Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Starlink....

Agree, With the rapid improvement and reduced costs in home solar /storage systems, any time you have to run power more than about a third of a mile, a solar setup is cheaper.

The big downside of Starlink is not how great your Facebook connection will be out in the middle of nowhere.The BIG problem will be the enablement of the Internet of Things and the broadening of surveillance.

Surveillance cameras will be connected and freaking everywhere. Everything will be connected to the Internet. Your dog, your cow, your car, your kids, your neighbors and YOU. Everything you can think of can open up to the Internet. The ffing internet will be inescapable. This is VERY bad.

I remember when 5Meg was the highest available. Now, it's basically the minimum you need to stream something on your TV.

It will be great until more and more devices will rely on it. This will eat into your speed and bog it down. Additionally, since you are probably sharing satellite bandwith amongst your neighbors it won't take much for a gamer or high end user to drag everyone down too.

Fiber optic is being placed in many new developments and retrofitted in many areas with aerial easements (telephone poles). If you are in an existing neighborhood with direct buried services, it will be the last areas retrofitted if at all.

I think you're right. About 10 years ago, we bought a place on the CA coast, maybe a three hour drive north of SF. There was one cable tv/internet provider in the area and it was down about 75% of the time, and when it worked it was like using a 300 baud modem. Because the internet (and phone) service was so bad, it was impossible to work remotely from there, but that wasn't a big deal since most businesses didn't allow remote working. Property values in that area were stagnant for a long time and when the homeowners association decided to put in cable internet, we didn't think much of it even though we agreed to subscribe.

Once the cable internet was live, it changed everything. We could work remotely, watch tv, get phone service, etc. And property values took off. We ended up selling a few years ago for a nice profit, and with the scamdemic causing people to flee urban areas prices went through the roof when folks realized they could work from one of the more beautiful coastal areas in the US. Today, the house we sold three years ago would sell for twice what we got for it, in large part because people now want to live in more rural areas,

Of course, that ain't all good. We hear that folks are now complaining about crowding, prices, etc.

Laughing!

We've had a fleet of Ferrari's running on 52 octane around here for 15 years. Our IMacs and home businesses have been starved for high-speed data.
You have zero understanding how bad the situation has been for rural America, since, well, basically the dawn of the internet....

We're hoping to do this at out place in NE Wisconsin. We're right on Lake Michigan, cell service is terrible and internet is non existent. Verizon used to kinda work, not so much anymore.

Congrats! Still on the "Late 2021" list here.

I don't think so. I still have friends I have to go visit if we have an issue to discuss, and they are fine happy people.

Some thought the same of fax machines and cell phones. The web is just one tool out of thousands in our modern world, and has not been a life changing event for my family. Living in the sticks, we're getting by on DSL at a download rate of 3 megabytes per second and upload of about 0.79. That's quick enough for us to have conversations with Australians. A neighbor has gone satellite and is doing about 100 times that. His sole entertainment, however, is online gaming. Ours is anything that will get us out of doors where a great deal of the appeal is being uninterrupted and out of touch. I must admit though that the dinner question of "how much wood could a wood chuck chuck" had to remain unanswered until the camp ground post routed it to Siri one evening.

My cell phone lives atop the kitchen microwave, and I've not touched it in the last two months. Left it there for 3 weeks of that interval when we were on the road. Probably needs charging.

If I lived and died as a day trader, I might see a need to hop things up a bit. Might pay me too to make a move to New York to cut down on lag time. I'm just not in that much of a hurry.

140 is pretty speedy.

About a year ago, we left the phone co as our ISP and get ‘net through FiWi. We went from 1 electron at a time, at gun point (kudos to las for that) to 18 down. We could get faster, but right now, we don’t need it.

My neighbor runs 3 websites on 1 Meg. Very troublesome for him. Phone co. won’t/can’t provide anything faster, and access to the FiWi tower is obscured. This may be the ticket for him.

Update...
After 13+ years, today we officially told Hughesnet to pound sand.
The Starlink overall has been fantastic. Experienced one spotty download session about 10 days ago when we had a rare and welcomed downpour.
Based on many speed tests download speeds are probably averaging around 80-90Mbps overall, but that's anecdotal. I speed tested at 230 just now. I suspect things will only get faster as this beta progresses.

We added an ASUS AS5400 dual band modem/router and replaced the Starlink-supplied router. The ASUS is actually a gaming router--screaming fast and reaches the Samsung screens around the house flawlessly with it's excellent range. We've seen no downside to replacing the Starlink equipment--they supply an okay router, but it only has one aux. ethernet port and it's very basic.

We also added a Roku Ultra streamer--plumbed that upstream (Cat 6) into the ASUS and downstream (HDMI) right into the Yamaha AVR to be able to utilize our Dolby Atmos. Cancelled our 12 years of monthly Netflix-mailed DVD/Bluray discs. For the first time ever we're actually streaming movies--perfectly, no glitches. Never thought we'd see the day in our remote valley.

Bottom line, what a fantastic system!