47 ms·

Starlink (and Musk in general) have been over-promising and under-delivering for years now. Starlink claimed 150Mbps back in 2020 and that speeds would double t

by mdasen 3y ago

Starlink (and Musk in general) have been over-promising and under-delivering for years now. Starlink claimed 150Mbps back in 2020 and that speeds would double to 300Mbps by the end of 2021.[1] Instead, speeds have halved.[2] At this point, T-Mobile is likely serving more rural high speed internet customers with greater speeds (T-Mobile has 4.2M home internet customers and Ookla's stats show 34% to be rural for 1.4M; Starlink has 2M customers and assuming two-thirds are in the US and of those 83% are rural would make for 1.1M). [1] https://www.tomsguide.com/news/elon-musk-promises-to-double-starlink-satellite-broadband-speeds-this-year https://www.tomsguide.com/news/elon-musk-promises-to-double-... [2] https://www.ookla.com/articles/us-satellite-performance-q3-2023 https://www.ookla.com/articles/us-satellite-performance-q3-2...

eggy 3y ago
<<Starlink (and Musk in general) have been over-promising and under-delivering for years now. It's not even 2024, and the targets are for 2025. How long has T-Mobile been ramping up their program to achieve this 1.4M vs. 1.1M, and how much does the government subsidy ACP cover for this 1.4M in order to have those customers under T-Mobile? And it seems they are being fined $200M for not complying with the subsidy's rules [1]. [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tmobile-fine-idUKKBN27K255/ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tmobile-fine-idUKKBN27K25...
CodeWriter23 3y ago
> Starlink (and Musk in general) have been over-promising and under-delivering for years now. Starlink claimed 150Mbps back in 2020 and that speeds would double to 300Mbps by the end of 2021.[1] Instead, speeds have halved.[2] How dare they during a globally-disruptive pandemic?
chrisco255 3y ago
I regularly get 150+ Mbps on my Starlink terminal. Don't really care that they didn't hit the ambitious goal of providing 300+, it is already more than 15x better than the next best option available for me. T-Mobile has a three decade head start (maybe four if you count their Sprint Wireless acquisition's history), so hardly surprising if there is currently more T-Mobile home internet users than Starlink users. But I also doubt that their rural base is as large as Starlink's currently is. Mobile broadband speeds heavily depend on the strength of the signal available in area, and in many rural areas, the 5G coverage is extremely spotty, or non-existent.
- Powdering7082 3y ago
  Yeah there's a pretty common routine of SpaceX & Tesla having some of the best results in the world for what they are trying to accomplish AND being much worse than what was promised.
  - kelnos 3y ago
    And that's one of the (many) frustrating things with Musk: he fairly consistently overpromises and underdelivers. Even if that underdelivering is better than what you can get elsewhere, it still leaves a bad taste in people's mouths.
    - daddylongstroke 3y ago
      I don't know who these ungrateful people are with the bad taste in their mouths? Starlink is the only game in town for me at this point for broadband: my only other option is DSL from Centurylink at 3Mb/.5Mb - they've had 30 years to improve service here and hundreds of millions in taxpayer subsidies, and they haven't done it. The nearest T-Mobile signal is about 7 miles away. I for one, am grateful.
    - KennyBlanken 3y ago
      > he fairly consistently overpromises and underdelivers. Can we please just call it what it really is? Lying. He's a pathological liar.
      - chiefalchemist 3y ago
        How many startups start by telling investors, employees and customers, "We're going to fail"? They know the odds are that's going to happen. Are they pathological liars? No one can predict the future. Musk is what plenty of entrepreneurs are...over-confident. That's part of the profile. That doesn't make him or any of them liars.
        uxp100 3y ago
hnburnsy 3y ago
>In 2022, many RDOF recipients had deployed no service at any speed to any location at all, and they had no obligation to do so. By contrast, Starlink had half a million subscribers in June 2022 (and about two million in September 2023) https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-23-105A3.pdf https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-23-105A3.pdf
- Deprecate9151 3y ago
  That argument is a red herring. The RDOF program is concentrated in specific geographic areas. Starlink onboarding subscribers in other areas doesn't really have a bearing on this program if they can't prove they can extend that to the areas in scope and hit the service levels they bid at. It might even hurt their argument if performance degrades as they focus on areas outside the RDOF locations. More traditional offerings have a much easier time demonstrating they can do that, even if they haven't started physically building yet. It's very easy for them to say x amount of fiber capacity at this location will meet the program specs, and this is how fast we can install it.
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    A rule of thumb is that big infrastructure projects are always significantly behind schedule and budget. Fiber rollouts are big infrastructure projects. They'll be late, almost guaranteed. Therefore demonstrating that they can hit a schedule is very difficult.
    - Deprecate9151 3y ago
      It is difficult, but the program (theoretically, since the program isn't at that stage yet) has checkpoints to address failure to actually deliver. This stage was to focus on if the bid accepted based off of the short-form proposal was progressing and likely to deliver as described by reviewing additional information provided in the long-form application. That is going to be easier for tech with an established delivery history.
    - doikor 3y ago
COGlory 3y ago
As a Montanan with T-Mobile, I promise that those "rural" T-Mobile ones are not the same type of rural that Starlink can serve.
- TaylorAlexander 3y ago
  Hell I work at a farm on the coast near Silicon Valley in San Gregorio (designing a farming robot) and Starlink is the only decent internet option we’ve ever had.
  - mcguire 3y ago
    What speeds do you get? Edit: That's weird. San Gregorio is like 15-20 miles from Cupertino. Here in Jackson County, AL, Farmers Telecom Coop has gigabit or half-gigabit fiber to much of the county.
    - 8ytecoder 3y ago
      Bay Area’s fiber and broadband network is a joke. That it’s the tech capital of the world makes it so much worse. Things are improving - I got fiber in 2020 - and speeds are trending upwards with some local completion. AT&T and Comcast are finally getting a bit better with speed. Coverage still sucks. Number of available options still suck. Not to mention weird collusions between Comcast and apt management companies and other anti-competitive behaviour. Then there’s PG&E using various excuses to block using their poles to expand the network. It’s terrible.
      - fragmede 3y ago
        The future is here, it's just (very) unevenly distributed. There's an IPX in downtown San Francisco so if you have the money for it, you can get 10-gig business class Internet. But if you're principled and don't want to get Comcast, and are in a shorter building so you can't get monkey brains, the local WISP, you get DSL, even in the heart of San Francisco so a friend is on 3Mbit down/128kbps up. Watching streaming at her place is a roll of the dice, so I torrent it at my place and walk it over on a USB drive. She pays for Paramount+ which is where the show we're watching is on, so monetarily I'm okay with myself.
throw0101c 3y ago
> […] (and Musk in general) have been over-promising and under-delivering for years now. Related, "Tesla FSD Timeline": > September 2014: They will be a factor of 10 safer than a person [at the wheel] in a six-year time frame * https://motherfrunker.ca/fsd/ https://motherfrunker.ca/fsd/ * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38625380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38625380 (earlier today)
- DoesntMatter22 3y ago
  To be fair FSD is the hardest software problem that man has ever attempted.
  - bdcravens 3y ago
    Possibly, but then don't make promises and have the audacity to charge for it
  - mikestew 3y ago
    That's not being fair, that's making excuses. If the problem is that hard, don't be running your mouth about you'll have it done in six months, and charge people money while you work out the bugs.
    - DoesntMatter22 3y ago
      Never did Musk say "We'll have it done in six months".
      - r3d0c 3y ago
        lol... but he has been saying "it'll be out next year" for many years but please, keep defending in bad faith
      - delecti 3y ago
        This: https://motherfrunker.ca/fsd/ https://motherfrunker.ca/fsd/ (linked in the GGP to your comment) links to this tweet from Jan 23, 2017 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/823727035088416768 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/823727035088416768 When asked the question "At what point will "Full Self-Driving Capability" features noticeably depart from "Enhanced Autopilot" features?" Elon responded "3 months maybe, 6 months definitely" Also, lots of examples of "this year" stated in various Januarys, and multiple instances along the lines of "complete autonomy in 2 years" going back 8 years. I suspect his statements are carefully made to not technically meet the legal definition for fraud, but colloquially he's absolutely a liar.
madaxe_again 3y ago
I get 300/30 on starlink. I’m not sure why ookla’s data says otherwise.
- WheatMillington 3y ago
  Did you consider that your experience may not be representative?
- kelnos 3y ago
  Because you are not everyone who uses Starlink? Just because you get good speeds, it doesn't mean that the average Starlink user does as well.
jlmorton 3y ago
Starlink also just launched in earnest a couple years ago, and is experiencing meteoric growth rates of ~100% a year. It doesn't take very many doublings for this comment to go down with "why would anyone want Dropbox."
- bilbo0s 3y ago
  At those growth rates, they shouldn't need the 900 Million. So this decision by the FCC shouldn't make a difference. As a matter of full disclosure, being from Wisconsin, (home of the great FoxConn boondoggle), I now find myself firmly against corporate welfare. Giving a guy who's supposed to be the richest man in the world a billion dollars to provide me internet service? Nah, that doesn't smell right to me. Something's off about that.
  - inemesitaffia 3y ago
    Bezos got a tax credit for his kids. These things are for people to deliver. Not people who don't have money to deliver. That's why the billionaires kid working at the grocery counter gets paid the same even though he's chauffeured to work in a Bentley
    - callalex 3y ago
      You’re conflating policy for individual people with policy for corporations. The post is specifically calling out corporate welfare.
      - inemesitaffia 3y ago
        The entire program is corporate welfare and the complaint is about it going to a particular person's company. Not about corporate welfare.
tomcam 3y ago
> T-Mobile is likely serving more rural high speed internet customers with greater speeds I live exactly 13 miles away from T-Mobile HQ (one city over) and their service was unusable. I know, I know, anecdotal. But funny!
- itslennysfault 3y ago
  When I was living in Seattle I found the service to be shockingly bad. I "upgraded" to 5G and my service got substantially worse. I'd often have "full signal 5G" and barely be able to watch videos in Capitol Hill. I worked in SoDo and I found multiple dead zones between the train station and my work (just a few blocks). For a while I was tweeting at them regularly with screenshots, but got bored of the "DM us so we can resolve this right away" bots and realized I was screaming into the void. I ultimately wound up switching to Verizon. Interestingly, T-Mobile service was far better in the 3 other major cities I lived in, but it's still pretty embarrassing that their service is so bad right in their own backyard.
  - tomcam 3y ago
    > got bored of the "DM us so we can resolve this right away" bots and realized I was screaming into the void You’re giving me PTSD here lol
- jmspring 3y ago
  I activated a tmobile hotspot for when I spend time in the San Juan Islands, because on at least one island TMo is the only provider. The service and hotspot were quite reliable. While at home - a rural area of northern CA, my fiber provider (which is also the backhaul for Verizon - my primary cell provider) went down for a couple days. The TMo hotspot was reliable, performant and served up both the work I needed to do and streaming TV just fine. $50/mo with no penalty to activate/deactivate made me a fan. Years ago, TMo sucked a lot in the Santa Cruz area.
memish 3y ago
"under-delivering" Delivered millions of EVs that everyone said would never work, dragging the entire car industry out of its stupor. Delivered a vast electric charging network and made it available to the competition. Delivered the best satellite internet. Delivered rockets that NASA uses. Delivered the most payload to space, more than even China. Gee, imagine under-delivering that badly.
- I_Am_Nous 3y ago
  "under-delivering" was paired with "over-promising". Elon has done some cool stuff, yeah. He promised cooler stuff and so far it hasn't been possible for lots of reasons. So you are both correct.
- mensetmanusman 3y ago
  over delivering compared to the world, under delivering compared to where Musk wants to be
paulsutter 3y ago
As a SpaceX shareholder since 2006, I can confirm that they’ve been turning the impossible into the late, very consistently. There is no more impressive company anywhere
- adastra22 3y ago
  Lucky.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
AtlasBarfed 3y ago
Iirc the cable and telcos promised more, pocket more, and delivered practically nothing. Starlink delivers a usable service that far exceeds hughesnet and other crappy alternatives. Granted this is a five year old take and I haven't followed things, but as a rural in flyover country starlink is amazing.
andrei_says_ 3y ago
On the over promising and under delivering topic, one of my favorite is a site listing some of Musk’s promises and grandiose statements. https://elonmusk.today/ https://elonmusk.today/

by mdasen 3y ago

eggy 3y ago

<<Starlink (and Musk in general) have been over-promising and under-delivering for years now. It's not even 2024, and the targets are for 2025. How long has T-Mobile been ramping up their program to achieve this 1.4M vs. 1.1M, and how much does the government subsidy ACP cover for this 1.4M in order to have those customers under T-Mobile? And it seems they are being fined $200M for not complying with the subsidy's rules [1]. [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tmobile-fine-idUKKBN27K255/ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tmobile-fine-idUKKBN27K25...

CodeWriter23 3y ago

> Starlink (and Musk in general) have been over-promising and under-delivering for years now. Starlink claimed 150Mbps back in 2020 and that speeds would double to 300Mbps by the end of 2021.[1] Instead, speeds have halved.[2] How dare they during a globally-disruptive pandemic?

chrisco255 3y ago

I regularly get 150+ Mbps on my Starlink terminal. Don't really care that they didn't hit the ambitious goal of providing 300+, it is already more than 15x better than the next best option available for me. T-Mobile has a three decade head start (maybe four if you count their Sprint Wireless acquisition's history), so hardly surprising if there is currently more T-Mobile home internet users than Starlink users. But I also doubt that their rural base is as large as Starlink's currently is. Mobile broadband speeds heavily depend on the strength of the signal available in area, and in many rural areas, the 5G coverage is extremely spotty, or non-existent.

Powdering7082 3y ago
Yeah there's a pretty common routine of SpaceX & Tesla having some of the best results in the world for what they are trying to accomplish AND being much worse than what was promised.
- kelnos 3y ago
  And that's one of the (many) frustrating things with Musk: he fairly consistently overpromises and underdelivers. Even if that underdelivering is better than what you can get elsewhere, it still leaves a bad taste in people's mouths.
  - daddylongstroke 3y ago
    I don't know who these ungrateful people are with the bad taste in their mouths? Starlink is the only game in town for me at this point for broadband: my only other option is DSL from Centurylink at 3Mb/.5Mb - they've had 30 years to improve service here and hundreds of millions in taxpayer subsidies, and they haven't done it. The nearest T-Mobile signal is about 7 miles away. I for one, am grateful.
  - KennyBlanken 3y ago
    > he fairly consistently overpromises and underdelivers. Can we please just call it what it really is? Lying. He's a pathological liar.
    - chiefalchemist 3y ago
      How many startups start by telling investors, employees and customers, "We're going to fail"? They know the odds are that's going to happen. Are they pathological liars? No one can predict the future. Musk is what plenty of entrepreneurs are...over-confident. That's part of the profile. That doesn't make him or any of them liars.
      - uxp100 3y ago

hnburnsy 3y ago

>In 2022, many RDOF recipients had deployed no service at any speed to any location at all, and they had no obligation to do so. By contrast, Starlink had half a million subscribers in June 2022 (and about two million in September 2023) https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-23-105A3.pdf https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-23-105A3.pdf

Deprecate9151 3y ago
That argument is a red herring. The RDOF program is concentrated in specific geographic areas. Starlink onboarding subscribers in other areas doesn't really have a bearing on this program if they can't prove they can extend that to the areas in scope and hit the service levels they bid at. It might even hurt their argument if performance degrades as they focus on areas outside the RDOF locations. More traditional offerings have a much easier time demonstrating they can do that, even if they haven't started physically building yet. It's very easy for them to say x amount of fiber capacity at this location will meet the program specs, and this is how fast we can install it.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  A rule of thumb is that big infrastructure projects are always significantly behind schedule and budget. Fiber rollouts are big infrastructure projects. They'll be late, almost guaranteed. Therefore demonstrating that they can hit a schedule is very difficult.
  - Deprecate9151 3y ago
    It is difficult, but the program (theoretically, since the program isn't at that stage yet) has checkpoints to address failure to actually deliver. This stage was to focus on if the bid accepted based off of the short-form proposal was progressing and likely to deliver as described by reviewing additional information provided in the long-form application. That is going to be easier for tech with an established delivery history.
  - doikor 3y ago

COGlory 3y ago

As a Montanan with T-Mobile, I promise that those "rural" T-Mobile ones are not the same type of rural that Starlink can serve.

TaylorAlexander 3y ago
Hell I work at a farm on the coast near Silicon Valley in San Gregorio (designing a farming robot) and Starlink is the only decent internet option we’ve ever had.
- mcguire 3y ago
  What speeds do you get? Edit: That's weird. San Gregorio is like 15-20 miles from Cupertino. Here in Jackson County, AL, Farmers Telecom Coop has gigabit or half-gigabit fiber to much of the county.
  - 8ytecoder 3y ago
    Bay Area’s fiber and broadband network is a joke. That it’s the tech capital of the world makes it so much worse. Things are improving - I got fiber in 2020 - and speeds are trending upwards with some local completion. AT&T and Comcast are finally getting a bit better with speed. Coverage still sucks. Number of available options still suck. Not to mention weird collusions between Comcast and apt management companies and other anti-competitive behaviour. Then there’s PG&E using various excuses to block using their poles to expand the network. It’s terrible.
    - fragmede 3y ago
      The future is here, it's just (very) unevenly distributed. There's an IPX in downtown San Francisco so if you have the money for it, you can get 10-gig business class Internet. But if you're principled and don't want to get Comcast, and are in a shorter building so you can't get monkey brains, the local WISP, you get DSL, even in the heart of San Francisco so a friend is on 3Mbit down/128kbps up. Watching streaming at her place is a roll of the dice, so I torrent it at my place and walk it over on a USB drive. She pays for Paramount+ which is where the show we're watching is on, so monetarily I'm okay with myself.

throw0101c 3y ago

> […] (and Musk in general) have been over-promising and under-delivering for years now. Related, "Tesla FSD Timeline": > September 2014: They will be a factor of 10 safer than a person [at the wheel] in a six-year time frame * https://motherfrunker.ca/fsd/ https://motherfrunker.ca/fsd/ * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38625380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38625380 (earlier today)

DoesntMatter22 3y ago
To be fair FSD is the hardest software problem that man has ever attempted.
- bdcravens 3y ago
  Possibly, but then don't make promises and have the audacity to charge for it
- mikestew 3y ago
  That's not being fair, that's making excuses. If the problem is that hard, don't be running your mouth about you'll have it done in six months, and charge people money while you work out the bugs.
  - DoesntMatter22 3y ago
    Never did Musk say "We'll have it done in six months".
    - r3d0c 3y ago
      lol... but he has been saying "it'll be out next year" for many years but please, keep defending in bad faith
    - delecti 3y ago
      This: https://motherfrunker.ca/fsd/ https://motherfrunker.ca/fsd/ (linked in the GGP to your comment) links to this tweet from Jan 23, 2017 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/823727035088416768 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/823727035088416768 When asked the question "At what point will "Full Self-Driving Capability" features noticeably depart from "Enhanced Autopilot" features?" Elon responded "3 months maybe, 6 months definitely" Also, lots of examples of "this year" stated in various Januarys, and multiple instances along the lines of "complete autonomy in 2 years" going back 8 years. I suspect his statements are carefully made to not technically meet the legal definition for fraud, but colloquially he's absolutely a liar.

madaxe_again 3y ago

I get 300/30 on starlink. I’m not sure why ookla’s data says otherwise.

WheatMillington 3y ago
Did you consider that your experience may not be representative?
kelnos 3y ago
Because you are not everyone who uses Starlink? Just because you get good speeds, it doesn't mean that the average Starlink user does as well.

jlmorton 3y ago

Starlink also just launched in earnest a couple years ago, and is experiencing meteoric growth rates of ~100% a year. It doesn't take very many doublings for this comment to go down with "why would anyone want Dropbox."

bilbo0s 3y ago
At those growth rates, they shouldn't need the 900 Million. So this decision by the FCC shouldn't make a difference. As a matter of full disclosure, being from Wisconsin, (home of the great FoxConn boondoggle), I now find myself firmly against corporate welfare. Giving a guy who's supposed to be the richest man in the world a billion dollars to provide me internet service? Nah, that doesn't smell right to me. Something's off about that.
- inemesitaffia 3y ago
  Bezos got a tax credit for his kids. These things are for people to deliver. Not people who don't have money to deliver. That's why the billionaires kid working at the grocery counter gets paid the same even though he's chauffeured to work in a Bentley
  - callalex 3y ago
    You’re conflating policy for individual people with policy for corporations. The post is specifically calling out corporate welfare.
    - inemesitaffia 3y ago
      The entire program is corporate welfare and the complaint is about it going to a particular person's company. Not about corporate welfare.

tomcam 3y ago

> T-Mobile is likely serving more rural high speed internet customers with greater speeds I live exactly 13 miles away from T-Mobile HQ (one city over) and their service was unusable. I know, I know, anecdotal. But funny!

itslennysfault 3y ago
When I was living in Seattle I found the service to be shockingly bad. I "upgraded" to 5G and my service got substantially worse. I'd often have "full signal 5G" and barely be able to watch videos in Capitol Hill. I worked in SoDo and I found multiple dead zones between the train station and my work (just a few blocks). For a while I was tweeting at them regularly with screenshots, but got bored of the "DM us so we can resolve this right away" bots and realized I was screaming into the void. I ultimately wound up switching to Verizon. Interestingly, T-Mobile service was far better in the 3 other major cities I lived in, but it's still pretty embarrassing that their service is so bad right in their own backyard.
- tomcam 3y ago
  > got bored of the "DM us so we can resolve this right away" bots and realized I was screaming into the void You’re giving me PTSD here lol
jmspring 3y ago
I activated a tmobile hotspot for when I spend time in the San Juan Islands, because on at least one island TMo is the only provider. The service and hotspot were quite reliable. While at home - a rural area of northern CA, my fiber provider (which is also the backhaul for Verizon - my primary cell provider) went down for a couple days. The TMo hotspot was reliable, performant and served up both the work I needed to do and streaming TV just fine. $50/mo with no penalty to activate/deactivate made me a fan. Years ago, TMo sucked a lot in the Santa Cruz area.

memish 3y ago

"under-delivering" Delivered millions of EVs that everyone said would never work, dragging the entire car industry out of its stupor. Delivered a vast electric charging network and made it available to the competition. Delivered the best satellite internet. Delivered rockets that NASA uses. Delivered the most payload to space, more than even China. Gee, imagine under-delivering that badly.

I_Am_Nous 3y ago
"under-delivering" was paired with "over-promising". Elon has done some cool stuff, yeah. He promised cooler stuff and so far it hasn't been possible for lots of reasons. So you are both correct.
mensetmanusman 3y ago
over delivering compared to the world, under delivering compared to where Musk wants to be

paulsutter 3y ago

As a SpaceX shareholder since 2006, I can confirm that they’ve been turning the impossible into the late, very consistently. There is no more impressive company anywhere

adastra22 3y ago
Lucky.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

AtlasBarfed 3y ago

Iirc the cable and telcos promised more, pocket more, and delivered practically nothing. Starlink delivers a usable service that far exceeds hughesnet and other crappy alternatives. Granted this is a five year old take and I haven't followed things, but as a rural in flyover country starlink is amazing.

andrei_says_ 3y ago

On the over promising and under delivering topic, one of my favorite is a site listing some of Musk’s promises and grandiose statements. https://elonmusk.today/ https://elonmusk.today/