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Starlink Sets High-Speed Data Cap at 1TB per Month, Lowers Advertised Speeds
- ravenstine 4y agoIf you believe your ISP's data is "unlimited", then I've got an "all you can eat" buffet to take you to.
- cute_boi 4y agoWell, if the data isn't "unlimited" I think they shouldn't advertise they provide "unlimited" data?
- ravenstine 4y agoCorrect.
- ztgasdf 4y ago> High-speed > Data cap Pick one
- metadat 4y agoHow about door #3: High price Even Comcast let's you pay an extra fee for uncapped bandwidth, physical realities be damned.
- Larrikin 4y agoComcast has uncapped speeds like most other residential ISPs in states with stronger consumer protection laws
- blahyawnblah 4y agoI've really only heard of it in areas that actually have a competitor
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- metadat 4y agoIIRC, they suspended to bandwidth caps around the beginning of the pando but a year or so ago reinstituted then. Edit: Looks like Comcast threatened to reinstitute the restrictions, then rescinded the action temporarily, but only through the end of 2022 [0]. [0] https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/16/22840165/comcast-data-cap-delay-isp-dec-2021 https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/16/22840165/comcast-data-ca...
- hnuser123456 4y agoThey must have capped some people in between "threatening to reinstitute" and "rescinding", because I suddenly started having to pay more for going over 1TB about a year ago, mid-pandemic.
- bombcar 4y agoThey will still have caps somewhere because they have to protect against network abuse. It may be in some fine print that says something about abuse, or it may just be that "all customers in this area share a cap" - you can't make an upstream connection go faster than it can go.
- metadat 4y agoAre you saying Comcast has neglected to keep their network infrastructure up-to-date? I'm shocked, shocked I tell you. I have ATT fiber and they don't seem to mind of it running at 1Gbps both up and downstream continually 24/7.
- bombcar 4y agoIt’s great right after a new tier is installed because they over provision at the beginning. It’s hell at the end of the lifecycle because they reaallly don’t want to provision anything new. Reminds me fiber just dropped maybe I should switch. But I love my tiny little ISP.
- tzs 4y ago> I have ATT fiber and they don't seem to mind of it running at 1Gbps both up and downstream continually 24/7. Would they still not mind if all the rest of their customers also were doing 1 Gbps continuously 24/7?
- metadat 4y agoDepends how they architected the network.. maybe the design can scale and tolerate it up to a higher point compared to Comcast's ancient steaming pile. Bandwidth hogs occur at a predictable rate. It's amazing when a telco company actually delivers a product customers want. AT&T is somehow pulling it off despite their organizational dysfunction.
- bombcar 4y agoSomewhere at some point bandwidth runs out, though I suspect that it’s rarer now than it used to be (since capacities have increased but things to download really haven’t).
- kjksf 4y agoYou have that option too with Starlink: pay 0.25 per GB during congestion if you go over 1 TB.
- metadat 4y agoOh really? That isn't too much more than the AWS egress fee per GB.
- simplotek 4y ago> High-speed Data cap Pick one Only if you've been scammed by your service provider, which advertised services that they are not able to provide. I don't recall the last ISP I subscribed to in the past decade which was not high-speed or imposed a data cap.
- rasz 4y agoUnless in Europe, or Asia.
- thecrumb 4y agoWhat a crock. Why are they rolling service out to RVs and planes when they don't even have capacity for existing residential users...
- rootusrootus 4y agoBecause it has to get worse before it can ever get better. The current generation of satellites are too small to ever be profitable. So they have to get the next generation up there. That requires the rocket to be ready, and lots of money. So they need to get people signed up even though it will degrade everyone's performance, in order to pay for the upgrade that will hopefully enable better performance in the future.
- bamboozled 4y agoNice way to do business ? Scam people ?
- beeboop 4y agoWhat's the scam?
- bamboozled 4y agoStart out advertising unlimited and then make it not unlimited once you’re invested as a customer
- MichaelCollins 4y agoOr... Why roll out to residential users when there are RVs and planes still without service? Anyway, any residential ISP advertising "unlimited" is almost certainly full of shit. They shouldn't be allowed to advertise with this sort of language when there are in fact limits imposed. Leading people to believe otherwise has always been unfair.
- nrmitchi 4y ago
- Dig1t 4y agoComcast, Time Warner, ATT, all the mobile providers have been doing this in the US for years. It makes sense to me to do this for something like Starlink that has actual limitations based on spectrum/physical availability of chunks of metal hurtling around the planet.
- manuelabeledo 4y agoJust because there is a cartel that has been operating for decades on these terms, that does not mean that new competitors should use the same playbook. In contrast, Google Fiber does not have data caps.
- remus 4y agoI think the parents point is that starlink has an actual reason to cap usage (because launching satellites into space is expensive), much more so than traditional providers anyway.
- wtallis 4y agoCongestion should be managed by throttling heavy users only at the point of congestion, during congested times. Applying a per-month cap is ridiculously coarse and is more about punishing users than discouraging behavior that the network cannot reasonably support.
- nharada 4y agoSeems fair to slow data after a certain amount (and 1TB seems pretty reasonable right now), but it's definitely shady to quietly add it to the terms and conditions and not actually tell customers.
- floydnoel 4y agoI got an email as a customer. I would assume others did as well but no guarantee
- pbreit 4y agoTop of the 1st inning, everyone. Let's not come to too many rash conclusions.
- rglover 4y ago"Hi, I'm Jerry and I've been assigned as your guide to the internet. Here, people are...shall we say...a tad excitable."
- ortusdux 4y agoAs I understand the situation, I would guess that they are bottlenecked by satellite bandwidth capacity. IIRC, they plan to launch ~4k units in 2023, which would double the current constellation. They will also switch over to version 2.0 units as soon as they can, and those are 9x larger and presumably come with considerable improvements.
- pixard 4y ago$0.25 per GB... uh no thanks. I've generally been happy with Starlink but this throws somewhat of a wrench into things. I wonder if it will be US only or worldwide.
- QuarterReptile 4y agoThe vast majority of people probably pay much more per GB than that. My family's traffic averages maybe 200GB per month.
- bombcar 4y agoAnd even more if you look at your cellphone - compare data used last month with your bill and divide it out.
- QuarterReptile 4y agoI don't consider them equivalent at all, though embarrassingly I don't know enough about wireless bandwidth and RF comms provisioning generally to be able to state conclusively that they're not.
- bombcar 4y agoJust that most people pay $100/mo for phone service and use 10-20gb or so (no idea) which is $10-5 a gig.
- nasmorn 4y agoI pay 20 for 25GB in Austria. Why is it so expensive in the US? You have not even close to twice our GDP/capita. Nationwide cartel?
- bombcar 4y agoI’m talking (amount actually used)/(amount actually paid). Many people have unlimited or some high limit but don’t use it all. (It’s not entirely fair as the device can do things like text and phone calls, but if I consider my phone as a phone only I was paying $100 for about 5-10 minutes of talk time a month (used) so in a way I was spending $10 a minute. Of course the main thing people want is data. We’re probably a few years from phones with data only and no phone number at all
- paxys 4y agoISP data caps are a complete scam. Xfinity offers gigabit connectivity with a 1TB data cap. Which means that if someone was actually using the network at those speeds it would take them 2.2 hours to get through their allotted monthly usage.
- QuarterReptile 4y agoI reject 'complete scam', though that example is obviously egregious. My 50Mbps plan should be capped (1280GB in my case.) I don't know what the utilization factors are, but that would be a lot of traffic on what is not a high powered plan, and I appreciate the price I get. Even when I try to go for the cap, I've never even made it to 400GB (because I don't know how to use that much traffic, mostly.) As with almost all these broadband provider problems, it's the barriers to new entrants that prevent sensible equilibrium.
- MichaelCollins 4y agoThe scam part is where the limits are all disclosed in the small print while the large print on their advertising material says "unlimited"; it takes serious pilpul to redefine that word.
- selectodude 4y agoAFAIK there's nowhere on Comcast's site that says unlimited bandwidth. I just went to sign up and they were pretty clear about data caps.
- MichaelCollins 4y agoRight on "Xfinity"'s homepage I see them offering "Unlimited". Then in the fine print below it, in a much smaller font, it says they'll throttle your connection after only 20 GB. Serious pilpul to call that "Unlimited".
- 1123581321 4y ago
- Panzer04 4y agoCapped data makes sense - brings those few people running endless torrents and the like into line. I can easily imagine a few customers making up a very substantial chunk of starlink’s usage that way, and given inherent service limitations that probably have to address it :/
- the_mitsuhiko 4y ago1TB is not a lot. Even my unlimited phone contract has a fair use clause for 5TB. My monthly home use for a 5 person household of which three are children is between 2 and 3TB from just streaming and home office.
- petra 4y agoLimit video to 720P and everything will be fine.
- the_mitsuhiko 4y agoI don’t think most devices in this household have even controls for this, let alone that family members would use that. Particularly the kids. Since we have gigabit speeds every app happily picks highest bitrate and resolution.
- bombcar 4y agoYoutube does, but I don't know if you can force it to stick. A "smart router" that slows down packets for video would be amusing, if not easy to setup.
- spockz 4y agoI suppose that would just be the opposite of QoS. If you have fixed addresses it should be relatively easy too throttle all traffic from those devices.
- Gigachad 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- RGamma 4y agoKessler syndrome should kick in any year now.
- NelsonMinar 4y agoI've been a Starlink user since March 2021 and this is a huge disappointment. My service quality took a nosedive in January 2022, it's clear they greatly oversold capacity and are congested. But all along they've been promising these great speeds and no caps. Now they aren't even going to pretend they might deliver that level of service. Still going to charge me the same though.
- floydnoel 4y agoI’m also a Starlink user and I’m super disappointed in the monthly cap. I only use my dish when my regular internet connection is broken, which is usually a few weeks per year. So in 11 months I’ll use 0 bandwidth, then in one month I will need to use it for working (and whatever else the family wants after work). So I’m going to hit a cap the one month I really need to use it out of the year. It should be an annual cap instead.
- sokoloff 4y agoPresumably others near you have a simultaneous alternate ISP outage; that being the case, it seems like having an annual cap would work against Starlink’s actual capacity constraint if a lot of customers do as you do.
- nasmorn 4y agoWhere do you live so that your regular connection breaks multiple weeks per year? Never heard of something like that
- grecy 4y agoI think it varies greatly based on your location. Where are you? My experience in Canada and remote Australia has been excellent. The service is many, many times better than the only alternative.
- NelsonMinar 4y agoIt does vary greatly on location. I'm in Grass Valley, CA which is a rural area but fairly densely populated, verging on suburban. The service was good until they added too many customers. It sounds like you're in an area that isn't overloaded; that's great! (I'll still quibble with "excellent"; even when not congested I find latency is higher than advertised and highly variable. Also the service is not as reliable as I'd like, many 1-2 second outages.)
- aaomidi 4y agoMusk fans, see why this service wasn’t eligible for the rural bandwidth benefit? I wonder if all the “it’s political retaliation” folks are gonna realize that starlink was effectively snakeoil in the scale they were talking about.
- tpmx 4y agoThe explicit 1 TB/month data cap is fairly generous for a satellite-based service. Speeds are more important/concerning. I'd also claim that anyone who didn't see explicit data caps/throttling coming for a satellite-based ISP service needs a reality check. Ever since Starlink launched I saw a lot of arguments being thrown around about how SpaceX would just launch more satellites using 'their fantastically affortable' Falcon 9 launches as the customer base grew so that it wouldn't be a problem (e.g. in HN threads and particularly in r/spacex and r/starlink).
- MichaelCollins 4y agoFalcon 9 isn't big enough to give Starlink the full constellation they've requested permission for. They first receieved permission for 12,000, and later requested an additional 30,000, or 42,000 total. Right now they have... less than 4,000, less than a tenth of what they want. So it will just take a few more years of Falcon 9 launches, right? Well, probably not. Because these satellites have a limited lifespan, they need to be constantly launching new satellites to replace older satellites. I don't think they can launch and keep anywhere close to 42,000 satellites operational with Falcon 9. They only get a bit more than 50 satellites per Falcon 9 launch. Even though Falcon 9 is cheap, to launch the full constellation would require several times more Falcon 9 launches than all the launches for every customer in the past combined. Long-term, Starlink is doomed to failure if SpaceX doesn't get Starship operational. FWIW, I also believe talk of Mars colonization is a recruiting scheme, and the true raison d'etre of Starship is to launch Starlink and similar large constellations. Solving this problem is what Starship is for, and without it they're toast.
- Dylan16807 4y agoSpaceX is on track to do 60 launches this year, and next year they'll probably hit 100 based on how much is already scheduled. A full constellation would require about 180 launches per year. Being stuck with Falcon 9 doesn't sound like doom to me.
- ftth_finland 4y agoThe issue isn’t whether 1 TB is a reasonable data cap or not, but that Starlink did a bait and switch.
- shrubble 4y agoFor land based: 1. First thing to understand - bandwidth is cheap. 1MBps continuous is well under 25 cents for an ISP at this point. They do have to have the network to get it to your home however. 2. Over-subscription of the link is not only usual, it is standard practice. A passive splitter setup might have 32 or 64 or more customers on it - all of whom share 1, 1Gbps link on what is basically a fancy Ethernet switch. As this equipment gets upgraded, they will be able to share 10Gbps amongst 64 or 128 customers. If there are data caps, they are there either to sell you something higher-priced later or else to cover up for their over-subscription. For StarLink, it of course depends on their setup - is there enough public information to determine what their bandwidth really is between all the different parts of their network?
- pencilguin 4y agohttps://xkcd.com/1656/ https://xkcd.com/1656/ Seriously, though, they are probably compensating for failure to get the "can" launching system (aka "starship") online that would enable lofting new higher bandwidth satellites. The cans would have more and, more importantly, bigger payload. If it takes too long to get the can going, they could probably shift to Falcon Heavy and a bigger shroud. But without the can, it costs too much to operate, steady-state. Starlink is pretty severely limited on aggregate bandwidth. They could do a lot to mitigate this by coming up with ways to deliver the hottest realtime streams (e.g. World Cup) via a broadcast protocol, and to partner with Akamai etc. to cache a few hundred TB of other content aloft, to save on uplink bandwidth. Capping is easier.
- ftth_finland 4y agoIt’s really hard to cache content pre-emptively. Netflix uses multiple Gbps per cache node during off hours to refresh content in order to get decent hit rates. And Netflix is just one service with a limited content library.
- pencilguin 4y agoThe laser links between satellites may be much less burdened than the uplink from the ground hub station nearest to the subscriber. SpaceX can upload content to the constellation via more-lightly loaded ground hubs, and propagate to the rest. They have the advantage that they can know what was being streamed in an area a satellite is about to enter, and can preload the parts it will need to downlink while there. Of course all this requires intimate cooperation with the streaming service, because it is at a much higher level than packets.
- rektide 4y agoIt'll be interesting to see what deprioritized means. Many mobile networks will throttle you to a given rate after your soft cap. Most everyone, last I checked, was 512kbps or under. It's hard to check! Xfinity Mobile was 768k down, but just checked again and it's 1.5Mbps down now. By compare I think Google Fi was 256kbps! Yikes! That has single handedly scared me off Fi.
- throwoutway 4y agoA few years ago my cable internet was capped at 250GB or 500GB depending on the plan. Installed 15y prior. I thought that was absurd… but a 1TB cap across “satellite” internet, I kinda get that. It will come down in price with competition
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]