Starlink Broadband
Discussion
BrettMRC said:
Is anyone using this as their only service at the moment?
I'm in the sticks and getting fed up with the average of 0.2Mb/s - even on mobile broadband!
It is general availability, I would get your order in quick, because for someone genuinely without broadband access this will be a transformative technology. But you will be joining the queue with a lot of people who just want the latest gadgets.I'm in the sticks and getting fed up with the average of 0.2Mb/s - even on mobile broadband!
Gman20 said:
BrettMRC said:
Is anyone using this as their only service at the moment?
I'm in the sticks and getting fed up with the average of 0.2Mb/s - even on mobile broadband!
It is general availability, I would get your order in quick, because for someone genuinely without broadband access this will be a transformative technology. But you will be joining the queue with a lot of people who just want the latest gadgets.I'm in the sticks and getting fed up with the average of 0.2Mb/s - even on mobile broadband!
Thanks for the advice
BrettMRC said:
normalbloke said:
BrettMRC said:
Is anyone using this as their only service at the moment?
I'm in the sticks and getting fed up with the average of 0.2Mb/s - even on mobile broadband!
Did you read this thread at all?I'm in the sticks and getting fed up with the average of 0.2Mb/s - even on mobile broadband!
Northernboy said:
BrettMRC said:
Will give it a week to see if the mobile providers come good on the infrastructure, then see if I can get on the bandwagon.
Thanks for the advice
The deposit is refundable if you decide to change your mind.Thanks for the advice
Anyone know if it's low flying jet/helicopter proof?
normalbloke said:
The poster on this thread sharing his experience of the Starlink kit he’s using probably does.
He still has another service as his back up, albeit at a slower speed?! (Unless I really can't read and he's cancelled it?!?)BrettMRC said:
Northernboy said:
BrettMRC said:
Will give it a week to see if the mobile providers come good on the infrastructure, then see if I can get on the bandwagon.
Thanks for the advice
The deposit is refundable if you decide to change your mind.Thanks for the advice
Anyone know if it's low flying jet/helicopter proof?
normalbloke said:
The poster on this thread sharing his experience of the Starlink kit he’s using probably does.
He still has another service as his back up, albeit at a slower speed?! (Unless I really can't read and he's cancelled it?!?)The service is still in Beta at the moment, so yes, I still have a BT wired backup. The diagnostics from the dish show service quality, and outages broken down by 1) No satellites 2) Obstructions (it thinks a satellite should be visible, but can't see it) and 3) Beta Downtime aka "we're fettling with it". A month ago I was seeing a bit of (1), a very small amount of (2) - think seconds a day and a significant amount of (3) - still seeing a fair amount of (3), but it varies day by day, but very little (1) or (2). Right now, showing 2 minutes Beta downtime in the past 24 hours.
The Beta outages are still enough that if I'm planning a long video call I might drop back to the BT line, if I remember...they're still enough to cause the call to hang in various ways, be it Skype, Zoom or Teams, but for day to day browsing and video streaming it's great, and still in the 120Mbps - 160MBps range. As per my previous post, in addition to the Beta outages, there are the occasional system configuration changes e.g. suddenly appearing to the outside world from Frankfurt instead of London.
I have no solid data, but I'd guess that if you have low flying jet or helicopter traffic in sufficiently close proximity and volume to interfere with Starlink, then you're probably sitting the middle of a military firing range and have more immediate and pressing problems than your Tik Tok videos freezing a bit (and when it's out of Beta and into general availability, hopefully even that would be kept to a minimum).
eharding said:
This post is brought to you by Starlink....
Still a risk that Starlink might go tits up commercially, and you'd be stuck with a £500 dish with no service, but technically the thing is a work of art and if they become a rarity could become a geek collectors' item one day - teardowns show they're probably costing SpaceX a lot more than £500 to produce, and Musk has been reported as saying getting the cost of the dish down is one of the largest technical challenges.
If you knew how expensive monopolistic internet services are here in the US you'd realize this is never going out of business... Still a risk that Starlink might go tits up commercially, and you'd be stuck with a £500 dish with no service, but technically the thing is a work of art and if they become a rarity could become a geek collectors' item one day - teardowns show they're probably costing SpaceX a lot more than £500 to produce, and Musk has been reported as saying getting the cost of the dish down is one of the largest technical challenges.
Edited by eharding on Monday 15th February 12:12
I miss the £25 a month all-in for 70Mbps from a choice of 100 providers, vs only one choice of $99 for upto 25Mbps, plus city tax, plus modem rental, plus interstate tax, plus entertainment tax etc.
s1962a said:
Whats the latency like in real-world usage? I'm sure it's fine for netflex and all, but what about VPN into work, and zoom calls etc?
Starlink diagnostics chart latency over the past 15 minutes or so - right now they're saying Min 23ms, Max 44ms, Last 31ms - goes up when loaded (although the router is still outside in an observatory shed as I haven't got round to drilling a hole in the wall). Latency is fine for video calling, with the caveat mentioned above the occasional drop out can cause the call to hang. VPN work is fine, but when I use it I don't use remote desktops , because ssh command line access, vi and a SQL prompt were good enough for grandad, good enough for dad and good enough for me.As mentioned earlier, Starlink latency might give you issues with intense online gaming, but if you're using Starlink because you're out in remote rural wilderness, just go for a nice walk in the countryside instead.
Borris-Bear said:
anyone have any contact details for Starlink? Have an interesting use case for them and wanted to see if they wanted to use us as a beta test.
The signup page at https://support.starlink.com/ is now looking for early signup for general access rather than Beta testing, but that may vary depending on your territory. I signed up for the Beta test last June, last July they asked for me to update address details, and in January this year was asked to fill in an online survey, followed by an invitation to take part. The Starlink portal has online support contacts, if you have a Beta account with them, not sure what you can see otherwise.I’ve ordered mine. I’ll run it HA with my BT connection for 6 months, then bin the BT connection. We’re a fair distance from the exchange, so the best BT can do is about 25Mbit, despite charging for 100.
I was talking with some farmer friends on Saturday evening about their connection, which is even worse than mine. The have Gigaclear digging up the road at vast expense (all subsidised by HM government) to bring them a connection. I do think this whole “rural internet” discussion is going to end up looking like Betamax in a years time.
And I have the added benefit of funding Mars exploration rather than BT Sport....
I was talking with some farmer friends on Saturday evening about their connection, which is even worse than mine. The have Gigaclear digging up the road at vast expense (all subsidised by HM government) to bring them a connection. I do think this whole “rural internet” discussion is going to end up looking like Betamax in a years time.
And I have the added benefit of funding Mars exploration rather than BT Sport....
megaphone said:
Does anyone have a link to their T&Cs, contract, pricing? I can't find anything.
If you enter an eligible address at https://starlink.com, and click through to order, the T&Cs (currently labelled as Beta for the UK) are available at the bottom - https://www.starlink.com/legal/terms-of-service?re...No contracts (yet) - you buy the dish (expensive, but all indications are that in beta at least the hardware costs a lot more that they're charging for it) - and then a £90 monthly fee, with 30 days notice on either side.
anonymous said:
[redacted]
Starlink / Spacex is a company with very little commercial ties to the UK, so government has little influence to say you must prioritise these people, and you must keep it affordable.Oneweb on the other hand UK government has bought a near majority stake, so once that gets up and running it very likely could replace this rollout, although the tech is still not yet proven how it will scale and how well it can last so it probably wont.
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