21 ms·

Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury

259 points by shaicoleman 4y ago

grecy 4y ago
Starlink was designed for, and has always been intended for remote people who literally have no other connection option. No cable, no 3G or 4G. If you can get those other options, Starlink is not a product designed for you. Go remote, and Starlink is an absolute game changer without even a remotely close equal.
- Zigurd 4y ago
  Take a look at 5G extended range FWA. That's what Starlink is competing against. Proprietary versions of similar capability are well-proven, but 5G-based extended range FWA enables interoperation, standardization, and competition.
  - capableweb 4y ago
    > Take a look at 5G extended range FWA. > This innovation extends mmWave coverage from a few hundred meters to more than 7km That doesn't seem very impressive... That doesn't even come close to what various long-range WiFi connections have been able to do.
    - Zigurd 4y ago
      5G extended range FWA piggybacks off 5G infrastructure. You can do similar things with WiFi or proprietary mmWave FWA, but it requires purpose-built infrastructure.
      - capableweb 4y ago
        But how much 5G infrastructure is there in rural areas? Around my parts, not a lot. So the piggieback argument feels less relevant here.
        Zigurd 4y ago
        Proprietary mmWave radios are already in wide use in rural areas. The economics of installing and using 5G extended range would be similar or better. The key difference is the "extended range" part, which is what makes them competitive and in many cases superior in range to proprietary FWA. What standardization adds is inter-operation of equipment.
- capableweb 4y ago
  It's gonna be interesting to see how they solve the financials. Targeting a rural/spare population via expensive satellite connections, that market has to be relatively limited. And with a limited amount of customers, how does it make business sense?
  - grecy 4y ago
    Given that it's global, and already rolled out to many countries, I'd have to assume the customer pool is tens or hundreds of millions of customers. Also the sats are some of the cheapest, most mass-produced ever, and SpaceX's launch costs are a tiny fraction of anything done previously. Given what they've achieved so far, I kind of trust SpaceX to have run the numbers on this more than you or I.
  - Auracle 4y ago
    Rural doesn't mean poor.
- plugger 4y ago
  no offence, but this perspective doesn't apply worldwide. if you live in a country like Australia a StarLink connection will give you 10x the speed of many NBN (National Broadband Network) wired connections. 3G/4G/5G are metered by MB and not a viable option for a daily WAN link due to that. Unless you were lucky enough to get fibre pulled into your house before the government at the time kneecapped the NBN you'd have a link that is comparable in cost and speed. Most consumers here do not have that link.
  - MindSpunk 4y ago
    So much this. I'm on Starlink in Sydney because Australia's NBN decided to stop their fibre rollout 600 meters from my house and decided that the only option they would provide me is old geostationary satellite. 4G reception is middling with pathetic data caps. I get 5G reception too but none of the providers will offer home broadband services, only mobile Wifi. On Starlink I get ~250mbps down at a price only marginally higher than what I would be paying to get the same speed on a fixed line connection. I can't be the only one in a situation like mine. Prime candidates for Starlink. The NBN closed quotes for running fibre to my residence. Even if I had the tens-of-thousands to pay for them to run the cable they won't even consider taking my money currently.
    - shaklee3 4y ago
      this has been repeated countless times, but the only reason you are experiencing good service is because it's not at capacity. as soon as your area gets to capacity, just like it is all over the US, you too will face bad speeds and increasing prices. for some reason people thought starlink had some magical solution to capacity problems and that the high speeds would last forever. it's just another ISP.
      - theaussiestew 4y ago
        It'll never get to capacity where he lives, because he lives in a semi-rural area that has a low population density.
IG_Semmelweiss 4y ago
Question - the article mentions bandwith capacity being a factor for pricing. Is there a resource online where one can find reported up/down speeds by geolocation ?
Zigurd 4y ago
Starlink is a link in Elon's fragile chain of strategies. Elon, evidently, loves interlinked strategies. The first grand linkage was "How do we make reusable rockets valuable?" because, on their own, with non-reusable second stages, they're cool, but not financially impressive. But, with Starlink using almost all reused Falcon 9 capacity, it looks sexy af. Elon, of course, can't stop there: How do you use the redonkulous payload-to-orbit capacity of Starship? You make satellites 5X larger that are no longer a "bent pipe" architecture and you make a "backbone-in-orbit" with laser links between satellites. That might make Starlink make financial sense. But it looks like it is years away from being possible. Meanwhile Starlink "1.5" satellites are a PoC of laser links between satellites, but not anywhere near the scale of the big satellites that need Starship.
xenospn 4y ago
I wonder why it’s so unreliable - I’m assuming they oversubscribed, but rural areas by definition should not have too many users.
- XorNot 4y ago
  This is all in LEO though. The satellites which can see a rural house are also going to be able to see a bunch of cities.
  - marcosdumay 4y ago
    Well, up to some 100 or 200km. That's quite a bit of rural area, but I wonder if the complaints are really concentrated there.
dougmwne 4y ago
We have a cottage where we are considering getting starlink at. This service still seems like a game changer to me. If 4g is also available, running a router with dual-wan sounds like a great option to mitigate connection dropouts. We will try that. If you’re really serious about living in the back of beyond and your income depends on your ability to be on zoom calls, then it’s a small price to pay.
- nucleardog 4y ago
  I live in one of the most heavily populated areas of Canada. Almost 20% of the population of the whole country is within an hour of my house. I live directly on a fairly major highway. Utilities are above ground and right at the end of my driveway. Local internet options are 5mbit DSL, 10 mbit fixed wireless, or 25 mbit fixed LTE. If this were a “cottage” in the vacation home sense I’d say “Starlink is generally reliable enough”, but we’ve got two people working from home here. We’ve got the Starlink as the primary (fast) connection and pay another $60USD/mo for the 25mbit fixed LTE as a backup. Missing a day of work due to an outage would pay for about a year of the LTE connection so it seems like some relatively cheap insurance. I do end up falling back on it relatively frequently when the Starlink isn’t “out” but the service is degraded enough that things like video calls are have a lot of short (1-2s) stutters or high latency. I could do probably live with it, but it’s there anyway so I use it. On the other end though, Starlink _also_ saved my ass when the whole region was without power for over a week. Cell tower dropped after about an hour and the LTE went out. Starlink relies on no local infrastructure so got the generator fired up and worked through the entire week without any real issue. If you’re planning to WFH in the “boonies” you’re basically describing my current setup and it’s been very solid. Can definitely recommend.
- chrisco255 4y ago
  I do full time RV. I basically do this. I have a 4G router and the starlink. I just switch to 4g during the rare times the Starlink is slow. It works great.
- Auracle 4y ago
  The only time our Starlink drops is during the heaviest of upper midwest downpours, so I really wouldn't worry about a backup unless you absolutely need 100% instead of 99.999% uptime.
lazzlazzlazz 4y ago
So Starlink has been so effective and so popular that — utterly unsurprisingly — it is becoming more congested and they're raising rates. This is good news and not bad. It's a strong sign that the model fundamentally works and they will be able to fund continuous improvements to meet strong demand.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  If the area is that congested, it's probably in need of wired connections. All the customers suddenly leaving might push ISPs to upgrade their offerings in these areas rather than seeing the customers as a captive audience.
  - chrisco255 4y ago
    I'd love to believe that, but having seen my parents own street overlooked by cable providers for two decades despite the fact that it's no longer rural and surrounded by tens of thousands of suburban households that have mowed down all the orange groves and cow pastures, they still do not have cable internet as an option in 2023.
    - brokenkebaby 4y ago
      This is a strong indicator that existing providers enjoy artificially limited competition, i.e. licensing/regulations need to be revised
      - chrisco255 4y ago
        Sometimes it is purely a cost / benefit tradeoff analysis. The cable company even if a local monopoly should want my business. Although I suspect the local cable company did the original analysis back in the 90s and never factored for 25+ years of reliable revenue. And every year since some bean counter has looked at short term ROI. At any rate, I remember getting some relief when the first iPhone jailbreak was available and now for sure Starlink is a boon.
- 4y ago
sandworm101 4y ago
For those prices, traditional sat (geostationary) might not be as fast but it is at least reliable connectivity. For anyone in the rual flatlands of america, look seriously at rural wifi bridges. Basic off-the-shelf wifi can bridge links over miles. All those cellphone towers have fiber lines. Setup a rural wifi collective and tap into that fiber. My parents ditched traditional sats a few years ago when a local company setup a local wifi tower, itself bridged to the nearest cell tower. Now they have faster internet then i do in my non-rural appartment.
- tcrenshaw 4y ago
  In my experience, geosat is reliable until it rains. Then your slow speeds drop down to nothing. TBF, I've not used starlink yet.
  - shaklee3 4y ago
    that's not true. satellite internet within the last 15 years has used adaptive modulation and coding, and rain doesn't have nearly the effect you're saying unless it's torrential and at an angle.
    - chrisco255 4y ago
      Yeah I've used the Starlink in both rain and snow and it's worked admirably through both. Occasionally you get a real dense, severe thunderstorm that affects it, but for most weather it works fine.
hnburnsy 4y ago
To paraphrase Sam Kinison...'It occured to me there woudnt be a rural broadband shortage if people would MOVE TO WHERE THE BROADBAND IS!!!'
- jlkuester7 4y ago
  Shoot, yeah, had not thought of that. Let me just load up my farm real quick and move it somewhere with better connectivity....
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- TMWNN 4y ago
  Or, as Yogi Berra joked [1] about a restaurant, "Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded". [1] Not original to him, but he said it. <https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/08/29/too-crowded/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/08/29/too-crowded/>
huevosabio 4y ago
I have Starlink in an Airbnb in Puerto Escondido, Mexico. It has been a blessing. It used to be that we had to deal with either cell carrier 4G wifi or wait until the phone company would finally extend service one block away from its current service area. Even if you had access to either, both solutions were pretty bad. They were so unreliable that some coworking spaces had *three* providers: "broadband", 4G, and old-school satellite. Starlink arrived last year in earnest and... really life changing. It even dropped the price some months ago. The internet _just works_. Anything that bypasses local monopolies and government stasis will get my business with true joy.
- anaganisk 4y ago
  I'm pretty sure you can't just launch satellites into orbit randomly without govt blessing it or stream data to ground stations legally (Eg: India doesn't like satellite phones), at a certain point Starlink could itself be the monopoly you dread.
  - chrisco255 4y ago
    Doubt it since there will probably always be lower latency and higher reliability on fiber connections.
    - olyjohn 4y ago
      I wish that was a good enough reason... because I wish fiber was everywhere. The truth is that most people won't care that much about 20-40ms of latency. I mean, people use 5g hotspots for their internet and are just happy as clams, ISPs are pushing for it, trying to get everybody on wireless connections. The benefits of fiber for customers doesn't outweigh the profits that wireless drives to ISPs. And as anecdata, my Starlink connection that I've had since the beta days has been more reliable than Comcast or Centurylink that I've had at other places. I haven't even had weather cause an outage that I've noticed. It's at least good enough that most people won't care. We are the only people who care, and understand why low latency and high speeds are important.
  - 4y ago
TradingPlaces 4y ago
$65 billion going into rural broadband over the next 5 years. Not finalized, but my read is the feds want fiber. They are wrangling over maps right now. https://www.commerce.gov/news/fact-sheets/2021/11/fact-sheet-department-commerces-use-bipartisan-infrastructure-deal-funding https://www.commerce.gov/news/fact-sheets/2021/11/fact-sheet...
- Fatnino 4y ago
  I'll bet 70+% of the money that ends up allocated will find its way into established isp pockets with absolutely nothing to show for it in return.
  - daedalus_j 4y ago
    This is it exactly. I've got clients I work with in two federally recognized under-served areas that ISPs have gotten government grants for supporting. And yet, when you try and talk to the ISP about problems with the 2.5-down-.4-up DSL line they provide their literal reply is "You're lucky you have a dialtone." This is at a location 1.7 miles down the road from a school that has gigabit fiber. The existing programs are a joke. Nothing short of competition is going to get the ISPs to fix their problems. Centurylink has lost about 7k/month on customers switching to StarLink just on this one road. Maybe someday they'll consider fiber, but until then Starlink is a godsend.
    - pastage 4y ago
      I am guessing your are in an urban environment, if it is not too urban two miles is a great half year weekend project for laying fiber yourself.
      - daedalus_j 4y ago
        Believe me, I've thought about it. Unfortunately it's a county-owned road. The local power co-op is considering the idea of considering burying the powerlines, so I'm keeping a close eye on that. I wish I could get them interested in the idea of adding fiber internet to their services, but I'm told they can't do it anywhere they have above-ground power because of an agreement stating that CenturyLink gets to be the only ISP on the poles.
muglug 4y ago
I think it probably should be more expensive to live off the beaten path. The per-capita CO2 consumption of people who rely on cars for everything is far higher than for people who can walk places or take public transport, and those environmental costs aren't passed on effectively to consumers.
- jlkuester7 4y ago
  If only we lived in a market economy that made things more expensive in places that were harder/more expensive to get to. Oh wait.... I guess you have never had the pleasure of paying $5 for a frozen cheeseburger that you had to heat up yourself in a microwave at a filling station in Max, North Dakota! Lots of benefits to rural life, but things being cheep is not usually one of them.
- chrisco255 4y ago
  I think it would be fantastic if delusional urban people would grow their own food and supply their own cities with non rural distribution chains. Hey, it's local first after all. No potatoes from Idaho. No more avocados from Mexico, no coffee beans from South America to supply your morning latte habit. Thanks to the inevitable drop in population upon enacting such a shortsighted policy, it would also fix any admittedly ephemeral concerns you might have about CO2.
  - muglug 4y ago
    Pricing in CO2 costs would not mean the end of avocados and coffee beans — it would just make them more expensive. You can grow can grow potatoes just about anywhere, so the total distance travelled for that staple absolutely could be reduced in a more carbon-conscious world.
tedk-42 4y ago
All these talks about Starlink -> Remember it's a bandaid solution to your governments poor planning and infrastructure rollout of a core utility / service. I say this as an Australian who watched one government plan a national rollout of fibre while another came in justifying most people don't need a connection better than 25/5 (based on usage data at the time) and went ahead and gutted the project. We're now trying to undo the previous government's mess up of the original roll out post COVID world when everyone discovered remote work is a good idea for many. Starlink's issue feels like history repeating itself with any service that becomes popular and goes too quickly into high demand
- steponlego 4y ago
  Last-mile rural connectivity will never reach everybody in the USA. It's just too many people to service. Obama's net "neutrality" which thankfully got shit canned was going to mandate free service for the poor for all new startups, among other considerations which would have made making a new a rural ISP a complete non-starter. If you want Internet, you can pay for it.
  - ianlevesque 4y ago
    Last-mile rural electrification will never reach everybody in the USA. It's just too many people to service. Roosevelt would've mandated free service for the poor for all new startups, among other considerations which would have made making a new a rural electrical utility a complete non-starter. If you want Electricity, you can pay for it.
    - steponlego 4y ago
      Many rural areas do not have power and never will.
      - runarberg 4y ago
        But they still need internet?
LightHugger 4y ago
It went up only 10$ per month in congested areas, and went down by 20$ in uncongested areas. It's still 90$ if you are rural. They are trying to encourage against people using the service in urban congested areas. Starlink, at least right now, is not ideal for urban situations, that's not very surprising, maybe with newer gen sats capacity will raise, but if not, it's not an "unreliable luxury", it's still perfect for rural situations.
- n8henrie 4y ago
  $90 if you're rural?! I'm now going to be paying $120. I live in a small town on the Navajo reservation. We don't have postal service, many here don't even have running water or electricity. The alternative ISP is 6 mbps max. Any idea how I apply for this rural pricing?
  - eganist 4y ago
    Not sure where they got that figure; I just spot-checked a few rural homes in reservations and got back the same 120 figure you did. Fingers crossed something exists for you though.
    - zamadatix 4y ago
      The figure comes from TFA. The criteria being "rural areas" in unsourced though as all Starlink reported was areas with "excess capacity". I was able to get 90$/m using an address North Dakota 58647 but not a random address in the middle of nowhere Wyoming. This leads me to think the user capacity in the 24km cell isn't the only factor as the North Dakota address was certainly less rural than the Wyoming one I picked (and both instantly available). If I had to guess I'd say you do have to be rural enough your user cell isn't near capacity but not in a region where there are a limited number of ground stations for the satellites to connect back to. For the Navajo region there are no ground stations in NM, one in AZ but in the opposite corner of the state, one in NV, one on the opposite end of UT, and one in the opposite end of CO. For Wyoming the story is almost identical. For ND there are 3 ground stations in the state.
  - 4y ago
stametseater 4y ago
I don't think Starlink is commercially viable in the long run unless Starship starts flying regularly. With Starship operational, maintaining a constellation of tens of thousands of satellites should be 'easy'. But with only F9, they have to launch at an insane pace just to keep a few thousand satellites up there. They're presently at 3.5k satellites of their desired 42k. In fact I think this and similar missions are the true raison d'etre of Starship. Mars colonization isn't going to happen, it's a huge joke. Nobody will have Mars colony infrastructure ready to ship for decades at least, SpaceX is barely even pretending to invest in this. Mars colonization customers just don't exist and couldn't justify the money SpaceX is spending to develop Starship. Therefore, Starship exists to launch massive satellite constellations, particularly Starlink. And it wouldn't exist at all if SpaceX thought they could pull it off with just F9. F9 is a stopgap, to buy them time for Starship's development.
marsven_422 4y ago
[dead]
Liberonostrud 4y ago
[dead]
hoseja 4y ago
Supply is still limited. Demand skyrockets (heh). Price increases. User moans and complains. Supply will increase.
c2h5oh 4y ago
In areas where it's not oversold it works very nicely: 150-250 down / 10-30 up with 20-55ms ping to 8.8.8.8. Source: me in extremely rural central EU location.
seu 4y ago
It's a pity that cooperative broadband is usually ignored, while people and local governments expect venture backed companies to solve their problems. They work for themselves, not for you. Cooperatives tend to have reasonable prices, reasonable speeds, and work by reasonable principles. They might not be the cheapest and fastest, but will be there for you because you're a member/co-owner, not a customer.
- greenie_beans 4y ago
  we have it in mississippi and it works well.
kozikow 4y ago
"Unreliable luxury" should be Elon's marketing slogan.
- fundad 4y ago
  Unreliable Government Benefits for rich people
bearmode 4y ago
Always was.
bitcharmer 4y ago
Believe it or not but in responding to queries and requests they are even worse than Google. My employer have been trying to contact them for over a year now. We're a fortune 100 company.
rsynnott 4y ago
> However, since I first began using these low-orbit satellites to power my internet, not only has the price gone up $30 per month, but the speeds and reliability have degraded significantly. I mean, this was always going to happen; this will happen with _any_ cellular internet solution (it'll be particularly bad here as the cells are particularly large, but the principle is the same). I'm a little surprised that people seem so surprised by this; I would have thought that the target market for this (rural, no fixed line available, willing and able to pay over $100/month) would have seen it all before with mobile telcos and WISPs. > For the last two months, I've gone back to T-Mobile Home Internet because I can get T-Mobile for only $50 per month and because speed and reliability are on par with what I'd been getting from Starlink. Again, fairly unsurprising; if you have terrestrial cellular available to you, all else being equal, it's generally going to be a better option than satellite cellular.
- sovietmudkipz 4y ago
  > this will happen with _any_ cellular internet solution (it'll be particularly bad here as the cells are particularly large, but the principle is the same) > if you have terrestrial cellular available to you, all else being equal, it's generally going to be a better option than satellite cellular. Can you elaborate? What is the disadvantage? Why is the performance degradation unsurprising?
  - rsynnott 4y ago
    > What is the disadvantage? Disadvantage of satellite cellular vs terrestrial cellular (ie mobile networks and most WISPs) is largely simply that the satellite cells are generally _enormous_. Starlink cells cover 379km^2. Some very large rural LTE cells may be of similar size, but if they hit capacity it is comparatively simple for the provider to build new towers and make them smaller. Urban LTE/5G cells are _much_ smaller. Latency is a secondary issue; even low earth orbit satellites can't really compete with the sort of latency that 5G can provide, say. > Why is the performance degradation unsurprising? Ultimately, for any cellular service, there's only so much bandwidth available for a cell, and the size of the cell is anything from virtually unchangeable (generally the case for satellite services) to difficult/expensive to change. So, if you're the only user of the cell, you get all the bandwidth (subject to any artificial limits placed by the provider). As more people are added to the cell you're sharing with more and more people, and typically the total achievable bandwidth per cell really isn't that much, so things get worse until the provider is forced to deal with it. For terrestrial cellular they'd normally do this by adding towers or upgrading equipment to increase supply; for satellite their options are much more limited, and they're really mostly looking at increasing cost (thereby destroying demand) and allowing degradation.
londons_explore 4y ago
The article complains about reliability... But the header photo shows a starlink device with trees that are clearly within the 25 degrees above the horizon 'must-be-clear' zone. I suspect OP's reliability issues are self inflicted by not mounting starlink on a post to avoid trees in the signal path...
Gustomaximus 4y ago
Am I being unfair, but doesn't this article seem a bit of a selfish whine. I feel sometimes we forget how amazing the things humans are doing to. We had a person and his teams literally build re-usable rockets and then blanket the earth in thousands of satellites, largely on private funding. This seemed unconceivable 10 years ago. This of all the people tat said this was ridiculous and bound to fail financially or technologically when announced. Then a few years later someone is 'my internet in the middle of nowhere is a more expensive, the price changed because its so popular and has dropouts"...like your using internet from a fleet of more satellites put up in a couple of years than humans created in the 50 years before. I think we need to step back and take perspective on this one. Its freaking incredible we have this services. Its fairly new tech and will probably get better and better over coming decades. For me, Starlink has been a game changer living in a rural area that still had copper ADSL. Its more expensive and sometimes (not often) has dropouts but I still marvel at what has been achieved. Less often these days but sometimes I still got to the Starlink maps, spin the globe and feel amazed. Try it: https://satellitemap.space/ https://satellitemap.space/
- Havoc 4y ago
  The fact that starlink is technologically impressive doesn't really change that paying 150 for a "30-50/2-10Mbps" connection is worth a whine
  - Gustomaximus 4y ago
    It's not just a connection. Its a connection anywhere in relevant countries. That 'anywhere' is a big difference. So if your in a urban location, its not mean for you, price sux. If you have a cabin in hte middle of nowhere, this seems cheap and amazing to me. And for speed, tested as typing this, I'm running 210mb down: https://prnt.sc/dXDNiqWQdtaC https://prnt.sc/dXDNiqWQdtaC - I guess benefits of not being overly congested yet
- jsjohnst 4y ago
  > Am I being unfair, but doesn't this article seem a bit of a selfish whine. It does for sure and I was debating whether I should comment and say it or not. > I think we need to step back and take perspective on this one. Disagree here though. If we were taking account of the global state of things, sure. When OP pays for a service, gets unreliable service, and prices go up, they have a legit reason to complain and not be told to take in the big picture. — It might seem like I’m taking both sides, but really I’m not. OP decided to live in the middle of nowhere (I grew up in the same state, so I speak from experience), with that comes tradeoffs. Want fast and reliable internet? Be ready to pay for multiple providers! Yes, $200/month for internet seem high compared to other costs of living in rural Kansas, but it’s the compromise you endure for living so remote but wanting a job that requires you to be connected.
upofadown 4y ago
The big gotcha with a system like Starlink is that the antenna has to be within line of sight of satellites that are at times quite low to the horizon. If you have obstructions that means that you are going to have dropouts, at least some of the time. Most people have to live with at least some obstructions, unless they want to put up a tower.
throwawaaarrgh 4y ago
> I would love to ask the Starlink support team for more information since I own the equipment, but I can't because there's no email address, phone number, chat, or other way to message support That seals it. Better to buy HughesNet or similar. It may be slower but at least you can get support.
- 1970-01-01 4y ago
  https://support.starlink.com/tickets https://support.starlink.com/tickets https://support.starlink.com/create-support-ticket https://support.starlink.com/create-support-ticket But don't take my word for it. Or do, because you've clearly settled on a decision without researching the problem.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- survirtual 4y ago
  You just open the app and chat with support, it is super easy and they’re very responsive. Not sure what that quote is talking about.
- olyjohn 4y ago
  Have you ever used HugesNet? I'd go back to my 1.5MBit DSL before I ever got that shit.
jeffheard 4y ago
I preordered Starlink in March of 2021, as soon as my first rural isp reneged on 50 megabits and sold me 5. 2 years later in western Virginia I still have no eta for my order and cannot contact anyone about it. I have 12 megabits from that same local ISP and it’s enough to do my job so I cancelled Starlink. I can’t imagine what customer service will be like if I am on preorder for two years and they refuse to give any update other than kicking the can down the road every time the estimated delivery date gets close. When I canceled my estimate was “early 2024”.
- londons_explore 4y ago
  I think starlink is deliberately not rolling out any more locations in the USA till their dispute with the FCC about the rural broadband money is sorted out. They don't want to deploy early, because then they wouldn't be eligible for the funding which is supposed to help them deploy. Notice that just over the canada and mexico borders have good service available today - suggesting bandwidth isn't the constraint.
  - fundad 4y ago
    That sweet government money!
    - londons_explore 4y ago
      It was $1B that they were expected to get... Thats substantially more revenue than they were going to collect from all their US based users in a whole year!
      - fundad 4y ago
        His companies are quintessential products of the money printer and low interest Musk has said says as much when he blames his performance on the fed rate rises. For a luxury car company, of all things.
pard68 4y ago
I've not had any speed or outage issues beyond the expected (ie storms, I live in tornado alley). I also don't pay $120 / month. And I noticed OP is using the old sat. Wonder if the issue is area/equipment.
tejohnso 4y ago
> I've talked to others in my area who use Starlink, and since January, we've experienced frequent downtime This is depressing. I thought Starlink would be at least consistently available in the areas that they are providing service. We don't need another unreliable internet option. Especially if it's also overpriced.
NDizzle 4y ago
They should gear it towards rural only.. If it's profitable at the moment? That's what is frustrating me about T-Mobile 5g home internet. I'm rural, work from home, and maintain 3 ISPs (with the proper load balancing network gear to support all of this) to deal with it. People in town are installing directional antennas, pointing towards my rural tower, and using 5G home internet, affecting my speeds, when they have cable/fiber options in town to choose from. Also, I mean, sure, I'd love fiber ran out this way. Would you like to run fiber about 12 miles to service less than 50 people, with about 20 offshoots to homes off the main road.. increasing the overall distance and trenching by who-knows-how-far?! It's not exactly a thrilling business plan.
secstate 4y ago
Still makes me a little depressed that instead of evolving Iridium, the best we can do with cheap launches is put up a bazillion bent-pipe satellites. I know all the technical reasons why not, but damn. Seems like a missed opportunity to use low interest rate VC money to build--or just improve--a generationally important system.
teleforce 4y ago
According to ITU, more than a third of world population has no (proper) access to the Internet, and that equates to about 2.7 Billion people worldwide [1]. Personally I'd really love Starlink to provide Internet access to all people in the rural areas but it probably will not going to happen. By their own estimate, they are only currently deploying around 5% to 10% of their 42K projected Starlink satellites for global coverage. I'm not seeing that going to happen for at least another ten years (2033) provided they get the funding they're requesting and it does not seems to be the case [2]. The best alternative for satellite link for rural is the terrestrial based fixed wireless access (FWA). There are mainly 3 segments/types of FWA namely [3]: 1) ‘Wireless Fiber’ (100 – 1K Mbps, cost USD50 – 100) 2) ‘Build with Precision’ (50 – 200 Mbps, cost USD20 – 60) 3) ‘Connect the Unconnected’ (10–100 Mbps, cost USD10 – 20) This last (3rd segment) is characterized by virtually non-existent fixed broadband alternatives, and mobile broadband using smartphones is the dominant way of accessing the Internet. Average revenue per unit (ARPU) cost are very much limited and user expectations of access speed are relatively low. The irony is that the 3rd segment is the "low hanging fruits" in term of technology while being the hardest to achieve in practice due to the very nature of terrestrial wireless signals. Starlink or any LEO based solution, however attractive, cannot possibly fill this gap due to the high cost involved in the satellite business and its astronomical ROI. The author of the OP article is from the first (1st) segment of "elite" users and they're very far in between in the grand scale of rural users, i.e. not a typical rural users most probably 5% maximum. It seems to me that Starlink is focusing on this type of "elite" rural to survive and remain profitable not unlike Tesla did with their initial luxury/premium Tesla EV models strategy. But Tesla success is largely hinged and depended on huge (US) govt support for Tesla early days, and Starlink is also counting in the same strategy [4]. However, the latest bidding for govt money for Starlink is not successful and it's evidence from the stalls number of further starlink satellite deployment [5]. Elon Musk has been mentioning on record that one of the first Starlink priorities is not to go bust as what had happenned to its predecessor Motorola's Iridium but the odd seems to be against them at least for now. I think it's the best for most of the countries that struggling with rural internet access (e.g. all countries US included) is to go for terrestrial fixed wireless access (FWA) for the third (3rd) segment i.e. connecting the unconnected. But if US cannot make satellite based Internet access work what are the chances that other countries might have? Probably the best solution is to be flexible in tackling the Internet access for the 3rd segment with FWA perhaps similar to approach taken by Magma [5]. It's still early days for the rural areas connectivity but the sooner we can tackle this issues is better, as demonstrated during the height of the pandemic where travels are limited and digital divide phenomenon is at its worst. [1] Measuring digital development Facts and Figures 2022: https://www.itu.int/itu-d/reports/statistics/facts-figures-2022/ https://www.itu.int/itu-d/reports/statistics/facts-figures-2... [2] FCC decides against giving Starlink $1b in rural broadband subsidies: https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/11/fcc_starlink_rural_internet/ https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/11/fcc_starlink_rural_in... [3] Fixed Wireless Access handbook (2023 Edition) by Ericsson: https://www.ericsson.com/en/fixed-wireless-access https://www.ericsson.com/en/fixed-wireless-access [4] SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network wins $885M in federal aid for rural broadband: https://www.geekwire.com/2020/spacexs-starlink-satellite-network-wins-885m-federal-subsidies-rural-broadband/ https://www.geekwire.com/2020/spacexs-starlink-satellite-net... [5] Building Flexible, Low-Cost Wireless Access Networks With Magma (to appear in 20th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation 2023): https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~jrex/papers/magma23.pdf https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~jrex/papers/magma23.pdf
wdb 4y ago
Pretty amazing that you can get faster internet in middle of nowhere sounding area with Starlink than in Central London (Zone 1/2) wired/phone line internet

259 points by shaicoleman 4y ago

Starlink was designed for, and has always been intended for remote people who literally have no other connection option. No cable, no 3G or 4G. If you can get those other options, Starlink is not a product designed for you. Go remote, and Starlink is an absolute game changer without even a remotely close equal.

Zigurd 4y ago
Take a look at 5G extended range FWA. That's what Starlink is competing against. Proprietary versions of similar capability are well-proven, but 5G-based extended range FWA enables interoperation, standardization, and competition.
- capableweb 4y ago
  > Take a look at 5G extended range FWA. > This innovation extends mmWave coverage from a few hundred meters to more than 7km That doesn't seem very impressive... That doesn't even come close to what various long-range WiFi connections have been able to do.
  - Zigurd 4y ago
    5G extended range FWA piggybacks off 5G infrastructure. You can do similar things with WiFi or proprietary mmWave FWA, but it requires purpose-built infrastructure.
    - capableweb 4y ago
      But how much 5G infrastructure is there in rural areas? Around my parts, not a lot. So the piggieback argument feels less relevant here.
      - Zigurd 4y ago
        Proprietary mmWave radios are already in wide use in rural areas. The economics of installing and using 5G extended range would be similar or better. The key difference is the "extended range" part, which is what makes them competitive and in many cases superior in range to proprietary FWA. What standardization adds is inter-operation of equipment.
capableweb 4y ago
It's gonna be interesting to see how they solve the financials. Targeting a rural/spare population via expensive satellite connections, that market has to be relatively limited. And with a limited amount of customers, how does it make business sense?
- grecy 4y ago
  Given that it's global, and already rolled out to many countries, I'd have to assume the customer pool is tens or hundreds of millions of customers. Also the sats are some of the cheapest, most mass-produced ever, and SpaceX's launch costs are a tiny fraction of anything done previously. Given what they've achieved so far, I kind of trust SpaceX to have run the numbers on this more than you or I.
- Auracle 4y ago
  Rural doesn't mean poor.
plugger 4y ago
no offence, but this perspective doesn't apply worldwide. if you live in a country like Australia a StarLink connection will give you 10x the speed of many NBN (National Broadband Network) wired connections. 3G/4G/5G are metered by MB and not a viable option for a daily WAN link due to that. Unless you were lucky enough to get fibre pulled into your house before the government at the time kneecapped the NBN you'd have a link that is comparable in cost and speed. Most consumers here do not have that link.
- MindSpunk 4y ago
  So much this. I'm on Starlink in Sydney because Australia's NBN decided to stop their fibre rollout 600 meters from my house and decided that the only option they would provide me is old geostationary satellite. 4G reception is middling with pathetic data caps. I get 5G reception too but none of the providers will offer home broadband services, only mobile Wifi. On Starlink I get ~250mbps down at a price only marginally higher than what I would be paying to get the same speed on a fixed line connection. I can't be the only one in a situation like mine. Prime candidates for Starlink. The NBN closed quotes for running fibre to my residence. Even if I had the tens-of-thousands to pay for them to run the cable they won't even consider taking my money currently.
  - shaklee3 4y ago
    this has been repeated countless times, but the only reason you are experiencing good service is because it's not at capacity. as soon as your area gets to capacity, just like it is all over the US, you too will face bad speeds and increasing prices. for some reason people thought starlink had some magical solution to capacity problems and that the high speeds would last forever. it's just another ISP.
    - theaussiestew 4y ago
      It'll never get to capacity where he lives, because he lives in a semi-rural area that has a low population density.

IG_Semmelweiss 4y ago

Question - the article mentions bandwith capacity being a factor for pricing. Is there a resource online where one can find reported up/down speeds by geolocation ?

Zigurd 4y ago

Starlink is a link in Elon's fragile chain of strategies. Elon, evidently, loves interlinked strategies. The first grand linkage was "How do we make reusable rockets valuable?" because, on their own, with non-reusable second stages, they're cool, but not financially impressive. But, with Starlink using almost all reused Falcon 9 capacity, it looks sexy af. Elon, of course, can't stop there: How do you use the redonkulous payload-to-orbit capacity of Starship? You make satellites 5X larger that are no longer a "bent pipe" architecture and you make a "backbone-in-orbit" with laser links between satellites. That might make Starlink make financial sense. But it looks like it is years away from being possible. Meanwhile Starlink "1.5" satellites are a PoC of laser links between satellites, but not anywhere near the scale of the big satellites that need Starship.

xenospn 4y ago

I wonder why it’s so unreliable - I’m assuming they oversubscribed, but rural areas by definition should not have too many users.

XorNot 4y ago
This is all in LEO though. The satellites which can see a rural house are also going to be able to see a bunch of cities.
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  Well, up to some 100 or 200km. That's quite a bit of rural area, but I wonder if the complaints are really concentrated there.

dougmwne 4y ago

We have a cottage where we are considering getting starlink at. This service still seems like a game changer to me. If 4g is also available, running a router with dual-wan sounds like a great option to mitigate connection dropouts. We will try that. If you’re really serious about living in the back of beyond and your income depends on your ability to be on zoom calls, then it’s a small price to pay.

nucleardog 4y ago
I live in one of the most heavily populated areas of Canada. Almost 20% of the population of the whole country is within an hour of my house. I live directly on a fairly major highway. Utilities are above ground and right at the end of my driveway. Local internet options are 5mbit DSL, 10 mbit fixed wireless, or 25 mbit fixed LTE. If this were a “cottage” in the vacation home sense I’d say “Starlink is generally reliable enough”, but we’ve got two people working from home here. We’ve got the Starlink as the primary (fast) connection and pay another $60USD/mo for the 25mbit fixed LTE as a backup. Missing a day of work due to an outage would pay for about a year of the LTE connection so it seems like some relatively cheap insurance. I do end up falling back on it relatively frequently when the Starlink isn’t “out” but the service is degraded enough that things like video calls are have a lot of short (1-2s) stutters or high latency. I could do probably live with it, but it’s there anyway so I use it. On the other end though, Starlink _also_ saved my ass when the whole region was without power for over a week. Cell tower dropped after about an hour and the LTE went out. Starlink relies on no local infrastructure so got the generator fired up and worked through the entire week without any real issue. If you’re planning to WFH in the “boonies” you’re basically describing my current setup and it’s been very solid. Can definitely recommend.
chrisco255 4y ago
I do full time RV. I basically do this. I have a 4G router and the starlink. I just switch to 4g during the rare times the Starlink is slow. It works great.
Auracle 4y ago
The only time our Starlink drops is during the heaviest of upper midwest downpours, so I really wouldn't worry about a backup unless you absolutely need 100% instead of 99.999% uptime.

lazzlazzlazz 4y ago

So Starlink has been so effective and so popular that — utterly unsurprisingly — it is becoming more congested and they're raising rates. This is good news and not bad. It's a strong sign that the model fundamentally works and they will be able to fund continuous improvements to meet strong demand.

Gigachad 4y ago
If the area is that congested, it's probably in need of wired connections. All the customers suddenly leaving might push ISPs to upgrade their offerings in these areas rather than seeing the customers as a captive audience.
- chrisco255 4y ago
  I'd love to believe that, but having seen my parents own street overlooked by cable providers for two decades despite the fact that it's no longer rural and surrounded by tens of thousands of suburban households that have mowed down all the orange groves and cow pastures, they still do not have cable internet as an option in 2023.
  - brokenkebaby 4y ago
    This is a strong indicator that existing providers enjoy artificially limited competition, i.e. licensing/regulations need to be revised
    - chrisco255 4y ago
      Sometimes it is purely a cost / benefit tradeoff analysis. The cable company even if a local monopoly should want my business. Although I suspect the local cable company did the original analysis back in the 90s and never factored for 25+ years of reliable revenue. And every year since some bean counter has looked at short term ROI. At any rate, I remember getting some relief when the first iPhone jailbreak was available and now for sure Starlink is a boon.
4y ago

sandworm101 4y ago

For those prices, traditional sat (geostationary) might not be as fast but it is at least reliable connectivity. For anyone in the rual flatlands of america, look seriously at rural wifi bridges. Basic off-the-shelf wifi can bridge links over miles. All those cellphone towers have fiber lines. Setup a rural wifi collective and tap into that fiber. My parents ditched traditional sats a few years ago when a local company setup a local wifi tower, itself bridged to the nearest cell tower. Now they have faster internet then i do in my non-rural appartment.

tcrenshaw 4y ago
In my experience, geosat is reliable until it rains. Then your slow speeds drop down to nothing. TBF, I've not used starlink yet.
- shaklee3 4y ago
  that's not true. satellite internet within the last 15 years has used adaptive modulation and coding, and rain doesn't have nearly the effect you're saying unless it's torrential and at an angle.
  - chrisco255 4y ago
    Yeah I've used the Starlink in both rain and snow and it's worked admirably through both. Occasionally you get a real dense, severe thunderstorm that affects it, but for most weather it works fine.

hnburnsy 4y ago

To paraphrase Sam Kinison...'It occured to me there woudnt be a rural broadband shortage if people would MOVE TO WHERE THE BROADBAND IS!!!'

jlkuester7 4y ago
Shoot, yeah, had not thought of that. Let me just load up my farm real quick and move it somewhere with better connectivity....
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
TMWNN 4y ago
Or, as Yogi Berra joked [1] about a restaurant, "Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded". [1] Not original to him, but he said it. <https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/08/29/too-crowded/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/08/29/too-crowded/>

huevosabio 4y ago

I have Starlink in an Airbnb in Puerto Escondido, Mexico. It has been a blessing. It used to be that we had to deal with either cell carrier 4G wifi or wait until the phone company would finally extend service one block away from its current service area. Even if you had access to either, both solutions were pretty bad. They were so unreliable that some coworking spaces had *three* providers: "broadband", 4G, and old-school satellite. Starlink arrived last year in earnest and... really life changing. It even dropped the price some months ago. The internet _just works_. Anything that bypasses local monopolies and government stasis will get my business with true joy.

anaganisk 4y ago
I'm pretty sure you can't just launch satellites into orbit randomly without govt blessing it or stream data to ground stations legally (Eg: India doesn't like satellite phones), at a certain point Starlink could itself be the monopoly you dread.
- chrisco255 4y ago
  Doubt it since there will probably always be lower latency and higher reliability on fiber connections.
  - olyjohn 4y ago
    I wish that was a good enough reason... because I wish fiber was everywhere. The truth is that most people won't care that much about 20-40ms of latency. I mean, people use 5g hotspots for their internet and are just happy as clams, ISPs are pushing for it, trying to get everybody on wireless connections. The benefits of fiber for customers doesn't outweigh the profits that wireless drives to ISPs. And as anecdata, my Starlink connection that I've had since the beta days has been more reliable than Comcast or Centurylink that I've had at other places. I haven't even had weather cause an outage that I've noticed. It's at least good enough that most people won't care. We are the only people who care, and understand why low latency and high speeds are important.
- 4y ago

TradingPlaces 4y ago

$65 billion going into rural broadband over the next 5 years. Not finalized, but my read is the feds want fiber. They are wrangling over maps right now. https://www.commerce.gov/news/fact-sheets/2021/11/fact-sheet-department-commerces-use-bipartisan-infrastructure-deal-funding https://www.commerce.gov/news/fact-sheets/2021/11/fact-sheet...

Fatnino 4y ago
I'll bet 70+% of the money that ends up allocated will find its way into established isp pockets with absolutely nothing to show for it in return.
- daedalus_j 4y ago
  This is it exactly. I've got clients I work with in two federally recognized under-served areas that ISPs have gotten government grants for supporting. And yet, when you try and talk to the ISP about problems with the 2.5-down-.4-up DSL line they provide their literal reply is "You're lucky you have a dialtone." This is at a location 1.7 miles down the road from a school that has gigabit fiber. The existing programs are a joke. Nothing short of competition is going to get the ISPs to fix their problems. Centurylink has lost about 7k/month on customers switching to StarLink just on this one road. Maybe someday they'll consider fiber, but until then Starlink is a godsend.
  - pastage 4y ago
    I am guessing your are in an urban environment, if it is not too urban two miles is a great half year weekend project for laying fiber yourself.
    - daedalus_j 4y ago
      Believe me, I've thought about it. Unfortunately it's a county-owned road. The local power co-op is considering the idea of considering burying the powerlines, so I'm keeping a close eye on that. I wish I could get them interested in the idea of adding fiber internet to their services, but I'm told they can't do it anywhere they have above-ground power because of an agreement stating that CenturyLink gets to be the only ISP on the poles.

muglug 4y ago

I think it probably should be more expensive to live off the beaten path. The per-capita CO2 consumption of people who rely on cars for everything is far higher than for people who can walk places or take public transport, and those environmental costs aren't passed on effectively to consumers.

jlkuester7 4y ago
If only we lived in a market economy that made things more expensive in places that were harder/more expensive to get to. Oh wait.... I guess you have never had the pleasure of paying $5 for a frozen cheeseburger that you had to heat up yourself in a microwave at a filling station in Max, North Dakota! Lots of benefits to rural life, but things being cheep is not usually one of them.
chrisco255 4y ago
I think it would be fantastic if delusional urban people would grow their own food and supply their own cities with non rural distribution chains. Hey, it's local first after all. No potatoes from Idaho. No more avocados from Mexico, no coffee beans from South America to supply your morning latte habit. Thanks to the inevitable drop in population upon enacting such a shortsighted policy, it would also fix any admittedly ephemeral concerns you might have about CO2.
- muglug 4y ago
  Pricing in CO2 costs would not mean the end of avocados and coffee beans — it would just make them more expensive. You can grow can grow potatoes just about anywhere, so the total distance travelled for that staple absolutely could be reduced in a more carbon-conscious world.

tedk-42 4y ago

All these talks about Starlink -> Remember it's a bandaid solution to your governments poor planning and infrastructure rollout of a core utility / service. I say this as an Australian who watched one government plan a national rollout of fibre while another came in justifying most people don't need a connection better than 25/5 (based on usage data at the time) and went ahead and gutted the project. We're now trying to undo the previous government's mess up of the original roll out post COVID world when everyone discovered remote work is a good idea for many. Starlink's issue feels like history repeating itself with any service that becomes popular and goes too quickly into high demand

steponlego 4y ago
Last-mile rural connectivity will never reach everybody in the USA. It's just too many people to service. Obama's net "neutrality" which thankfully got shit canned was going to mandate free service for the poor for all new startups, among other considerations which would have made making a new a rural ISP a complete non-starter. If you want Internet, you can pay for it.
- ianlevesque 4y ago
  Last-mile rural electrification will never reach everybody in the USA. It's just too many people to service. Roosevelt would've mandated free service for the poor for all new startups, among other considerations which would have made making a new a rural electrical utility a complete non-starter. If you want Electricity, you can pay for it.
  - steponlego 4y ago
    Many rural areas do not have power and never will.
    - runarberg 4y ago
      But they still need internet?

LightHugger 4y ago

It went up only 10$ per month in congested areas, and went down by 20$ in uncongested areas. It's still 90$ if you are rural. They are trying to encourage against people using the service in urban congested areas. Starlink, at least right now, is not ideal for urban situations, that's not very surprising, maybe with newer gen sats capacity will raise, but if not, it's not an "unreliable luxury", it's still perfect for rural situations.

n8henrie 4y ago
$90 if you're rural?! I'm now going to be paying $120. I live in a small town on the Navajo reservation. We don't have postal service, many here don't even have running water or electricity. The alternative ISP is 6 mbps max. Any idea how I apply for this rural pricing?
- eganist 4y ago
  Not sure where they got that figure; I just spot-checked a few rural homes in reservations and got back the same 120 figure you did. Fingers crossed something exists for you though.
  - zamadatix 4y ago
    The figure comes from TFA. The criteria being "rural areas" in unsourced though as all Starlink reported was areas with "excess capacity". I was able to get 90$/m using an address North Dakota 58647 but not a random address in the middle of nowhere Wyoming. This leads me to think the user capacity in the 24km cell isn't the only factor as the North Dakota address was certainly less rural than the Wyoming one I picked (and both instantly available). If I had to guess I'd say you do have to be rural enough your user cell isn't near capacity but not in a region where there are a limited number of ground stations for the satellites to connect back to. For the Navajo region there are no ground stations in NM, one in AZ but in the opposite corner of the state, one in NV, one on the opposite end of UT, and one in the opposite end of CO. For Wyoming the story is almost identical. For ND there are 3 ground stations in the state.
- 4y ago

stametseater 4y ago

I don't think Starlink is commercially viable in the long run unless Starship starts flying regularly. With Starship operational, maintaining a constellation of tens of thousands of satellites should be 'easy'. But with only F9, they have to launch at an insane pace just to keep a few thousand satellites up there. They're presently at 3.5k satellites of their desired 42k. In fact I think this and similar missions are the true raison d'etre of Starship. Mars colonization isn't going to happen, it's a huge joke. Nobody will have Mars colony infrastructure ready to ship for decades at least, SpaceX is barely even pretending to invest in this. Mars colonization customers just don't exist and couldn't justify the money SpaceX is spending to develop Starship. Therefore, Starship exists to launch massive satellite constellations, particularly Starlink. And it wouldn't exist at all if SpaceX thought they could pull it off with just F9. F9 is a stopgap, to buy them time for Starship's development.

marsven_422 4y ago

[dead]

Liberonostrud 4y ago

[dead]

hoseja 4y ago

Supply is still limited. Demand skyrockets (heh). Price increases. User moans and complains. Supply will increase.

c2h5oh 4y ago

In areas where it's not oversold it works very nicely: 150-250 down / 10-30 up with 20-55ms ping to 8.8.8.8. Source: me in extremely rural central EU location.

seu 4y ago

It's a pity that cooperative broadband is usually ignored, while people and local governments expect venture backed companies to solve their problems. They work for themselves, not for you. Cooperatives tend to have reasonable prices, reasonable speeds, and work by reasonable principles. They might not be the cheapest and fastest, but will be there for you because you're a member/co-owner, not a customer.

greenie_beans 4y ago
we have it in mississippi and it works well.

kozikow 4y ago

"Unreliable luxury" should be Elon's marketing slogan.

fundad 4y ago
Unreliable Government Benefits for rich people

bearmode 4y ago

Always was.

bitcharmer 4y ago

Believe it or not but in responding to queries and requests they are even worse than Google. My employer have been trying to contact them for over a year now. We're a fortune 100 company.

rsynnott 4y ago

> However, since I first began using these low-orbit satellites to power my internet, not only has the price gone up $30 per month, but the speeds and reliability have degraded significantly. I mean, this was always going to happen; this will happen with _any_ cellular internet solution (it'll be particularly bad here as the cells are particularly large, but the principle is the same). I'm a little surprised that people seem so surprised by this; I would have thought that the target market for this (rural, no fixed line available, willing and able to pay over $100/month) would have seen it all before with mobile telcos and WISPs. > For the last two months, I've gone back to T-Mobile Home Internet because I can get T-Mobile for only $50 per month and because speed and reliability are on par with what I'd been getting from Starlink. Again, fairly unsurprising; if you have terrestrial cellular available to you, all else being equal, it's generally going to be a better option than satellite cellular.

sovietmudkipz 4y ago
> this will happen with _any_ cellular internet solution (it'll be particularly bad here as the cells are particularly large, but the principle is the same) > if you have terrestrial cellular available to you, all else being equal, it's generally going to be a better option than satellite cellular. Can you elaborate? What is the disadvantage? Why is the performance degradation unsurprising?
- rsynnott 4y ago
  > What is the disadvantage? Disadvantage of satellite cellular vs terrestrial cellular (ie mobile networks and most WISPs) is largely simply that the satellite cells are generally _enormous_. Starlink cells cover 379km^2. Some very large rural LTE cells may be of similar size, but if they hit capacity it is comparatively simple for the provider to build new towers and make them smaller. Urban LTE/5G cells are _much_ smaller. Latency is a secondary issue; even low earth orbit satellites can't really compete with the sort of latency that 5G can provide, say. > Why is the performance degradation unsurprising? Ultimately, for any cellular service, there's only so much bandwidth available for a cell, and the size of the cell is anything from virtually unchangeable (generally the case for satellite services) to difficult/expensive to change. So, if you're the only user of the cell, you get all the bandwidth (subject to any artificial limits placed by the provider). As more people are added to the cell you're sharing with more and more people, and typically the total achievable bandwidth per cell really isn't that much, so things get worse until the provider is forced to deal with it. For terrestrial cellular they'd normally do this by adding towers or upgrading equipment to increase supply; for satellite their options are much more limited, and they're really mostly looking at increasing cost (thereby destroying demand) and allowing degradation.

londons_explore 4y ago

The article complains about reliability... But the header photo shows a starlink device with trees that are clearly within the 25 degrees above the horizon 'must-be-clear' zone. I suspect OP's reliability issues are self inflicted by not mounting starlink on a post to avoid trees in the signal path...

Gustomaximus 4y ago

Am I being unfair, but doesn't this article seem a bit of a selfish whine. I feel sometimes we forget how amazing the things humans are doing to. We had a person and his teams literally build re-usable rockets and then blanket the earth in thousands of satellites, largely on private funding. This seemed unconceivable 10 years ago. This of all the people tat said this was ridiculous and bound to fail financially or technologically when announced. Then a few years later someone is 'my internet in the middle of nowhere is a more expensive, the price changed because its so popular and has dropouts"...like your using internet from a fleet of more satellites put up in a couple of years than humans created in the 50 years before. I think we need to step back and take perspective on this one. Its freaking incredible we have this services. Its fairly new tech and will probably get better and better over coming decades. For me, Starlink has been a game changer living in a rural area that still had copper ADSL. Its more expensive and sometimes (not often) has dropouts but I still marvel at what has been achieved. Less often these days but sometimes I still got to the Starlink maps, spin the globe and feel amazed. Try it: https://satellitemap.space/ https://satellitemap.space/

Havoc 4y ago
The fact that starlink is technologically impressive doesn't really change that paying 150 for a "30-50/2-10Mbps" connection is worth a whine
- Gustomaximus 4y ago
  It's not just a connection. Its a connection anywhere in relevant countries. That 'anywhere' is a big difference. So if your in a urban location, its not mean for you, price sux. If you have a cabin in hte middle of nowhere, this seems cheap and amazing to me. And for speed, tested as typing this, I'm running 210mb down: https://prnt.sc/dXDNiqWQdtaC https://prnt.sc/dXDNiqWQdtaC - I guess benefits of not being overly congested yet
jsjohnst 4y ago
> Am I being unfair, but doesn't this article seem a bit of a selfish whine. It does for sure and I was debating whether I should comment and say it or not. > I think we need to step back and take perspective on this one. Disagree here though. If we were taking account of the global state of things, sure. When OP pays for a service, gets unreliable service, and prices go up, they have a legit reason to complain and not be told to take in the big picture. — It might seem like I’m taking both sides, but really I’m not. OP decided to live in the middle of nowhere (I grew up in the same state, so I speak from experience), with that comes tradeoffs. Want fast and reliable internet? Be ready to pay for multiple providers! Yes, $200/month for internet seem high compared to other costs of living in rural Kansas, but it’s the compromise you endure for living so remote but wanting a job that requires you to be connected.

upofadown 4y ago

The big gotcha with a system like Starlink is that the antenna has to be within line of sight of satellites that are at times quite low to the horizon. If you have obstructions that means that you are going to have dropouts, at least some of the time. Most people have to live with at least some obstructions, unless they want to put up a tower.

throwawaaarrgh 4y ago

> I would love to ask the Starlink support team for more information since I own the equipment, but I can't because there's no email address, phone number, chat, or other way to message support That seals it. Better to buy HughesNet or similar. It may be slower but at least you can get support.

1970-01-01 4y ago
https://support.starlink.com/tickets https://support.starlink.com/tickets https://support.starlink.com/create-support-ticket https://support.starlink.com/create-support-ticket But don't take my word for it. Or do, because you've clearly settled on a decision without researching the problem.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
survirtual 4y ago
You just open the app and chat with support, it is super easy and they’re very responsive. Not sure what that quote is talking about.
olyjohn 4y ago
Have you ever used HugesNet? I'd go back to my 1.5MBit DSL before I ever got that shit.

jeffheard 4y ago

I preordered Starlink in March of 2021, as soon as my first rural isp reneged on 50 megabits and sold me 5. 2 years later in western Virginia I still have no eta for my order and cannot contact anyone about it. I have 12 megabits from that same local ISP and it’s enough to do my job so I cancelled Starlink. I can’t imagine what customer service will be like if I am on preorder for two years and they refuse to give any update other than kicking the can down the road every time the estimated delivery date gets close. When I canceled my estimate was “early 2024”.

londons_explore 4y ago
I think starlink is deliberately not rolling out any more locations in the USA till their dispute with the FCC about the rural broadband money is sorted out. They don't want to deploy early, because then they wouldn't be eligible for the funding which is supposed to help them deploy. Notice that just over the canada and mexico borders have good service available today - suggesting bandwidth isn't the constraint.
- fundad 4y ago
  That sweet government money!
  - londons_explore 4y ago
    It was $1B that they were expected to get... Thats substantially more revenue than they were going to collect from all their US based users in a whole year!
    - fundad 4y ago
      His companies are quintessential products of the money printer and low interest Musk has said says as much when he blames his performance on the fed rate rises. For a luxury car company, of all things.

pard68 4y ago

I've not had any speed or outage issues beyond the expected (ie storms, I live in tornado alley). I also don't pay $120 / month. And I noticed OP is using the old sat. Wonder if the issue is area/equipment.

tejohnso 4y ago

> I've talked to others in my area who use Starlink, and since January, we've experienced frequent downtime This is depressing. I thought Starlink would be at least consistently available in the areas that they are providing service. We don't need another unreliable internet option. Especially if it's also overpriced.

NDizzle 4y ago

They should gear it towards rural only.. If it's profitable at the moment? That's what is frustrating me about T-Mobile 5g home internet. I'm rural, work from home, and maintain 3 ISPs (with the proper load balancing network gear to support all of this) to deal with it. People in town are installing directional antennas, pointing towards my rural tower, and using 5G home internet, affecting my speeds, when they have cable/fiber options in town to choose from. Also, I mean, sure, I'd love fiber ran out this way. Would you like to run fiber about 12 miles to service less than 50 people, with about 20 offshoots to homes off the main road.. increasing the overall distance and trenching by who-knows-how-far?! It's not exactly a thrilling business plan.

secstate 4y ago

Still makes me a little depressed that instead of evolving Iridium, the best we can do with cheap launches is put up a bazillion bent-pipe satellites. I know all the technical reasons why not, but damn. Seems like a missed opportunity to use low interest rate VC money to build--or just improve--a generationally important system.

teleforce 4y ago

According to ITU, more than a third of world population has no (proper) access to the Internet, and that equates to about 2.7 Billion people worldwide [1]. Personally I'd really love Starlink to provide Internet access to all people in the rural areas but it probably will not going to happen. By their own estimate, they are only currently deploying around 5% to 10% of their 42K projected Starlink satellites for global coverage. I'm not seeing that going to happen for at least another ten years (2033) provided they get the funding they're requesting and it does not seems to be the case [2]. The best alternative for satellite link for rural is the terrestrial based fixed wireless access (FWA). There are mainly 3 segments/types of FWA namely [3]: 1) ‘Wireless Fiber’ (100 – 1K Mbps, cost USD50 – 100) 2) ‘Build with Precision’ (50 – 200 Mbps, cost USD20 – 60) 3) ‘Connect the Unconnected’ (10–100 Mbps, cost USD10 – 20) This last (3rd segment) is characterized by virtually non-existent fixed broadband alternatives, and mobile broadband using smartphones is the dominant way of accessing the Internet. Average revenue per unit (ARPU) cost are very much limited and user expectations of access speed are relatively low. The irony is that the 3rd segment is the "low hanging fruits" in term of technology while being the hardest to achieve in practice due to the very nature of terrestrial wireless signals. Starlink or any LEO based solution, however attractive, cannot possibly fill this gap due to the high cost involved in the satellite business and its astronomical ROI. The author of the OP article is from the first (1st) segment of "elite" users and they're very far in between in the grand scale of rural users, i.e. not a typical rural users most probably 5% maximum. It seems to me that Starlink is focusing on this type of "elite" rural to survive and remain profitable not unlike Tesla did with their initial luxury/premium Tesla EV models strategy. But Tesla success is largely hinged and depended on huge (US) govt support for Tesla early days, and Starlink is also counting in the same strategy [4]. However, the latest bidding for govt money for Starlink is not successful and it's evidence from the stalls number of further starlink satellite deployment [5]. Elon Musk has been mentioning on record that one of the first Starlink priorities is not to go bust as what had happenned to its predecessor Motorola's Iridium but the odd seems to be against them at least for now. I think it's the best for most of the countries that struggling with rural internet access (e.g. all countries US included) is to go for terrestrial fixed wireless access (FWA) for the third (3rd) segment i.e. connecting the unconnected. But if US cannot make satellite based Internet access work what are the chances that other countries might have? Probably the best solution is to be flexible in tackling the Internet access for the 3rd segment with FWA perhaps similar to approach taken by Magma [5]. It's still early days for the rural areas connectivity but the sooner we can tackle this issues is better, as demonstrated during the height of the pandemic where travels are limited and digital divide phenomenon is at its worst. [1] Measuring digital development Facts and Figures 2022: https://www.itu.int/itu-d/reports/statistics/facts-figures-2022/ https://www.itu.int/itu-d/reports/statistics/facts-figures-2... [2] FCC decides against giving Starlink $1b in rural broadband subsidies: https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/11/fcc_starlink_rural_internet/ https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/11/fcc_starlink_rural_in... [3] Fixed Wireless Access handbook (2023 Edition) by Ericsson: https://www.ericsson.com/en/fixed-wireless-access https://www.ericsson.com/en/fixed-wireless-access [4] SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network wins $885M in federal aid for rural broadband: https://www.geekwire.com/2020/spacexs-starlink-satellite-network-wins-885m-federal-subsidies-rural-broadband/ https://www.geekwire.com/2020/spacexs-starlink-satellite-net... [5] Building Flexible, Low-Cost Wireless Access Networks With Magma (to appear in 20th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation 2023): https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~jrex/papers/magma23.pdf https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~jrex/papers/magma23.pdf

wdb 4y ago

Pretty amazing that you can get faster internet in middle of nowhere sounding area with Starlink than in Central London (Zone 1/2) wired/phone line internet