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Despite the hate on the promo the tech they offer is still pretty cool. Only way I knew my in-laws were safe near Asheville was because one of their neighbors h
by jagtstronaut 2y ago
Despite the hate on the promo the tech they offer is still pretty cool. Only way I knew my in-laws were safe near Asheville was because one of their neighbors had starlink and a generator. Took a week for them to get power and cell phone service back and there is no way to get to them without a helicopter so if it wasn't for the product we would have just learned that they were alright.
- matthewdgreen 2y agoTo ask a tech question: how much capacity does Starlink have? If every single person in US rural areas switches to Starlink, can the system handle it? What's the bandwidth/customers/capacity limit for the service? (I'm obviously not talking about emergencies, where degraded bandwidth is acceptable.)
- jagtstronaut 2y agoAt least last time I looked into starlink it most definitely cannot. Definitely more ideal for very rural or very poor areas where you are gonna be one of a few dishes. That may have changed now though.
- colechristensen 2y agoI don't know if that kind of information is public. Starlink is continually adding new satellites, and each one adds bandwidth capability. Likewise with end user ground station hardware updates and spectrum purchases (at least the former is happening on a regular basis), capacity likewise goes up. I don't believe there is a theoretical or practical upper limit which would exclude very wide adoption of Starlink and similar competitors. Put in another way, I think it is possible that in a decade or two the only cell phone/data service that doesn't come from orbit will be a few terrestrial towers in dense downtown urban areas and around things like sports venues.
- CorrectHorseBat 2y ago5G is going exactly the opposite way to provide higher bandwidth, more cells with each less users. With satellite internet you're sharing the medium with everyone, and that doesn't scale well. Beamforming probably helps a lot, but I don't how accurate it can be on that distance.
- Retric 2y agoYou can have essentially unlimited satellites the issue is the percentage of time each one spends over high density areas. Design for NYC density and 99% of satellites would be redundant at any given moment. The solution for increasing density is dropping costs so it’s viable for satellites to be idle 95% of the time. At least as a first approximation, there’s some tricks with how you setup orbits after the basic network is done.
- CorrectHorseBat 2y agoYou're still sharing the medium (the sky), so at some point interference is going to be an issue. A quick search tells me the beams a satellite uses is measured in km, so you can only have one satellite serving several square km (you could have more channels of course).
- Retric 2y agoLet’s be pessimistic and say it’s ~25km^2 with current designs. Surface area of the earth is 510,064,472 km² so you estimate limits things to ~20 million satellites X however they can slice up the available spectrum. IE essentially unlimited satellites. As of September 2024 they have 6,371 operational satellites and ~ 4 million customers globally.
- CorrectHorseBat 2y agoHow is that relevant? Adding satellites over the Pacific doesn't improve New York's service. The question is how dense of a population they can serve, not how many satellites Starlink could theoretically have.
- Andys 2y agoI don't know the specs, but since they control both ends of the link, (ie. the client-side router) they've done a remarkable job of smoothing out load imbalances to make it highly usable even under problematic conditions.
- AlotOfReading 2y agoThe bandwidth is limited on a per-cell basis, somewhere around 700Gbps max per cell. Actual capacity at any time is somewhat less. If everyone is actively using theirs, you might get single digit Mbps or less at cell capacity limits, even if there aren't bottlenecks elsewhere. It's fine, but it's highly dependent on having extremely low customer density. The system doesn't work well if everyone is using it all the time.
- throwaway984393 2y agoYep, in a few years these dishes will be $600 paperweights. We need real rural broadband.
- Alupis 2y agoYou can have real rural broadband today. You just need to be willing to pay for installation out of pocket. When an ISP runs fiber to a new building (be it in a business park or rural farm), the math is almost entirely based on recuperating their installation costs - which they often pay for entirely out of their pocket. Your entire first contract term is usually just paying back the installation costs alone... For some perspective, at a previous building we tried to bring fiber across the street into our office. The installation costs were too expensive to make the math work - so the ISP offered to split the installation costs 50/50 instead. Our half was over $94,000. This involved directional boring and the works, to go ~200ft to the right-of-way vault and into our MPOE. One can only imagine the expense of running fiber (or any type of cable) out to the boonies. It's totally feasible - but the costs make it not palatable in reality.
- rtkwe 2y agoNo they're already added a one time "congestion charge" of $100 dollars to some (unspecified afaik) areas to try to lower the demand. Or cynically maybe it's a profit taking maneuver get more money out of areas where it's most popular. I tend towards the former personally.
- AdamJacobMuller 2y agoIt depends how you define rural of course. Starlink could pretty easily serve everyone whose only current option is 4G/5G/DSL/Satellite. Basically everywhere where there is no Fiber or Cable. That's still a decent chunk of the population.
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- nativeit 2y agoCurious…it’s not been a week yet? It certainly feels longer. Glad to know they’re alright. My family is in Swannanoa, and still without power and water.
- deelowe 2y agoIt has not. I have family impacted who still does not have power. One week will be tomorrow.
- mysterydip 2y agoI still do not have power but Duke Energy is getting it back on one neighborhood away from me right now. Hoping tomorrow is our turn.
- jagtstronaut 2y agoEdited to a week. I was actually shocked how quickly my in-laws got power back with how widespread the destruction was and how many of the roads are out. They have well water so as soon as power was back on they obviously have water.
- lkbm 2y agoIn Asheville / if you're close to the river, it's still recommended to boil your water. (I'm in Marshall ~700ft higher than downtown, so I'm assuming it's fine where I am, but guidance has been non-specific.)
- mlindner 2y agoThat's entirely dependent on the depth of your well and how well it was constructed. A properly built well is accessing water below an impermeable layer of rock so shouldn't be affected by ground water. The boil warnings for wells I've heard is mostly about surface water running down your own well borehole (or into your neighbors accessing the same aquifer water).
- hammock 2y ago>Despite the hate on the promo What does "hate on the promo" mean?
- Spivak 2y agoOffering a "30 day free trial" doesn't really feel like a gift as much as it's an ad for the service trying to onboard customers. It's not a bad thing per se, just kind of in poor taste.
- hshshshsvsv 2y agoThey probably used the free trial system for a quick release instead of having to build some new system for this.
- dotnet00 2y agoThere were just a few hours between Elon accepting to do it on X, and the update being deployed, I think they can be forgiven for not having it super polished. However, they've also explained that it's 30 days for now, as the end of that approaches, they'll re-evaluate to see if an extension is warranted. I recall them also mentioning refunds or maybe account credits for affected people if they've happened to pay already.
- seadan83 2y agoI agree. Giving the equipment out for free*, 30 days free, and no return charge would smell of true disaster relief rather than promo. * perhaps equipment charge after 30 days, or a half off on the equipment after 30 days. Those would very feel reasonable.
- seadan83 2y agoI have learned now from other replies that there is a free return. 2 of 3 criteria I stipulated are met. Units being donated meets the first criteria, though that still relies on a donation. The logistics of returning the equipment is then also complicated too..
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- RowanH 2y agoIn New Zealand we're very much natural disaster prone. I run a SaaS working out of home - we wired the house for generator backup and have a starlink unit that sits in a box exactly for this reason, even if the proverbial hits the fan for a week I can still keep on top of the business. Every couple of months the geny gets sparked up and everything tested. For a very small investment it's very comforting to know we've always got power/internet, regardless of what happens.
- fennecfoxy 2y agoAs a Kiwi I wouldn't say we're prone to natural disasters per se. Certainly not on a yearly basis. Though that said, Mt. Taranaki is meant to do the big boom soonish. That'll be interesting.
- rafaelmn 2y agoWondering if solar/batteries would do the same thing as a generator but cleaner and also useful in general ? Because I've thought about solving a similar scenario but just assumed solar/batteries would be the play here.
- parl_match 2y agoIf you spent 10 minutes running the numbers, you'd probably answer your question pretty handily.
- h0l0cube 2y agoDepends on the price of batteries, which are rapidly declining. Within the next few years the numbers will change in favor of batteries. Though it also depends on the load and having enough space/sunlight for the solar array
- parl_match 2y agoMy quick math came up short on batteries. But as you say, it's worth running those numbers every year. I can't imagine I'll be sitting here in 2030 saying "batteries aren't there yet".