Starlink Available in Some Areas

[toggledbits]

This morning I signed up for Starlink internet. This is the Musk project that has been aboard many of the SpaceX launches for some time. I watched this morning's launch (60 additional Starlink satellites), and they announced that the Beta was open in some areas. I went to the site, and it was open in my area.

The site (starlink.com) quoted $99/mo with $499 initial equipment and setup. I realize that's pretty pricey compared to Internet access in many areas, but I currently pay a fair amount more (monthly) to my current cable- (TV) based ISP, quality and speed are inconsistent, and every year I have to fight their customer retention staff to keep my pricing from nearly doubling as my "special offer" expires.

Verizon, the dominant cellular carrier where I live, has been slow to roll out home-based Internet on 5G. This is another alternative I've been excited to investigate, but still waiting.

I'm pretty excited. Yes, I'm a Musk fan-boy. Don't judge me.

[HSD99]

Interesting. I didn't know they were going to offer service that far south this year. I know some folks who are on the beta in the boondocks of north-central Washington state. They're ecstatic since they only had dial-up previously.

[Matteburk]

Starling sounds interesting, On my street were I live(Sweden) I only have 24mbit from a adsl telephone line, feels like im the last house in hole Sweden on copper cable . Almost everywhere here its fiber with 1000mbit .
I tested 5G recently with my iPhone 12 proMax. I went in to Stockholm (20km) and got reception with 5G and did a bandwidth test. Shit!.....777mbit down and 47mbit up. would like that in my neighborhood ..... But I will be stuck with 24mbit for at least 2 year until fiber is coming...

[CatmanV2]

I have a 500m cable line. Does me just fine

C

[therealdb]

Public service utility “forgot” to cover my street, so we have no fiber and we’ll probably never get it.

There’s a public plan here in Italy to cover every house in a city with at least 100Mbit “broadband” connection, so they’re now doing FWA (4g+ to a tower, then fiber) and in two years we’ll get 5G.

There are zones where 5G FWA is already active and people are more than happy. I must say I’m happy too with 4G+, since the alternative was 6/0.5 and I’m now on a 40/4 plan, with 100/50 rolling out in the coming months and 1000/500 to be delivered via 5G. I’ll probably take a look at the mentioned service too.

[CatmanV2]

Well fibre optics were pretty much invented in my town. When it was built, the whole town had cable. In fact TV aerials were not permitted as everything was delivered via that cable.
FFWD 60 years and we have a great cable and fibre infrastructure for much of it (in fact there's a brand new (<12 months old) data centre less than 10 minutes walk from my house.

It amuses me when we get ads here advertising boosters to guarantee good wifi in every room of at least 10m......

Finally ditched my cheapo rubbish late last year (was getting about 2m sitting on the damned thing) the spectrum is so polluted. I now have a couple of Ubiquiti APs (previous comments not withstanding) and now happily pull 150+ anywhere in the house.

C

[LibraSun]

Situation in New Orleans, where things (esp. infrastructure and tech) are always behind the rest of the country. Starlink became available a week ago, which surprised me (NOLA is at 30 lat. N). Meanwhile, AT&T Fiber has been rolling out steadily over the past 2 years, so I jumped on board with no regrets. Their middle-tier 300 Mbps offering runs a few bucks less than Cox's 100 Mbps Internet service, and is far more reliably day-to-day. Thing is, when fiber goes out, it's typically out for days, not just minutes or hours like coaxial.

Can't speak to customer service yet. Back in the DSL/dial-up days, AT&T was the absolute worst in that regard, yet (aside from not honoring their sign-up promotional, which I had to kick and scream to receive) I've heard they have improved now. Cox is just a money-making monopoly with little interest in pleasing customers, so we're all thankful to see them get honest competition.

I will continue strongly urging neighbors to give Starlink a try, esp. my neighbor across the street, whom AT&T refuses to set up with Fiber, even though his other immediate neighbor has had the service for 2 years now, and the same poles pass his house. Weird.

[akbooer]

Not so happy with Starlink, myself, as I am an astro-photographer...

Emily Zhang

SpaceX&rsquo;s Dark Satellites Are Still Too Bright for Astronomers

The company&rsquo;s attempts to dim the spacecraft in its megaconstellation fall short of eliminating disruptions to the world&rsquo;s ground-based observatories

Although we live in a rural area, we have fibre optic to the house with 1 Gb, since the CEO of a company who installs fibres lives in the village!

[rafale77]

I myself am running on dual WAN from both cable (Comcast) and fiber (formerly verizon but got resold twice) Total bandwidth of 1.3Gbps/600Mbps... Had to use pfSense on my QNAP to handle that (load balance+failover) on a 10G home network.

@toggledbits I suppose you drive a Tesla?

In spite of being a tech enthusiast, I am also very wary of the RF pollution these days and was personally absolutely frightened by the spectrum 5G is going after since it obviously will have shorter range and will require more RF power and denser emission points so I will stay off of it.

[toggledbits]

Having been in a business on the commercial side of bandwidth, it's still crazy what we have to pay. When I sold my company eight years ago, I was buying at US$1/Mbps commit 95th percentile on the low side (tier one, but not regarded as the best service, but we never had any problems at all), still paying some top tier one providers $30-40/Mbps. I still get emails from various vendors, and recently got one for 10Gbps for $1000, which is $0.1/Mbps. AT&T, owning as much in the ground and on the poles as they do, and all the others, are having a field day in residential, so the more competition there is in the market, the better. Where I live, Comcast is dominant, and AT&T is secondary and still doesn't have last-mile fiber (it's in my neighborhood but not deep enough to reach my house, so I would get fiber to a DSLAM and then copper to premise -- still DSL; my neighbors did it and got about 6Mbps of an 18Mbps promise). Verizon and the other carriers with 5G have threatened to put a serious wrinkle in their monopolies, and that can only be good for pricing eventually (they wouldn't dare price-fix, right?). Having a disruptive player in the market is very welcome.

I suppose you drive a Tesla?

@rafale77 Actually, no, I've got my little hybrid Lexus that's 7 years old and still has near new battery capacity (luckily). I'm a cheapskate with cars. They depreciate too quickly, I have no vanity whatsoever around what I drive, and I'm past the point where I'd use it to attract a mate. It's just a car. I like it spotless clean and running perfectly, but beyond that, I think I could be happy in a Trabant if it had any quality.

[therealdb]

@rafale77 said in Starlink Available in Some Areas:

In spite of being a tech enthusiast, I am also very wary of the RF pollution these days and was personally absolutely frightened by the spectrum 5G is going after since it obviously will have shorter range and will require more RF power and denser emission points so I will stay off of it.

Since we're not be covered with fiber, unless I'll pay for it (at about 5k/10k, probably, and 100+ Eur per month), 5G is the only way to go for me. Good for me that I'm outside the city (at the very border) and the 4G/5G tower is at 1km just in front of my house, so coverage is 5 bars. I was on dual network too (WiFi link + 4G+) until last month, and I'll now transition over two 4G+, or 1 4G + 5G. We'll see.

[Nameless]

Reading your speeds and cost, I'm feeling pretty good about my 500Mbps up/500Mbps down fiber with static IP for $67 a month with the option of 1Gbps up/down for $99 a month no limits. Helps having a small company go all in on fiber and strike a deal with our city to run all fiber within the city owned electric conduit. 300k resident city installed in under 3 years I think. Middle of the US in Nebraska.

[therealdb]

Before the pandemic I used to live in Milan during the week, and I still have 2Gbps/1Gbps at 35 eur/month. In big cities coverage is another story.

[apocalypsehobby]

I'm in Michigan and paying $120/month for Gig speeds with no cap. I was checking out Starlink the other day as well, but there's not an actual NEED