20% speed... I know, many people's reaction would be that they shouldn't slow you down, they're advertising unlimited service, etc. At the same time, it's a shared link and a user using 10TB of data means that Starlink can't provide service to around 30 people. Do you prioritize one person using a lot over the needs of dozens? And this is only at times of congestion and realistically 40Mbps or even 20Mbps is still quite usable - especially when the alternative is 3Mbps DSL. 20Mbps will even allow 4K streaming and many full-HD streams. To make it even better, one could only count data usage during congested times, but that's a lot harder to reason about because we don't always know congested times in advance and while I have data on average monthly usage, I don't have information on usage during congested times. The different thresholds would need to be adjusted accordingly. Still, given a shared link with demand way exceeding capacity, I think it makes sense to offer the service to more users with the knowledge that there will be some traffic shaping around usage. I worked in IT at a university and one of the big things was that the top 50 users on the network usually consumed more than half of the available bandwidth. The university liked supporting students, but thought it reasonable to give their traffic lower priority than the thousands of other users on the network. The techie students liked it because they could do what they wanted without impacting other users. Starlink is more capacity constrained, but I think almost no one would notice being deprioritized to 80% during congestion. I think most usage wouldn't notice further deprioritization. I think net neutrality is very important, but I do think with a shared link like Starlink there can be some opt-in traffic shaping that can work in concert with deprioritization. For example, let's say you want do download CoD Modern Warfare at over 200GB. Should that be given equal priority to someone trying to video chat with their family? Well, that might depend on your personal views - maybe you're really looking forward to the game. However, I do think that Starlink could build in an opt-in feature that would move bulk data transfers (like game downloads) from congested times to non-congested times. Even during peak times, there are lulls in congestion and I think many people would say, "yes, please save network bandwidth for 'important' or real-time needs compared to my non-time-sensitive transfer and in exchange that transfer doesn't count toward deprioritization limits." But you might also decide that you want CoD Modern Warfare as fast as possible - and that would be your choice. I'd also point out that there are lots of transfers that aren't "fun" like a new game. For example, you need to download OS updates for your smartphone or laptop, but you generally aren't champing at the bit to update and restart immediately - we've all played the "not today" game with updates. There's no reason for those downloads to happen during congestion while that Netflix show you're watching has packets that need to be delivered. I think Starlink has been trying to offer an unlimited connection without caveats like deprioritization and I think it's putting them in a tough spot. I'm guessing many of their users got Starlink and had minimal usage the first few months. They weren't the types to spend a lot of time online because their connectivity was terrible - but as they became accustomed to Starlink's level of service, that changed. If Starlink was averaging 50-100GB per user, that might have gone up to 300GB per user or even more as people cancel things like satellite TV for streaming services and get accustomed to having a good internet connection. People without good internet wouldn't be in the habit of using it, but that would certainly change over the months and years. > Shouldn't providing down payment legally guarantee to buy a service at original said price? I can't comment on legally. Morally? Maybe the dish itself and maybe the service for a limited time like 1 year, but internet service prices usually only offer a 1 or 2 year price guarantee (yes, there are exceptions, but this is shouldn't be about holding Starlink to a higher standard than the industry in general). Yes, it's frustrating that the price has gone up for both the service and the dish itself, but it can be hard to price new services. You don't quite know how much data people are going to use, you don't totally know how the network will perform, etc. As I noted, it seems likely that they're getting greater than expected usage as users get accustomed to using it more and more. Fuel prices, supply chain disruption, and general inflation don't help Starlink continue offering service or the dish at the original price. Again, I really understand the frustration. However, I think Starlink's premium products (aviation, maritime) will only help the company serve home users better.
• pclmulqdq 4y ago
  They have no existing obligations, and a business model that doesn't seem to work for consumer-level products. They are in the process of trying to upscale quickly: they entered the defense market (Starlinks in Ukraine), they started providing service for luxury yachts, and now aircraft. It's clear what is happening here: they have been told that they can't get subsidies for consumer broadband, so they are pivoting.