Anyone using STARLINK as your internet? I would like to upgrade from the POS system we have now which is Cellone, basically a mobile hotspot. The other option i have here is Frontier communications that is limited to 1MB upload and download speed, Frontier has not ungraded the system for 15 years, been in the house 20.
I am asking for any feedback about the STARLINK system, good or bad.

Thanks

I do not, but I looked into it

I think there is a start up fee - for the beta testers it was $499. I don't know if that is still it or not

but I did see someone who had it and did a speedtest on it and was getting 80mbps. That is , IMO, as fast as any regular household needs to do everyday internet stuff.

I also read its only going to be effective for people that live in rural areas because of the shared bandwidth of its design. Subscribing to it , as is, in a densely populated area is going to mean the speed is going to noticeably drop during peak usage times.

They are about to go nationwide with coverage, and have already begun work on V-3 of the receiver sets, which are greatly improved over the V-1 sets. That's the good news. The bad news is that they have about 100,000 customers on backlog to get receivers and service. You might as well sign up, because by the time they get to you, all the hardware and coverage will be cutting edge.

If I remember right, Broomd posted his speeds when he got his receiver, they were impressive.

I'm on the waiting list for our place in NE WI. We're right on Lake Michigan, very rural, and any cell service is nonexistent. Hopeful and waiting...

Plenty of user YouTube videos out there documenting their results.

My understanding is that the first generation box costs Starlink twice what they charge for it, and the new box is supposed to be cheaper. Add in the usual disclaimer about chips and supply chain issues, and it’s not surprising it’s a bit backed up.

Last I read, it was only available in a narrow band between the 43d and 50 something parallels. That's well north of AZ. They keep adding more satellites, though, so maybe it's a wider band now. A lot of the articles on the web aren't dated so it's hard to know which is the latest.

I was being cheap and didn’t want to pay $99 on a deposit up front. I was stupid. Month ago I paid up and got on the list. Now just waiting for my number to come up. I haven’t heard any negative reports on it from people that have it in my area.

I've had it for two months now, and it's been a game changer......I was on [bleep] LTE internet as well. It's easy to set up and I often get speeds well over 100 mb/s (sometimes over 300) down with pings usually from 25-35 ms. No more spinning circles either while trying to watch a movie on Netflix etc.

Cheers,

R

That was my understanding as well. Not sure though.


I'm in the middle of nowhere and have fiber speeds better as as good as populated areas. I'm good to go.

I'm a few miles outside of a small town of about 2000. We have a small independent phone company that keeps up with things. We now have fiber optic internet. We have 25 mbps which is enough to run 2 computers and Netflilx on the tv at the same time. They have much faster service, too, if it's needed for businesses.

I'd bet on Elon Musk to win, and soon. The stuff they've launched so far is a multi-billion dollar investment and they will want to recoup their investment.

We have Frontier phone/internet service and I absolutely would not recommend it. It is the sorriest excuse of a phone/internet service I have ever seen.

I'm in the middle of no where..I signed up in July .... 99 bucks down ...then wait....the sats for the north pole launched mid Aug......

I signed up for Pacific Dataport. Their SAT coverage should give us northern dwellers better reception.

They had a two-month gap in launches while they upgraded all the follow-on satellites to have laser interconnects. That will eventually remove the need for ground relay stations like they have now. Starlink birds are short lifetime; they bring them down after about two years so the replacement ones are always of the latest technology. The next launch scheduled is another set of 51 polar satellites, all with laser links. No firm date yet.

And to think.....for the cost of all this space garbage zinging around you could have all been on fiberoptic by now.


Gee, rockets are neat.

Believe it or not, there is actually a world outside of the US.

Hopefully we can spend some tax dollars for their benefit too.

Enough already, reality is everything south of the border but north of the Hi-line.

Nothing else matters.

Indeed, I found out the last time I went to walmart.

We have some friends in a tiny town in SW Idaho. They have satellite internet and WIFI calling. Last time we were there, I tried to put my phone on their WiFi and it really screwed something up. I take to take it in to a shop when we got home to get it to work with regular calling. They're really watching starlink. It should greatly improve their service.

It's 1st come 1st served...tell them to get on it ! ..they will not slow the network down to get another sale...

You must have Hughes Net?

My farm is in a rural area outside a town of about the same size. I’ve been on the starlink waiting list for over a year. The local phone/cable provider is about to beat them with getting fiber to me. Local provider will be cheaper too

Yeah Dutch, still kickin' azz with the Starlink. We stream anything we want; nary a glitch or buffer ever....
Love our starlink!

Wait, WHAT? Gen2 starlink was supposed to be 30,000 satellites on completion. He’s going to replace 15,000 satellites PER YEAR!?!?

42 per day, 365 days a year?

I have a hard time thinking that big.....

Just got it installed into it's permanent spot this afternoon. We have a lot of 150ft tall trees surrounding our place. Had to get it pretty high to reduce the obstructions. I'll know in the morning how obstructed it is but so far it looks good (takes 12 hours to get report).

Went from bonded DSL at 16Mbs down/ 1Mbs Up to 50-100Mbs down/15-10Mbs up.

Obstructions are still there but much reduced. Very usable.

We'll see how it does on video conferencing. Might have to keep the old DSL for a bit and get a load balancing dual WAN router that will allow for fast failover and failback.

Dutch, that 30,000 satellites may refer to the total to be flown over the life of the program. I think they need a bit over 2,000 at any one time to have near-global coverage.

They've got FCC permission for 15K (also read 12K) and International Telecommunication Union for up to 30,000. Hard to tell how many they'll actually have up at one time.

It's clear that the FCC is banking on SL. Every objection to change to the license (orbital plans) has been approved.

They've also got many of the rural broadband licenses here in the US (including our area). So I think they'll be putting up a lot more to allow low dropout frequency in forested and mountainous areas.

This will completely change the rural landscape related to IoT.

Here's a pretty good video about global access and the constraints thereof.

we were talking about this a few weeks ago

I think you're going to see white flight in the suburbs to the country. Those 5 acre tracts of land are going to be in high demand out in the country

This^^^^^

Can someone explain why there has been a problem with Starlink coverage in Southern USA while Northern states have coverage.

Geosynchronous orbits are over the equator. 22,236 miles over the equator. Every other orbit crosses the equator.

Rocky???????????

Does weather affect your receiving capabilities like it does to Satellite TV?

Idaho, the guy in the video above explains it quite well. For a visual, look at this real-time map of where Starlink satellites are. You'll note how close together they are at the northern extreme of orbital path, and how far apart they are nearer to the equator. With fewer satellite "in view" from any point on the ground, the less reliable or possible coverage will be. LINK (Zoom in and you'll see that this is a live display, every satellite shown is moving.)

StarLink isn't geosynchronous; they orbit at about 550 km. That's the whole point of Starlink. Geosync communications involve a significant latency or "lag" as the signals pass up and down, a lag too great for lots of uses.

They're not in geosync. The first shell is in a 53d(?) inclination. This makes them only go to about 60d N/S. This also makes them more dense as they approach thier N/S extremes and the least dense over the equator.

Take a look at this link. It will show it better than I can describe it.

https://spacex.moesalih.com/starlink

We've had very few issues with weather re. our Dish Network system over the years. Maybe 5-6 outages over the last 15 years?. Solid system.

That said, we had one short-lived Starlink outage a couple of months ago due to a downpour. We'll see how the heavy snowfall affects this Winter.

Thanks guys. I knew the satellites were in low orbit, thus not geosynchronous. I was not aware the satellite density was that much lower in middle latitudes. But it does make perfect sense.

The only time we've had problems with our sat tv is when snow accumulates on the dish itself.

The starlink dish dissipates about 130w and they can play with that value depending on ambient temps. Basically it will melt the snow.

Depends on where you are and your line of sight to the bird. In the subtropics where we are outages are normal during the rainy season.