I took down Starlink

I was initially optimistic when I got my Starlink kit and set up Dishy McFlatface, but some developments have me changing my mind.
I see four problems with Starlink as it currently operates, and I'll go through them in this video, explaining why I still subscribe, even though I don't have my dish set up anymore.
See my earlier Starlink videos:
- Review: • SpaceX's Starlink Revi...
- Installation: • SpaceX Starlink satell...
Support me on Patreon: / geerlingguy
Sponsor me on GitHub: github.com/sponsors/geerlingguy
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#Starlink #SpaceX
Contents:
00:00 - Taking down Dishy McFlatface
02:06 - Coverage and preorders
04:49 - New Terminal - one step forward...
07:25 - Power hungry dish
08:45 - Mo' sats, mo' problems
10:20 - And yet...

[@handle_gc]

When tech is not up to the mark, expressing your thoughts is just a feedback not negativity.

[@ryansuedel9274]

I get your point, however it is called "better than nothing" internet for a reason. Musk has been transparent in stating its in beta mode and will improve in time. The current rollout was intended for people who had no internet access, rather than for people who have hi-speed service to compare between services. Mail me your dish if you are that unhappy and save me the wait.

[@handle_gc]

@@ryansuedel9274 I'm not blaming someone or something, you should read it twice

[@zachb.6179]

@@ryansuedel9274 "better than nothing"? oh so that's why they did the hella expensive proprietary connection cables?

[@ryansuedel9274]

@@handle_gc you didn't, I did. My point was while the OC was expressing his feedback, it was misguided. Comparing a beta version (which is honestly sold as "better than nothing) to a fully functional service is like drinking expensive wine out of a paper cup and complaining it tastes better out of crystal. I'm blaming people for knowing that and complaining anyway, and also taking the limited availability from those who have no internet.

[@ryansuedel9274]

@@zachb.6179 the service, yes....not the equipment. Check out the website and any interviews with Musk. Starlink has been pretty honest in my opinion.

[@TheGTP1995]

A dongle to have a crucial port and a proprietary connector, I see that Starlink has learned the Apple way

[@ne14lov22002]

Cause it's part of the APPLE... Open your eyes and you shall see

[@waynemasters8673]

Why is your own life worse than being a vidiot?

[@neceugene2773]

Not an apt comparison. Apple has sold USB/thunderbolt based Ethernet dongles and has supported 3rd party dongles for 20 years now. If you're referring to products that use the 30-pin or lightning connectors, there has almost always been supported third party products for those as well. It's 2022, time to retire that joke.

[@kristoZen]

@@neceugene2773 Apple are overpriced underpowered un upgradable pieces of gloatware, who fools their customers into upgrading by slowing the performances of older hardware on purpose. I won't even walk near the apple designated areas of shopping centers out of disgust for their un customizable junk, and tendency to use Chinese sweat shops to make their crap : \ Booo Apple Boo

[@da4127]

@@neceugene2773 doesn’t matter if there are supported third party products for the lighting connector, Apple signed a cooperation agreement to use standardised port over 10 years ago, they argued for,lighting saying it was faster and providing adaptors, but they still use their dumb lighting connector today when USB C is now faster, better and common. All their products also work in a closed environment, where if you want to use all the features of your phone, earphones, headphones, pc, ipad, etc. you need to buy more Apple products. IOS is also closed to the point that you couldn’t even see the files on your device until 3 years ago, and you still cannot configure so many things that you can on Android. Today you can’t even change the camera of an iPhone for another original camera from another iPhone. And the excuse? “They are proprietary”, literally said by Apple. You are right, it’s time to retire the joke because its not longer a joke, it’s the sad reality of a world where people don’t care of big corporations decide how they should live their lives.

[@nezu_cc]

The inequality is crazy. I have symmetric gigabit FTTH internet with a dedicated IP and all ports open(Literal dream when it comes to homelabing) and no data caps for ~25$/mo in Poland. Crazy what some people pay for shitty LTE with almost no signal strength and insanely low data caps.

[@NuLiForm]

WoW!! Seriously!

[@tudbut]

i live in Germany and i have none of these things (i dont have a data cap but my bandwidth is very low, not because the cables to my house cant handle it, but instead cuz i dont pay enough) for 50€/mo

[@dwmcever]

5G LTE in Central Texas $50 a month. 140Mbs at 4 am 5-10Mbs at 9pm. My neighbors can't even get it cause the Tower has been sold out. My backup is 4G LTE 30Mps 2 Mbs at 9pm. neighbor has DSL. Yes DSL.

[@kyronmeza6275]

Damn I feel you. Same specs for me, 1 Gbit/s FTTH all ports open for like ~$30 US / month in Chile.

[@roryo1386]

@@dwmcever I have bonded pair ADSL @ 60Mbps lol. Tough life in the boonies of VT

[@Recovering_Californian]

Love my Starlink. Despite some of it's flaws it's a game changer for folks who don't have access to high speed internet. I live in a rural area. My local provider is still on copper wire DSL. Slow AF! They have no plans on updating....ever. There just isn't the customer base to support fiber out where I am at.

[@soulssong2u]

I am puzzled by those who already have options for high speed internet like cable, fiber Optic, etc, why they thought Starlink would be a better option for them. It was clear from the start this service was meant for those who don't have those other options. It was a game changer for me as well. We went from having to use satellite Tv to now streaming tv full time at about half the price.

[@johnnyboogalo4897]

This is who it should be for.I don't know why city people who got acess to optic fiber and all that are getting this all they doing is clogging up the wait times.Maybe they have a tesla and are an elon musk fanboy/girl but yeah starlink should be for us rural folk who have to deal with shit datacapped services.I love my starlink no more waiting hours download 20gb ffs lol

[@vincentthemasterofshadows5743]

I don't think your local provider is worse than mine.

[@benjaminhicks3920]

@@johnnyboogalo4897 Agreed, I don't understand why people in metro areas were even offered the service on initial release.

[@benjaminhicks3920]

I picked up Starlink because we couldn't even get DSL, only dial-up or "rural wireless" that costs $85/month for a 3MB/s download and 0.3MB/s upload speed.

[@jhill4874]

Comcast refuses to extend their network 6 miles down the road to where I live. Classic. They want all the benefits of being a utility, but none of the responsibilities.

[@jond1536]

I couldn't agree more, Concast took six months to fix THEIR problem, it is called "Pull Out" when the temperature of the cable drops to a certain level the copper part of the cable would shrink,. pulling out of the connector and lose the connection , and when it heated up it would return. ConCast had to bring in a Tech from another state to figure it out. I told them when the temp drops below freezing the connection would be lost. Of course I am just a dumb customer and don't know $h!T. Concast cost 79.00 a month and would occasionally send the magic bullet to kill my modem to get me to rent. "F" that I would just do without until my OWN modem would show up. so StarLink is GREAT and I will keep it as long as i can. Go Elon Musk

[@jhill4874]

@@jond1536 When I worked for a large network equipment company, I provided 24 hours customer support. The company wanted me to have network connectivity, so they provided ISDN into the company server, which was in the next county. The phone company changed our area code and the ISDN went down. It was one of the things I supported with the customers, but I had to talk to the company techs to fix it. When I called in I told what the problem was, but, no, we had to go through the entire "you are stupid, I am the expert" trouble shooting schtick. After over an hour of trouble shooting you know what the tech found? The area code changed. 😶

[@michaelterrell]

Then start your own company that only serves totally unprofitable installs. They have to operate under a franchise, so that six miles may also be outside of their franchised service area. I worked in Cable TV engineering back in the '80s. the laws and permits required at least 20 homes per mile to even approach payback before the physical plant had to be replaced or severely upgraded. Do you think people who live in serviceable areas should pay a much higher rate, just for you to get service?

[@stitchfinger7678]

@@michaelterrell Except they're the ones that campaigned for nobody else to serve the area the OP is in Comcast does nothing but monopolize. They can't chase out the competition and then complain about franchising and service areas, its literally their fault.

[@michaelterrell]

@@stitchfinger7678 No one else wants to build in someone else's franchise area. They have little hope of ever paying off the construction and operating costs, let alone making a profit. It isn't a monopoly, it is just basic economics.

[@DaPanda19]

I would say that sharing your personal knowledge and experience is in no way being negative you're just sharing your thoughts on the product, but when it comes to your thoughts on Elon musk I couldn't agree more ("somewhere in the middle")

[@SeraphX2]

Agreed it's somewhere in the middle. The guy has some crazy ideas, but those crazy ideas have brought about some of the cheapest rocket launches the world has known since the beginning of the space industry. Without him, there wouldn't be a way to get Americans to the ISS (because there was no replacement for the Shuttle) and instead we'd be shoveling Russia a shit ton of money for no reason. And sure, his class 3 auto-drive is far behind (Mercedes-Benz even beat him to the punch), he still kick-started the EV industry. I highly doubt any major brand would have been on top of EV "by 2030" if it wasn't for Musk. Why re-invent the system when you don't have to and spend tons of money on R&D. It's not like EV is new, but no one bothered to figure out how to make it more efficient. I know battery tech requires a lot of new MFG that wasn't available then, but maybe if the big guys had all been throwing their money into the pot for the last 50 years, we would have been a lot further along. And even some of his more outrageous stuff like the Boring Company (I know that's not the company to make the new hiway, but it's part of it), it's not like he was the only one in that space. There were plenty of other companies that were thinking of the same idea and trying to make something similar happen. But not all business ventures are successful. All major investors, inventors, business people have to try stuff to see if it will stick. Thinking every idea should pan out and then knocking people when it doesn't means you're just an idiot who doesn't understand the concept of invention and that failures are bound to happen before a successful venture. And Musk is not an idiot. He pioneered online payment systems. He works on the floor with people at SpaceX helping solve problems. He's not just a figurehead at the front of a company. People just don't like success is the problem.

[@nekdo_kavc]

Seeing some good discussion on KZbin is so refreshing. My take on Musk is overall positive and just like any human ever, he is deeply flawed.

[@bluesquadron593]

@@SeraphX2 Sorry but you are wrong on many many ways. You are citing the Musk highlight chart. He does not have the cheapest launch. He has exactly the same numbers as the others. Elon chronically overpromising and 99% under delivering. His only saving grace is that sometimes he delivers something.

[@BeefIngot]

How can anyone be in the middle. Hes like a typical billionaire asshole who underpays workers, spreads misinformation, acts like a petulant child, rips off taxpayers the list goes on and on. Hes objectively worse than many of the richest western billionaires.

[@silverclouds3725]

I used to think Musk was cool, but then when I found out that he was onboard with Gates in saying we should fear A.I., I wondered why. And then I heard him speak on it at some length... he was telling us to fear A.I. because that's one of his ways to convince people to get his Neuralink set-up. Classic Hegelian Dialectic. Just another pawn set in place for his handlers to take over the world. There is much about his story that doesn't match with the facts - I mean, he didn't start Tesla, he basically took it over from the Engineers who started it who had already produced their first model...

[@scottrobinson4611]

I'm an astronomer early in my career, academics in my field are already pretty pissed off with starlink. As for removing those starlink streaks, that's only really useful for imaging, which isn't all that common for real astronomers. Very few of us get by just looking at pictures of things nowadays. Most of us use big telescopes to gather numerical data. If a starlink satellite leaves a streak in one of our frames, we're just going to discard that frame. Removing them with some sort of AI tool would affect the legitimacy of the data, which makes it unsuitable for scientific studies.

[@k.chriscaldwell4141]

Don’t worry, Starlink is unsustainable. After it goes down the satellites will fall out of the sky.

[@whatilearnttoday5295]

> we're just going to discard that frame. Good luck when it's every frame.

[@PeterJames143]

honestly it's an incredible act to fill the sky with 30,000 satellites. incredible in a good way and also in a bad way.

[@jimbo32234]

Sorry but I really can't believe that if you do the calculations. The area of the sky a telescope looks at is tiny, imagine looking through a pen lid at arms length at the sky. 64000 satellites sounds like a lot, but not when they are in orbit and spread around the globe. You stand more chance of winning the lottery than a satellite crossing your field of view. A lot of the images you see published of the satellites are either taken just after launch before they reach their parking orbit, or they actively seek them out.

[@ryzkyjaeger07]

Finally an astronomer that's a realist

[@shaneintegra]

My mom lives in a cabin in the woods with no cell phone service and got starlink. Her previous internet was around 3mbps at best. With starlink she gets over 100mbps at most times paired with a WiFi 6 mesh network and it has absolutely made a huge impact over there. I don't personally use starlink but I hope he's successful

[@pearcomputers2542]

8:38 In Germany those 50 Watts cost currently more like $ 13.60 a month.

[@JeffGeerling]

😵

[@altosack]

…as it should! We subsidize many commodities by not paying externalities; that practice will eventually bite us, both with direct effects and with standard practices and expectations ill-tuned.

[@grahameida7163]

you need to plug those nuclear power stations back in pronto

[@Teekeks]

@@grahameida7163 if you dont subsidize most of the costs from nuclear like most countries do, nuclear is actually a terribly expensive energy source. Way cheaper to further build out the renewable market share.

[@madssrensen1216]

That's peanuts compared to the $20.4 a month in Denmark.

[@Waitwhat469]

The multiple constellations is exactly why this should have been a open standard so others can build satellites to fit into the constellation

[@JeffGeerling]

This I would like. An International collaboration so there could be one amazing constellation with as free and open access as possible. Though that's a pipe dream :(

[@lescarneiro]

This idea unfortunately is unfeasible under capitalism.

[@wikingagresor]

@@lescarneiro it is not because of capitalism, but because of geopolitics.

[@filleswe91]

Well, if Starlink went FLOSS on their software and hardware or like ARM license it to other companies they'd still earn their money back. Either way, the sky would still be littered with the same number of low earth orbit satellites no matter if we had 2-3 or 20 smaller companies (think PC component manufacturers) launching LEO satellites

[@CoolMan-ig1ol]

@@lescarneiro No. We have internet across the world because of a similar collaboration.

[@grantleyhughes]

I live on a large pontoon houseboat in Mannum South Australia. I'm right on the end of 4GX coverage, and over Summer with all the river visitors and heat, was getting under 7 and often under 3 mbps. Starlink, in my case, is a revelation, constantly over 200 and often 300 mbps. The dish sits unobstructed on the top roof on the boat. High winds, rainstorms and extreme heat have not affected performance of the system. Our optical fibre NBN is reasonable, but not here and useless for a boat. Best part was it arriving only a months after ordering it. One afternoon there were outages for 40 mins that affected buffering slightly, else it's incredibly. Current speedtest was 324 with 29 latency.

[@Sithhy]

29ms latency on satellite internet? That's really good. I use ADSL (soon to be upgraded) & I get 30-35ms ping, even to relatively close network servers in my country

[@3535gt]

Once more people start using Starlink around you, do you think your speeds will slow?

[@grantleyhughes]

@@3535gt I don't. Very rural in an older population. Plus the additional satellites on a regular launch schedule should keep it reliable. Worth the money.

[@Zenkai76]

For us rural users starlink has been awesome. I was overpaying for DSL that only gave me 12/1 I have my starlink v2 kit for 2 months now. I wish it had came with an Ethernet adapter as I have a high quality router but other than that, 0 complaints. Hardly ever have issues with it. The 110 a month is totally worth the price just to give the finger to ATT DSL.

[@benjaminhicks3920]

I couldn't even get DSL... Starlink brought me decent net again.

[@javitronix014]

The tittle made me expect red shirt Jeff with an angle grinder and a Starlink satellite in the backyard

[@mme725]

That makes me imagine Red Shirt Jeff cutting the dish into an actual star shape ⭐

[@jyvben1520]

or rsj using an extra size machine gun shooting the satellites out of the sky

[@filleswe91]

@@jyvben1520Pfff hahaha. I'm imagining Rambo Minigun space target practice.

[@AaronStarkLinux]

This service is for specific cases for sure, not for everyone. It won't be competitive in my country Spain, where I pay 35€/month for 300Mbps fiber connection, 1Gbps already costs only 45€/month and I don't have to pay for hardware or installations... But for other cases it will be necessary and justified.

[@SodaWithoutSparkles]

I dont think it would be competitive in my area too, where 2 * 1000 Mbps (2 lanes each 1000 Mbps, you _could_ combine them to make 2000 Mbps) connection with fiber-to-your-house plan only cost about 22 USD a month, and you can often spend some time to chat with the sales to get a free installation and a free router (which you could still use even if the plan ended).

[@JamesHodgson01]

If you are in the city... rural residents have awful internet and rely on Next or Movistar for WISP at a max speed of 15/2. The latency and jitter is awful as well, we pay €35 for that connection. Starlink will definitely be competitive for rural areas, whenever they actually launch in Spain. I know they say it's in limited areas right now but those limited areas are right outside large cities (Madrid, Valencia, Barcelona and thats it) and nowhere near the South of Spain unfortunately. I remember the Spanish government talking about getting more people to move to rural areas in Spain, even going as far as saying EVERY rural area will be connected with fiber by 2025, what a joke!

[@Youchubeswindon]

Hey I get it, and I am the same as you, £25 for 250mbs in the city. However my parents, at the wrong end of the copper line in the countryside (2 miles from a major small town, but 11 miles from where the copper starts at another town) get 4-5mbs ADSL. Even with the backbone provider getting rid of POTS with fibre to the exchange doesn't matter. A third party government funded supplier just installed a new fiber line down the road, but that is locked to the installer till 2030 at £120pcm for 30-50mbs max. Starlink is more affordable than many think.

[@gus473]

@@Youchubeswindon Their situation is similar to ours, sadly. For our area, Starlink has been the best solution by far! 👍🏼😎✌🏼

[@PineappleForFun]

@@JamesHodgson01 starlink, like all satellite internet services, has terrible latency. They do some things to help but it's a fundamental problem that your data has to go up, down, routed around a bit, back up and back down. Even in it's best case numbers starlink is 4 times higher ping times then my service at home. There are some problems to rural broadband that just don't have technical solutions and require build out. This is one of them.

[@tannerb55]

I didn’t watch the whole video but I’ll tell you it’s changed our life. My wife works from home and it’s the best damn thing I’ve ever spent my money on. 200 mbps no caps idk what else to say don’t buy it if you plan on selling. Might help keep ppl from price gouging other people who need it I guess.

[@DClairRobinson]

Just got ours last week and it is truly another whole level for us. This kind of fantastic internet is something we have NEVER had access to, and I for one am much more than pleased with the service and I'm ok with the price.

[@imagesh1]

In rural Eastern Colorado I have a ranch that is remote from my home in Colorado Springs. The ranch is isolated from cell phone service, and growing up out there we only could get a couple TV stations with a 50' tall antenna. Right now I know the temperature, and multiple security cameras tell me things are okay during a large snowstorm on-going. Starlink is the reason I have that confidence. I went from the phone companies 4 mb/sec down, .8 mb/sec up DSL to the high Starlink numbers everyone reports. in 2-5 years the local power company is promising fiber, but until then, I thank Elon every single day.

[@gus473]

👍🏼 Same here, brother! 👍🏼😎✌🏼

[@janeblogs324]

But what's the current up/down/ping?

[@soulssong2u]

We live in the northern front range foothills in CO where there is no cell phone service (yet..they started running line and stopped last year, supposed to finish this year..we'll see....) and no tv unless you use Satellite tv service. We were lucky to get 10 Mbps download and 2.5 up at $109/month until Starlink came along. We've been using it almost a year now. At first it dropped pretty often but now has been very reliable. We ditched satellite tv and have been full out streaming tv using starlink and youtube tv for about half the price of what we were paying before to watch tv. It doesn't hurt my feelings that people who already have other options for high speed internet are dropping SL though. It wasn't meant for them to begin with.

[@imagesh1]

Sorry, didn't see the question about the ping... it's from 24 to 80, averaging about 45. Am I a gammer? No, but I'm often triggering the remote security cameras pan/tilt/zoom and there's no discernable lag. I absolutely echo Soulsoung2u's comments. If you're setting in an area with Xfinity or similar, certainly that's your best bet. We were in the same boat, with no reliable options for internet beyond the Consolidated Communications DSL I mentioned. Since I was a child, TV reception was only on a tall mast via antenna, and only a handful of channels at that. Currently, Starlink has no data caps, which also separates it from the Geo satellite providers. Uptime has been phenomenal, only out seconds per day (if that) and usually in the dead of night/early AM.

[@c1ph3rpunk]

Starlink is an excellent example of how it’s often easier to design a technology than to operationalize it. I don’t think anyone there thought ahead to actually deploying and operating an ISP.

[@kaiky1807]

@surfer300ZX they din't "stole your money" if you want it back, all you have to do is ask.

[@subverter1.188]

First generation is always filled with issues

[@somerandompersonidk2272]

@@subverter1.188 And yet concurrently it is a really bad business model. You have to constantly replace every satellite as they are naturally going to die, whilst it also clutters up leo. But yeah, defend it because "Musk is the saviour".

[@angrymokyuu9475]

This is Musk's modus operandi. It's just a lot more obvious here because in most cases he's been able to scale back his promises or stall for time, which is a lot harder to do when you're spending hundreds of millions just to keep your same capabilities.

[@xXKisskerXx]

every big invention musk backs (not designs, no he is not that clever) and promotes is a failure. Tesla Truck, Hyperloop, etc. The only one with a mediocre amount of success is the SpaceX rocketry, and they couldn't do it without basically hiring and learning from literally every other space agency. (also they failed to get our transports, so only focus on going to orbit right now) It's just greed. Simply greed. Musk wants your money, and has a silver tongue to tell you about 'this brand new invention' - which most were already thought of and planned before he was even born, and died when reality kicked in that it would be impossible with current materials and technology.

[@daviddean4061]

Excellent summary of you experience and observations. Very helpful!

[@keycontroller]

So you cant pinpoint the same satelite orbit for your cousin ( like sat tv dish) if so can you find the actual coverage range like its seeing you and if you put it on a long cable and mobile power in the field/ garden to see where the range stops from orbit or is it software checked and routed like user is in location x now in location y and not allowed?

[@RickSlone]

I installed my v2 Starlink yesterday. Took me from 5mb dsl to 150mb. Ordered February 6 2021, installed February 1,2022. Used a tp link wifi bridge to connect to my ethernet. Worked like a charm.

[@Cthulhu013]

That equipment and service won't be worth anything when the project goes bankrupt.

[@hycron1234]

@@Cthulhu013 - Well if he can get starship off the ground, that might not come to pass. 🤔

[@JBoy340a]

Congrats!!

[@joansparky4439]

@@Cthulhu013 why would it go bankrupt? So far there is plenty people lined up to take up service so they'll stay afloat. Once Starship flies the deployment of gen2 sats with laserlinks will just speed up and create an even bigger market with much more customers.

[@gus473]

@@Cthulhu013 🤣 You're confusing it with the old Iridium satellite service! And even that got refinanced and operates now! Rather dismissive, I believe. 🤷🏻‍♂️

[@michelsavoie6971]

I went from 1.5 mbps to between 150 and 200 mbps with Starlink. I ordered in September 2021 and received it December 23 2021. I have the round Dishy. It's doing well in the snow. I can now watch KZbin in HD, I used to watch it in the lowest quality.

[@hewhobringsthenight9907]

i used to have 512 kbps (not KB/s) but my isp has some kind of caching with youtube so it used to work at 100MB/s. weird internet i had

[@sixforks6543]

Holy Moses that first monologue hit deep Mr Geerling. These past few years have been great for you and you deserve every cent, but the one thing I admire above all, is just how damn self aware and humble you are, in addition to the high levels of talent and intelligence you clearly possess. Bravo.

[@onlineda1]

Your videos are very helpful for someone in Canada considering jumping to starlink. Thank you

[@candyczar]

The local EMC ran fiber. Went from 12/3 LTE to Gigabit both ways. Absolutely glorious!

[@alexhampshire2421]

There is fiber service no more than a mile from my house and cable at the end of my road. in short, i hate the ISPs in my area lol also i wish ISPs would stop over reporting to the FCC on what they cover

[@timramich]

@@alexhampshire2421 That's what happens when the FCC lets them do their own reports, instead of having a third and neutral party do them. But what are they gonna do, go around knocking on rural doors asking people their internet speed? If people had a clue about their speed then maybe they could work it into the census.

[@nealramsey4439]

I'm currently installing 1G up and down here in WV. We had terrible speeds before but Frontier is installing fiber to the home now. The customers love it and we are installing it as fast as possible.

[@JosephFrietze]

I was looking forward to Star Link before out electric company started doing the same thing. I got the call yesterday to set up my account. In home install should be within 10 weeks. 1 Gig up and down for $99/month. No taxes or fees. No equipment rentals. No install charges. No contracts.

[@idofps9709]

Yeah, parents house(where i grew up) got fiber through our electricity provider. 25Mbps for 50 or 75 for gigabit lmao. I dont understand the speeds tho i assume most people here in backwoods of madison county, people are fine with 25. Its nice, never had internet growing up

[@jessedaly7847]

I think the most important aspect about starlink at least in the US is that it provides viable competition in markets which until now have been monopolized by the likes of comcast or century link, both of whom are notorious for terrible service at ever increasing costs in their little monopolized markets. Those days are over now.

[@JBoy340a]

Agreed. When I visit relatives in little towns in the upper midwest I am shocked at how bad their service is. 4 Mbps down, 0.5 Mbps up is a good day. I sometimes put my laptop in the car and drive to the lake where I can get a good 5G signal to make conference calls.

[@scottstewart9154]

agree but I wouldn't be surprised if Comcast,ATT, Verizon all make deals with Starlink to pay them to get internet to their cell towers, and wouldn't be surprised if that agreement was that Starlink won't be available to other customers in those tower vicinits

[@jessedaly7847]

@@scottstewart9154 I like the way you think, but they would have to compensate starlink for decades of missed payments from all their potential customers in those neighborhoods, and even then Musk would have to approve the bribe.

[@bigchris3616]

Well said

[@AustinHollingerOfficial]

@@JBoy340a places that are legitimately rural normally don't even have access to anything more than ridiculous DSL or even more ridiculous expensive satellite Internet. That is changing because rural electric cooperatives are running fiber in the areas that don't yet have it excluding cities

[@sterlinglombard]

Your review was very informative! I was considering getting the package, but it really doesn't look ready for prime time, you're not the only person who's given your review. Looks like I'm going to save my money for now. Maybe when Verizon 5g shows in Phoenix, AZ, I might consider wireless internet.

[@ProfessorFate]

Like some others here, I put down $100 for starlink in feb 2021 with a projected (and missed,) summer 21 delivery. By fall of 21, the tmobile 5g home terminal was available and I put it in. Typically does 300 mbs down, 20 mbs up, 21 ms latency for $50/ month with $0 terminal fee. Built in router is 6g. After a few months testing, I cancelled my starlink reservation. At least, the refund of the $100 was prompt. The tmo terminal continues to provide excellent service and I can typically watch movies off the internet providers and never see a “buffering” delay. The terminal is just sitting in a window sill linked to a cell site 2.8 miles away running on the N 41 band.

[@Rob2]

The main problem with Starlink coverage is that they promised to launch satellites with links between them, then launched 1000 satellites without that feature. So now for every user there has to be a Starlink uplink station in the same coverage area. That severely limits the usefulness of the entire system, as it means there is no coverage in remote areas of the world. Which exactly is the area where such a system would be useful.

[@MiguelRuiz-vp1hu]

This is a temporary problem. All new launches are with laser link and they have over 200 up. Soon they will be activated according to Elon. Remote regions don't even have approval yet and countries like South Africa are estimated to be 2023 for approval.

[@basarayam]

Luckily I live off-grid with solar in a warm climate so no pesky power bill. Starlink works very well here in Australia. Very happy customer.

[@indyalx]

I live in the middle of almost nowhere in california. Starlink has been a massive boon for me too. My only other option was inconsistent DSL with below 20mbps speeds.

[@indyalx]

@@gags730 "I get 1gbps down, but I got starlink because I hate Comcast customer service" smh

[@shippo72]

@@gags730 Haha, you think people can get "affordable" internet if they live in a city? Just one block is the difference between abject poor service and mediocre service. Companies also section off cities between themselves, so they don't have to compete with each other (it's illegal, but they still do it). So in most scenarios, you only have access to one broadband provider, and the only other internet options are 4G/5G or DSL. Granted, if you live in an apartment, you won't be able to use Starlink anyway.

[@downsouth5971]

@@gags730 Is SMH cool talk??

[@cyberpleb2472]

I live in a rural part of central British Columbia, Canada. There is snow on the ground for seven month of the year and we get over four feet of snow accumulation each winter. I've been on the waiting list for seven months now and I am expecting service in April. I will need to build a tower for the dish to clear the trees... so this is a big investment. I'm rather nervous, to be honest.

[@kamara4700]

I lived in a major city. Had great internet. Moved to rural and tried all 3 internet options. What a shit show. Got starlink and it's like being back in the city. I can facetime, download, youtube etc. Only a slight delay sometimes. I don't think you really know who Starlink is actually for. I waste 4 - 8 bucks a month in electricity to have city internet. Sign me the fuck up.

[@jeffreyparsons5309]

We moved to a rural acreage and bought into the 4g lte promises after being on fiber in the city, the service was terrible to say the least without even getting the promised 1/6th of the speeds 90 percent of the time. We ordered starlink late in the beta, received it 3 months later and it has been day and night. I was skeptical of all things musk but have to say after 5 months am presently surprised as the performance is exceeding the promised average performance the company advertises

[@benjaminhicks3920]

Same situation here. I even had a $750 amplified, directional LTE antenna mounted on a pole 40 feet in the air a few years back. On a good day, I'm lucky to get 20MB/s with the expensive antenna (it was 1-3 MB/s before the antenna), but I leave it up because I don't drop/miss calls now. Starlink, though, has made the Internet usable again. Now I get ~200MB/s down, and 8-15MB/s up with a ~30ms ping.

[@ozymatic3291]

Starling was my only option for faster internet. Yes it costs more, uses more power, has clunky hardware. But I have no alternative, grateful to have useable internet. The only ISP considering rural dwellers.

[@JBoy340a]

You sound like the original target market. Glad it is working for you.

[@AmstradExin]

Not really. It's all a scam and you've been scammed. It should be possible for ....like a community to receive funding to provide themselves with a Satellite-powered local network. This is the norm here in Germany.

[@Vaasref]

@@AmstradExin If you get the service and the price is fair enough for you then it cannot be a scam.

[@auslanderalex5464]

@@AmstradExin Rural Germany is hardly rural by other countries standards. The fact that a signal satellite can be shared by neighbours is evidence of this. There are farming areas in the USA, Australia and South Africa (Where I live) where you would need to travel for an hour at 100 km/h before you reach your neighbour's house. Also, not everyone is blessed with a government that can afford (in my case) or is willing (USA) to subsidise a community satellite dish.

[@chironchangnoi]

That's patently false, there are already at least two other satellite internet providers with comparable speeds, latency and price without $500 initial equipment investment with nearly universal coverage.

[@cstraley]

Starlink has been great for me. It replaced DSL and performs way better at several times the download speed I was used to. Now I can stream 1080p to 4k....

[@mikethetoolman8776]

same working great exceeds my expectations and the daughters Y is great also

[@svenp6504]

Same here. I expected a lot more instability and outages given that the constellation was just getting to be functional but it's been quite reliable. I'm at the far end of DSLs range so it was slow and not very reliable. Very happy.

[@aquilegus]

depends on your use and your location: too many breaks for streaming use in France currently, and download speeds have dropped dramatically

[@christins.1481]

@@aquilegus Pretty good where I live. Surprisingly is reverse for me when it never was before. Our friend in town has Starlink and gets a download of 160 Mbps. We live out in the rural area and get 260 Mbps. The concept of this system was for people out in rural areas and not for people living out in the suburbs, our friend. It honestly works as it was intended to. I do imagine being throttled and data caps later on for us when this gets more customers, but considering we were getting dial up speeds on our previous plans when we didn't exceed our 10GB and weren't supposed to be throttled while paying $160 a month. We'll take the $100 a month with caps if we can at least get Netflix speeds. Even with AT&T with the new system they had that wasn't U Verse. We first were given a special deal for 800 GB for $20 a month. Tech guy came out here to install the equipment and couldn't because our tower wasn't even ready when AT&T told us it was. That tower gave us dial-up speeds for a a year before that program was actually available to us, but because we didn't catch their deal when it was first offered we ended up paying $40 for 400 GB. Was excited when it was installed, but then got dial-up speeds yet again and no connection for days. Not hours, days. We gave up on in two winters ago because a freeze destroyed their tower and they weren't reimbursing us for any of this. The idea of Starlink was for people out in rural areas, not suburban areas. It's working as intended.

[@christins.1481]

I live in Louisiana and my Dad is currently living in Thailand. He was living in Australia before. Haven't seen my Dad in person in over 10 years and have been contacting him through Skype and before Skype became popular. With Starlink, I finally got to Skype my Dad without failed connection.

[@Lagggerengineering]

The ethernet adapter is on backorder, but is the starlink too? Maybe they separated them because of the chip shortage, could have found it difficult to get a specific chip. Or am I just making this up since there is almost no shortage of normal switches and routers?

[@RC-nq7mg]

What is your topography like? Seems to me with the relatively short distance a couple towers and a LOS radio link could solve your cousins problem especially if you have a reliable high speed connection. It could easily bring the connection from kilobits to megabits.

[@kurothot2203]

I have to wonder what costs more? Launching satellites into space or digging trenches and laying cables.

[@roseroserose588]

hint: if sattelites were cheaper and easier we would've been doing it already 😓 Sattelite internet is cool, don't get me wrong, and it can provide service to incredibly remote regions, but at the end of the day it will always be cheaper to dig a hole in the ground than send thousands of tiny computers into space and keep them there

[@DaniilGentili]

The main problem on land is bureaucracy :)

[@jimbo-dev]

In my opinion it is better to build networks on the ground. Satellite tech has use case, but we can build a lot more cheaply on the ground. For example better utilization of frequencies. And with dish antennas on the ground it is possible to add more cell towers without physical wiring (it only needs power), on rural areas this can greatly improve speeds. And the cell operators can join their networks, for example a network called "Yhteisverkko" in Finland has operated for years now in the rural areas of the country and the idea is that customer of either wireless service provider can use the network of either provider but both providers are still competitors on the dense populated areas. Partial reason for this collaboration is the strict coverage requirements of LTE and 5G licences

[@grahameida7163]

I think it depends on how many people are going to be on the end of the fibre and land rights... one satellite can cover many miles below it, and the starlink satellites are pretty cheap in space terms (I think about $100K) . So economically viable for satellites where one 50 mile wire is only used my one house.

[@strickter]

The trenches would cost far more per person. And with how cable companies currently do it the cost is normally passed on to the owner which is often well beyond what a typical home owner is willing to pay. There's a new method of getting space junk into the air that's likely to bring down the cost of launching these satellites in the future as well. It just spins the payload in a donut real fast and literally hurl them into space

[@JBoy340a]

For me, the connector is idiotic. We have been CAT 6 cables outside for decades. Why create such a strange connection?

[@QualityDoggo]

money

[@brad3378]

It's because of the wattage requirements

[@kpb0]

@@brad3378 it may make sense, because the most powerful PoE++ standard is rated at 71 W max.

[@schlix101]

Totally agree... I was seriously considering a star-link connection, once it would become available where I am. But that option just went out the window! I am NOT going to entertain a proprietary solution! That is just idiotic!

[@eDoc2020]

@@brad3378 If it's really a wattage issue and the cable itself is standard, a user-friendly company could release their own connectors, maybe with punch-down blocks.

[@ArthursHD]

How the dish 📡 compares to 4g router with 2 directional antennas? Or WiFi point to point setup?

[@Encysted]

I really love that this video was not just about “yeah the speed was okay, coverage has been slow to build”

[@MrRecorder1]

Honestly, I think this is just Silicon valley in a nutshell: "dumb down" and add "custom solutions" to your product so that nobody has the right tools to fix it so that gullible people (or in the future, the entire market) have/has no choice but conform and accept your ridiculous standards. That is when you jack up the prices again by a factor of 10 and crush your competition (people who want to make your "custom solutions" more accessible) with the money you already have. Sounds like the Apple-playbook to me!

[@blakedavis6193]

Before getting to the bottom of your paragraph I kept thinking, nah that just sounds like an Apple thing lol

[@Youchubeswindon]

​@sp0777iXdlMLalN0dsXxlMlNdsM0jdsj Tesla's are not the least repairable cars, when fixing shit. They do have the same problem as other manufacturers electric vehicles in the software and control systems because there hasn't been enough time to leak the knowledge to third parties, and even when that happens it will require super detailed levels of knowledge to fix those sorts of issues. They do have a parts supply problem which hurts the local grease monkey garage and the home repairer, because Tesla have only been building cars for a short period of time, can't build enough actually finished cars to meet demand, let alone parts supply, and want to keep the parts to themselves.

[@Youchubeswindon]

@@blakedavis6193 I think the 'Apple' lack of repair thing was very much a Jonny Ive thing in design (thin-ness) forcing a lack of reparability. With the new devices and whilst they still solder on memory and storage, which causes upgrade issues although this is offset because of the way the new systems use the RAM and HDD as almost interchangeable, and so lack of compatibility in upgrades would force issues, the devices (when parts are available) are becoming much easier to repair, not Framework level, but getting there. Silicon Valley has done the Juicero stupid hardware phase, and is moving more to a 'green' viewpoint and as such reparability and Open Source is being given a higher priority.

[@hubertnnn]

@@Youchubeswindon Dude, electric engine exists for over 50 years now, and its the simplest engine possible. There is no knowledge to leak. Literally every university student on IT or electronics has to make an electric vehicle as one of their projects. The only thing that is different is scale and law.

[@Youchubeswindon]

@@hubertnnn That's why I was not talking about the motor. The main issue in fixing a Tesla is the individual battery management systems and the software that drives it, even if you have the parts. Good luck fucking about with either. Body work, drive trains, brakes, if you got the parts, easy easy well understood fixes. The issue is parts availability, if you are not trying to fix the battery or its ecu or the infotainment, and you have parts, the cars are easy to fix. Which is what I was responding to the OP about. Please don't try and twist what I was talking about.

[@louishermann7676]

One point on the delays that went unmentioned from someone who primarily follows SpaceX's development: The new Starlink sats are beefier and have laser linkups which should increase bandwidth significantly, BUT the extra mass makes the 100T to LEO of Starship almost mandatory for these satellites to be deployed economically. Once Starship is capable of reaching orbit reliably and also either A) They manage to land both stages or B) They manage to significantly increase the speed of raptor engine production as that is currently their biggest production bottleneck, a significant number of newer sats should go up in short order. Basically I think these delays hang on the development of Starship and the Raptors. EDIT: "Starship and the Raptors" might be a cool band name.

[@Pete856]

Starship is another example of "Elon time". A year ago it looked like they were making great progress and an orbital flight would happen before the year was out, in the middle of the year Elon said they were only a couple of months away. They have built a lot of ground support equipment and done a few tests on the booster, but they are still months away from an orbital test, and I suspect years from regular starship flights.

[@user2C47]

@@Pete856 Aren't they still waiting on government approval?

[@Pete856]

@@user2C47 Yes, they still don't have FAA approval yet, but that's not currently holding them up.

[@SpaceRanger187]

yall voted for all of this..so hush..This is nothing just wait only going to get worse

[@areyoujelton]

@@Pete856 Elon is a vaporware salesman. Look at his “hyper loop” 😂

[@varaniversum7614]

Is it possible to buy the dish and pay the monthly fees for using the internet later? or do I have to pay it right from the start?

[@teamgartz-motorsports6881]

How are you doing your upload bonding? I have a slower than Starlink fallback radio connection that I can also bond using a open source project, tho it is quite unreliable, unfortunately.

[@martini380]

When starlink was launched at my location there was ongoing construction on FTTH infrastructure. It was a nobrainer to choose a 100€ deposit for a fiber connection over 500€ for starlink. Now we have both, a few lights in the sky and fibre connections to most houses

[@krazyr8erfan]

Glad you can get fiber, they refuse to bring it to many. What we get is constant interruption of wireless service with nothing else available at a cost of $100 per month. It cost me $600 to put a tower up to clear tree's so the antenna could be pointed at the transmitting tower direction. Be thankful you can get a wired connection because some of us don't get that choice.

[@martini380]

@@krazyr8erfan I feel you, used to have a somewhat ok 4G connection with a data cap at 200GB for like 60€ a month as the only dsl provider was the biggest piece of sh*** with 16mbit/s,100GB for the past 30Days(not the Month) and like 40€. They then claimed they could offer 50Mbit/s what excluded us from all government financed programms. I feel like it's just luck and a bunch of waiting.

[@ShinyTechThings]

I pre-ordered the day it was announced but am still waiting. Fun fact I used to work for StarLink back in the 90's it was a independent dialup ISP back then and I'm sure the old owners are kicking themselves for selling the domain name a few decades ago.

[@Bigdog1787]

He would of just picked a different name of it was not for sale. 😅 Probably be called Space X Internet😉

[@scottmoseley5122]

Nice report I'm Living in the Philippines ... My home and business fiber internet has been down nearly 3 months after a typhoon knocked out lines. Would so love to have had a starlink system. I understand they will be opening here soon.

[@Bianchi77]

Nicely explained, thanks for sharing :)

[@Juttutin]

There's a small bunch of people who have used alternative Ethernet power injectors and/or connected their V1 Dishy directly to their existing router wan ports. That's gonna be harder with V2. Really, they need two kits, one super simple, and one for folks who like to do their own networking with (e.g.) an AC-or-DC power injector, no WiFi router, and some sort of screw-down weatherproof RJ45 adaptor box for the dish. Then they could leave it to the installer to buy the right length and grade of dish cable, so it'd probably end up cheaper to produce, and make a lot of people happy.

[@robertoaguiar6230]

Soon some chinese company will make a dumb-proof 5$ dongle with starlink port on one side and ethernet on the other and sell it on amazon.

[@Iam_Dunn]

Watching this from Starlink service on the bottom of James Bay, ON CAN. Preordered March of 2021, received Nov 2021. Had my dish up and running within 30 min of getting it. Old speed of my DSL provider 10mbps dl 500kbps ul. Starlink speeds 370 mbps dl 80 - 100 mbps ul. Conclusion, Dunn gleefully throws $129 (CAN) at Elon every month!!

[@kaya051285]

The amount of power draw is crazy high. My home electricity consumption would go up by 30% and that isn't a typo Begs the question, how good would 4G cellular be if you had a dedicated $500 antenna dish 📡 with a pwoer budget of 100 watts rather than the $5 and 1 watt antenna in a smartphone

[@JeffGeerling]

Heh, or if you just positioned the antenna optimally, and didn't have a super cheap little stick antenna (or a flat PCB antenna like most devices have).

[@TheAnantaSesa]

Worth a try. They do exist. At least back during 3g era they did. Assuming they worked for data too. I was looking into them just for better phone talk service.

[@benjaminhicks3920]

Not that good. I tried it before Starlink was developed. Dropped about $750 on a directional outdoor antenna with amplifier and indoor antenna. It was better than nothing (no more dropped/missed calls), and did improve DL/UL speeds, but it still relies on getting a decent signal quality from the nearest tower to where your antenna is mounted. You can't "pull radio waves out of the air," 😂 if they aren't already there. Basically, if you stand on your roof and still don't have the bars, the outdoor antenna/amplifier aren't going to help very much. That's a little simplified, but the general idea holds true.

[@simonl7784]

10:00 Kesler syndrome is not 'a reduced concern' its an impossible outcome given the low altitude of the satellites. Kessler syndrome is not caused by collisions per-say it's caused by debris maintaining orbits after a collision. Maintaining an orbit is impossible if it was never sustainable to start with. This is the whole premise of Starlink's orbital safety. **Correction: collisions can put debris in higher orbits and eccentric orbits. see replies below.

[@honkhonk8009]

what if a sattelite collides, and those thousands of small peices end up having a new orbit that go another orbital altitude? Its not far off to say that if its collided a certain way, the orbit of the debris wont be the same.

[@wealthelife]

A LEO collision will produce a range of debris with differing vectors, so some collusion products will rapidly decay orbit and burn up, but other fragments from an LEO collision will go to eccentric orbits that intersect much higher orbits and therefore produce secondary collisions at higher orbits, and so on. So, a horde of LEO satellites DOES contribute to Kessler syndrome. orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/library/sciencemag-risks-in-space-from-orbiting.pdf Some of the debris from the Cosmos1408 destruction (which was 100 km BELOW starlink constellation) "ejected into higher orbits will have their orbits circularize more slowly, and the majority will re-enter the atmosphere over much longer timeframes - potentially decades, depending on altitude." leolabs-space.medium.com/analysis-of-the-cosmos-1408-breakup-71b32de5641f

[@simonl7784]

@@wealthelife I stand corrected, pushing debris into eccentric orbits will potentially have then cross higher orbits. Thank you.

[@BrondRando]

I got my kit the other day and hadn't been watching to see that the RJ-45 port was removed. I raised hell and they gave me a month credit for my wait until I can actually use it.

[@JeffGeerling]

That's nice of them-it seems like one of the bright spots is their support team is very kind and helpful, albeit sometimes it takes a bit of time to get that response.

[@BrondRando]

@@JeffGeerling Definitely, guy was great and open to learning. Knew more about coding than networking. I told them my biggest issue is it was essentially a bait and switch that rendered the system useless to me and I received no correspondence from SpaceX telling me they removed it. I had to learn it from Reddit after I already had it. Now I have to wait. Told them routers without wifi is normal. Routers without RJ-45 ports is not a thing. If the website had told me "here are products you may need to order as well" I'd of said "oh, that's stupid but ok send me the port adapter too."

[@scottripley6381]

Had no idea you were based in STL. I live about 40 miles out in Franklin County and we were able to get on the open beta for our internet. I hear all of your concerns and they're valid. Still so far Starlink is the best option we've found as currently everything available in our area is either slow DSL through ancient rural telephone lines or metered 4G or "old" sattelite. Our speeds and uptime even beat the cable we used to have at a different location we lived about 4 years ago.

[@JeffGeerling]

Glad you could get it, and I do know for many who have gotten it it's a new lifeline on Internet access. I just hope Starlink can get over these big humps so more people can access the network. Not sure how long it will take to get there.

[@DroneTECH688]

Viking from Denmark here living in rural area - had 20 down before and in average now 280 - 350 mb /sec and drops out like 10-15 secs in a 12 hours period in average I have it hooked up to my home ax-6000 router and everything runs like a charm ! GREATLY impressive improvement and ladies dont forget that this is internet from space and they plan to free the sat cells to allow free movement in the future !!!! SO REMEMBER TO RESEARCH THE ISSUE BEFORE FLOGGING YOUR OPINION!

[@elduderino7767]

the proprietary connectors look like they have a double water seal, are they suppose to be installed outside? there is probably a good reason for them

[@povilasstaniulis9484]

Apart from all the problems you mentioned, was Starlink any good as an ISP ? One cybersecurity researcher who lives in my small town got Starlink as soon as they began opearating in my country (Lithuania) and praised the speed and stability. Internet speed was several times faster than LTE even though my country does not have good Starlink satellite coverage.

[@jimjohnson7331]

I received my Starlink a couple of weeks ago. It is a Gen 2 and my ethernet adapter just arrived and I'm working on that tonight. For those of us that live outside the realm of high speed internet this is a Godsend. Most people posting negative comments probably have options. Finally I can stream 4k and not have to take a break every time a webpage loads or PS4 updates. I have a CPC1100 telescope and love astronomy, but the future of astronomy will be in space. By no means is Starlink perfect at this moment in time although I have had downloads approaching 400. I'm actually saving over $150 month right now as I cut out Hughesnet, DirectTV, and some ATT. Downtime is rare amounting to less than a minute a day on average. Not bad in two years time.

[@eng3d]

Couple of weeks... And not bad in two years. Did i miss something?

[@1224chrisng]

the main problem astronomy-wise is in hunting asteroids, where the quality of observations matters less than the number of telescopes, and we aren't going to send enough space telescopes to match the number of scopes on earth, not in a long while that said, improving rural internet access is important, which will hopefully get better with the new laser-connected satellites

[@thompsona10625]

When this thing first hit beta, I signed up. Here we are about 2 years later and my sisters and brother in law have theirs installed and working and I’m still waiting. I signed up long before they did. My brother in law lives 5 miles away and my closest sister lives 10 miles away. The FedEx guy told my sister that he’s been delivering the hardware to people all over the neighborhood for weeks but I’m still waiting. Pretty frustrating; however, I’m optimistic. We have no good options otherwise as we live 30 miles from the nearest town. Even cell service is poor out here. My family that does have theirs seem to love it so far. :)

[@RABooth82]

All of your comments are valid. I ordered Starlink here in Ireland and received it during the first Covid lockdown. The difference it has made is amazing, our previous connection which cost us €45 a month was not fast enough to have more than one device at a time connected. And working from home was impossible for us. But now we can. It amazes me that a company in a different country can launch something like this and I spend the amount of money that has been spent to get it up and running. Yet the government and isps in Ireland can’t even manage to run cables or some other form of internet out to rural areas. There are a couple of places in Ireland where Starlink is the first usable internet to be available. Which is a little unbelievable for a country like Ireland in 2022

[@lemdixon01]

We have roofs in the UK which don't need replacing. I think they're made of slate or brick over here.

[@JeffGeerling]

Most of us just stick with asphalt shingles in the midwest-they tend to have good durability with regard to the every-few-year hailstorms we get, and perform well through the rest of the year, while looking decent. They do require replacement every 20-30 years, but it's also a lot cheaper than slate/tile!

[@katrinabryce]

Slate or tile. They generally need replacing after about 100 years.

[@henoch44]

You also have barely any trees left when comparing to America...

[@illya3859]

Houses in Europe are built to last with solid concrete or brick walls , while houses in America are cheaper wood houses not made last a century or even just many decades.

[@Youchubeswindon]

@@illya3859 My Mum and Dad's house has a section 275 years old, older than the US! I never understand America's obsession with cheaply built replace every 20 year house building culture. I get things like Tornados and Hurricanes, but even solidly built house's will not get completely devastated by them, and our houses are designed for heavy snow loads, so that argument against them is rubbish as well.

[@garysheppard4028]

Friends of ours have Starlink installed at their property in the Hunter Valley near Sydney. I didn't know it had hit Australia yet but apparently is has and they reckon it's great. They get about 150MB/S download which is plenty for everything they do and they pay about 100 bucks a month I think they said. Compared to what they had before (being rural, they could only get Skymuster satellite) Starlink is miles ahead on both speed and cost.

[@traceyearl9468]

I have recently installed Starlink because l too could only have skymuster which was rubbish and the Starlink dish is way smaller we installed Starlink ourselves it has been a absolute game changer but we are paying 140 a month for Starlink it’s worth it ,less the headaches from our nonexistent providers thanks Liberals and Rupert Merdoc😝

[@traceyearl9468]

Ps we are only 4 kilometres from town go figure?

[@JasonTerryKC]

Great information, easy to watch, good speaking skills. +1 subscriber!

[@rickjames4181]

I lived in a very rural area where only outdate dsl was available. It took 7 months to get my order and I went from 3mb down .5 up to 250/20. Lifelong struggle for internet that was basically unusable. It has absolutely been a blessing and def worth the wait. Although i do agree the router coming without a ethernet connection is surprising, all your other feedback is really knit picking in my opinion at this stage of development. This is new tech that's still really early in it's life cycle.

[@philcollins2176]

I waited a year and finally got starlink late December 2021. February 2022 I've been on starlink a month and if I had to do it again I'd wait as long as it takes to get it. If it would of been 2 or 3 years iI would wait. My dsl was 6mbps I have over 100mbps plus with starlink. No other options for me. Patience, unless you can get cable or fiber.

[@martinrocket1436]

Serious question: Can we get a video like this “I installed a series of solar powered drectional WiFi towers to bring internet to my cousin”?

[@eidrag]

using PI array?

[@martinrocket1436]

@@eidrag well. I thought of some tplink cpe or UniFi. But raspbery pis that link their wifis are fine too.

[@AmstradExin]

Stuff like this exists in some countries already. I would really like a closer look at this.

[@kpb0]

No need for WiFi, there are "air fiber" solutions that can keep stable >1Gbps links over several kilometers. LTT has a video on how he connected his parents house over a lake.

[@martinrocket1436]

@@kpb0 airfiber seems to be a proprietary protocol by ubiquity operating on WiFi frequencies. Interesting. Yes. Would be curious to see a video on that too.

[@boxedowl]

This video was great. Very fair. One of the bigger complications in our area over the last couple of years has been rural internet access. I'm lucky. I live beside the fiber backbone for our area. Some of my neighbors are still on dial-up. A year ago we lived at a different property with 0.5 Mbps upload speeds that went out with every storm. HughesNet doesn't help. Terrible latency and a 50 Gig monthly data cap on their most expensive package in our region.

[@johnmcginnis5201]

Signed up in Dec 2020. Was informed then that it would be summer 2021 before service would be available. Then a follow on email said service may not be offered till late 2022. Then first week of February I was notified my preorder was ready to ship. Received it a week ago and it all works. Service has been good so far so I can't complain on that score. I do agree that the should be a bit more industry standard. The only connector that justifies special treatment would be the end that attaches to the dish being in the elements. Everything downstream of that should net std gear.

[@DouglasJMark]

Thanks Jeff. My first time watching you. Thanks for your thoughts. I hope Starlink/SpaceX follow you and continue to improve their product. Getting Internet to areas where it is needed will surely change the planet particularly disadvantaged countries and rural areas (hope your cousin can get connected soon).

[@GregInHouston2]

Very useful information; please keep it up. I looked into StarLink as a solution to a problem. What I got was the positives; I needed the negatives.

[@lewishudgens]

This is where you "could" have done a real "good" job Jeff, but didn't...

[@natebaird]

Most of these changes seem to point to ease of production/working around shortages. My guess is after all of the chip shortages clear, things will be back to normal. I'm guessing they're also able to determine what percentage of people utilized the ethernet port and made a strategic decision to cut costs while still offering the functionality for those who want it. It doesn't seem like they're demand constrained and perhaps these changes just help them get more units in people's hands; most people will still take this than the current internet options they have. My parent's unit that was reserved a year ago said it'd be ready in March but just shipped today. Here's to them continuing to scale and improving along the way.

[@waltergreene2474]

Complaints aside I've found Starlink to be reliable and fast. You knew going in that you wouldn't get a unit until coverage was established in the stated service address. My biggest beef is one you mentioned concerning power use. Power draw has been improved and has been as low as about 35 Watts but does go as high as 145 watts. I power my system from a solar battery system and routinely turn off starlink when there is low sun and at night. The special connector you discuss for the new smaller dish is for weather proofing. Have you ever seen a weather proof RJ45? An RJ45 is hardly a robust outdoor connector.

[@Clark-Mills]

Part of the problem is downlink sites for connection to the terrestrial network. If you are in the wop-wops and there's no Starlink basestation that bounces to/from your Starlink user station then you can't use Starlink yet. Once their laser linked satellites are up they can bypass ground-stations except for the gateway downlink stations.

[@ZachMeador]

Isn't the power usage increase during winter weather unavoidable as it's for defrosting the receiver? 40 additional watts for that task seems pretty decent given that a consumer electric blanket uses 200-400 watts on average.

[@gus473]

You're right! And according to our rural electric power cooperative, our monthly kilowatt usage has increased by 1% or less per month since we added Starlink. No biggie. Compared with gasoline, dirt cheap!

[@user2C47]

What kind of electric blanket uses 400 watts?

[@unsettledroell]

Your blanket is not on 100% of the time.

[@prometheusp11]

I work as a travel nurse and have Starlink. I understand your concerns regarding portability but so far it hasn't been an issue at all (I've managed to move and change addresses several times). I had to buy the silly dongle to use my own router, that's completely valid. I actually appreciate the proprietary plug, I mounted my router in a place that could potentially see water intrusion and appreciate it being waterproof. Power consumption wasn't much of an issue either, I just tossed a couple extra panels on my motorhome's roof for when I'm boondocking. Before Starlink I was limited to whatever RV park internet was available (Often worse than your cousin's) or whatever I speeds I got tethered to my cell phone (almost always worse than your cousin's. Not a Musk fanboy but I feel that some good choices were made with the newer version kit. Now if he could just stop trying to turn car ownership into a subscription service.

[@allalphazerobeta8643]

Did you ever not update the address in a timely fashion? And if so what happened?

[@prometheusp11]

@@allalphazerobeta8643 I updated the address a couple times. My last two moves I have not. One of those moves was 2 states over, the other about 400 miles. So far no issues.

[@mika4real]

It’s all about having an alternative. I’m living on a farm and there is no alternative. So I’m happy there is something like Starlink. If you have an alternative in your location, go for it! There is no point for Starlink then. Starlink is not and was never meant for everyone.

[@soulssong2u]

Exactly! I am puzzled why people who have other high speed options would think that Starlink was a good one for them. It wasn't meant for people in the areas where cable and fiber optic internet are already available. Here in the mountains of Colorado, I was paying $109 for 10 Mbps download and 2.5 Mbps upload speeds. Starlink has been a game changer for us, costing less per month and allowing us to drop the satellite tv service and go full on streaming tv for half the price we were paying for tv.

[@kennytrice7937]

I’m happy with mine … in my rural area other satellite and cables and phone services only offered 25 mbps over $100 a month with bundles and contracts I don’t need… so in my case starlink is been good for me

[@313barrygmail]

Visible cell 25 $ unlimited

[@kennytrice7937]

@@313barrygmail if that works for you 👍🏻🤟

[@ryansuedel9274]

Love how many people grabbed Starlink as an alternative for their existing internet when Musks plan was to bring internet to those who have no access at all. Guess Elon should have made a screening process to filter out people who have internet already.

[@jackee-is-silent2938]

Great plan when that Internet is so expensive it prices it out of reach of those who don't have Internet now.

[@stitchfinger7678]

@@jackee-is-silent2938 $300/mo still beats 25k upfront to even get the wire run to your area in the first place. Not that they aren't totally bending you over still, but its better up front for a while.

[@ryansuedel9274]

@@jackee-is-silent2938 cheaper than the $12,000 COX wants to charge me, just for hookup.

[@StumblingBumblingIdiot]

@@jackee-is-silent2938 We pay $99.95 a month right now for internet because we have no way to even get hooked to cable, phone companies said "screw fibre" and wireless 4g/5g is still limited especially if you want to back up data to the "cloud" (hate that term, its a warehouse with hard drives not a stupid floating fluffy thing). We have a theoretical max of about 15mbps down and probably half that up so the Starlink service is the same price we have now, it is just the upfront cost of the equipment that has kept me from ordering.

[@ryansuedel9274]

@@StumblingBumblingIdiot you are most likely already paying rental on the equipment you have. Check your bill and see. Do the math and see how many months it would take to pay for your own equipment. Might be worth it, but everyone's situation is different.

[@tonyl.jumbam1631]

Thanks for the update Jeff. Great video...

[@marydd4147]

We love Starlink, it worked great, until a day ago when someone caused a short (too lengthy to explain here) in a circuit, and now despite all the checks we've done, it is connected but not to the internet. Power supply?? We live in a rural area so this was our best option. We created a service request, but have to go back to our expensive cell phone internet, which has connectivity issues. 🙄 Great content on your video!

[@therobustmole1137]

There are other providers

[@johnbuscher]

@@therobustmole1137 Not in every area. I live in an area with “other providers” and no one wanted to run cable down our street, despite the entire neighborhood wanting decent internet. It’s either cell phone internet or satellite.

[@therobustmole1137]

@@johnbuscher Not talking about cable, i undertood the issue. I believe there's a couple more stelelital internet providers, maybe one of them could work (No idea about their coverage).

[@marydd4147]

@@therobustmole1137 We did look into other satellite providers however we were concerned of the speed of the internet. However slow internet is better than no internet. Thank you

[@benjaminhicks3920]

Mine is mounted quite far from the house (too many trees close to the house for a clear sky view), so my power supply and router are in a shed, with a secondary ethernet line running to a router inside the house. I had to brave soldering the wires back together after someone broke the cable where it entered the shed. It can be fixed. It's basically standard Cat-6 ethernet with one extra wire for the power that the "dish" uses to melt ice/snow. If it's connected, it isn't the power supply.

[@growtopiajaw]

The title made me think you brought down the whole Starlink network

[@JeffGeerling]

Heh, I might've made a tiny dent last year when I had a default in one of my projects do a speedtest every 5 minutes :O Fixed that and made it default to once an hour. I did practically DDoS my own website though; still seeing an impact, I have 3 Mbps of continuous traffic of people hitting my site with http status checks.

[@colourfulcookie]

I liked that you also touched on the downsides of the technology as a whole. It's great that rural areas are getting better internet access, but it's always important to try as see the bigger picture and question if the current way is also the best/only way. In my opinion too many channels don't scrutinise the tech and are just focusing on how it is. So kudos to you for not going that way!

[@teh-maxh]

Since the Starlink cable is just a weird connector on a normal ethernet cable, could you just replace the weird connector with a normal one and use your own router?

[@Waathiqful]

Well done and thought out, I found useful information from this video.

[@prakashc6481]

Looks very genuine feedback.., definitely I hope space X may improve their services waiting for starlink from India

[@wskinnyodden]

The funky connector is most likely to ensure you do not use some funky non-standard POE adapter (which can provide anything in terms of Volts or Amps) that could kill the thing, and of course to have an extra income source pretty much the same way Apple ensures to have such additional income sources...

[@edgarwalk5637]

You are correct in the second part. It's all about profit.

[@__WJK__]

Often wonder if high-altitude solar blimps would've been better vs dealing with the complexities/issues associated w/42,000 satellites.

[@cybinnaturaldomaincnd3955]

Thanks, great info!

[@FredyArg]

This is an excellent review of the bad aspects of this product, at no time did anything you pointed out sounded negative…or made me think you were being negative…excellent video!!!

[@kriegtiger]

The cable connector looks the way it does because of that double-ring black gasket - that is weather proofing/sealing. The cable plugs in and seals itself so that rain, bugs, etc don't get into it. Is it worth the cost they want for it? Not really, there are more cost friendly ways to weather-seal an RJ-45, but they're designing this product around the lowest common denominator as far as users go; the kind of person that is as dumb as bricks or a box of rocks when it comes to tech, not to fleece people but to make sure that 'stuff just works' when it's time to take it home, turn it on and plug it in. And I will give them credit where it's due, my unit (the 2nd gen rectangle) did exactly that and it has surpassed our old connection well enough that I got rid of my old ISP. These same box of rocks end users are also going to be the ones that only use laptops, tablets, and phones to connect to the internet there, which is why the WiFi only configuration of the 2nd gen antenna makes sense too. I would have REALLY preferred to have the option when I ordered the kit to specify that I **NEEDED** an ethernet jack because of how my house is setup, as it is for the time being I have to use a laptop as a bridge - WiFi is connecting to the Starlink and I have the house router (a ubiquiti ISG3) plugged into the ethernet port on that same laptop. It's ugly, and online gaming functions like XBOX don't like it, but it's temporary and it works for the rest of the house, so I can deal with it.

[@chuzzle44]

This is a great point. As enthusiasts, we tend to hold products to a certain standard, while forgetting that the average user is going to have significantly simpler needs. In that context, these decisions make a lot of sense. I'm still quite disappointed that they went so far though. Being able to simply plug the original dish into any router you want was something I was really looking forward to.

[@TheFeist77]

If your cousin is on a co-op electric tell her to contact them. Most electric co-op were given huge grants to install fiber internet to the customers on their system.

[@Workin1_az]

Doesn’t it peak on power usage when cold because it warms itself so that ice doesn’t form?

[@brucemccreary769]

Thanks for the power consumption update and a very good technical review. You're right that power use is a big downside for us off grid folks who have to watch our power use. My Netgear modem ( ethernet only) uses less than 2W. I'd also love to see some measurements of the stray 60 GHz emissions from the dish. No affordable consumer broadband RF meters can measure this (or other mmwaves).

[@JeffGeerling]

Yeah, that's something I'd love to explore more someday. I have my new Geerling Engineering channel, and one hope is that between my Dad (RF engineer) and myself (software engineer), we might be able to do some more interesting tests that most other people couldn't do as well ("with our powers combined! and all that jazz...")

[@brucemccreary769]

@@JeffGeerling Thanks, Jeff, I'm a retired, disabled, EE/CS myself. I'm looking forward to following your future work!

[@ErikUden]

Starlink sounds pretty cool. Imagine playing video games in the middle of the arctic.

[@johnallright6847]

Can I get through Starlink what is now my landline which is hardwired to local telephone company , am thinking of getting Starlink and getting rid of my old phone line but want to keep the number I have had for 40 years??

[@TraneFrancks]

Interesting assessment. I'm one of those waiting to see whether this technology will mature enough for recreational boating anytime soon, e.g., a 38-40' sailboat. The promise of internet anywhere is pretty seductive. It feels pretty far off, though.

[@PeterJames143]

I'm with you 100%. boating or RV'ing. Promise of internet everywhere is very very seductive. Definitely does appear far off. Will probably be life changing or world changing if & when it works.

[@TraneFrancks]

@@PeterJames143 It would definitely be life-changing for me. I work in IT and am slave to an always-on broadband connection. A reliable marine-based Starlink connection would absolutely change my approach to life and work. I've been watching this for years already and am champing at the bit for a marine provider to adapt the antenna.

[@benjaminhicks3920]

It has already matured beyond that point, it's just a matter of getting enough satellites in orbit to support the bandwidth. SpaceX contracted with Hawaiian Airlines to provide in-flight wifi via Starlink a few weeks ago, so planting a working antenna on a sailing vessel would be child's play.

[@TraneFrancks]

@@benjaminhicks3920 Let's be clear about the requirements: It's already quite easy to mount the existing antenna in a custom enclosure on a gimbal platform on a large yacht. That's not the situation, however, for a small boat under 40'. I have not seen anything from marine comms providers that addresses the unique constraints of small-to-mid sized watercraft that wish to employ Starlink. If you have knowledge in that regard that I've missed, I'd be tremendously grateful if you'd share a link or two. 🙇‍♂️

[@benjaminhicks3920]

@@TraneFrancks if it’s installed on a stabilizing gimbal it isn’t going to be much different than on an aircraft. That isn’t a limit of Starlink, but rather the mounting apparatus. The “dish” is going track the satellite constellation so long as the platform is stable enough.

[@airborne0x0]

Just a quick note on the cable- the image you shared looks like it's an attempt to add a moisture seal to the connector. I would welcome new connectors like this if they became a standard (and so became cheaper). Most consumer grade connectors suck, particularly RJ45 (how many of the stupid acrylic latch tabs have you had break off on you?). Even if the cables are outdoor rated, the connectors most certainly are not, with no way to seal out moisture, unless a cover / cable gland is there to help. Anything that improves on this is welcome. Without a better cable you might have been griping about lost connectivity due to moisture failures. Not defending the expense (but it's a consequence of changing it until a standard is available- companies should work with the standards groups to improve what's available). Also, there probably is a heater inside Starlink to keep electronics going under cold temps.. so yes just a consequence of the technology used (there are other ways to do it). Not really much of an Elon fan but a lot of the gripes are a result of the technology you're using. Maybe you want to pay for a fiber optic cable run to your cousin's house instead? But more seriously maybe just setting up a few point to point wireless relay stations would work better- or maybe these could be done as community projects.

[@TimBryan]

It would be nice if Starlink released explanations for their decisions.

[@AdamsLab]

I suspected the same as well. There are watertight RJ45 connectors, but they are bulky. While it would be nice to see a non-proprietary connection this was likely done to save space and create a weather tight connection.

[@joansparky4439]

@@AdamsLab in industrial settings Ethernet is regularly done via M12 8 pin connectors, IP67 and all. It's no magic and not much more expensive than using a RJ45 with weatherproofing while being way less bulky and coming as close to RJ45 as I could imagine when using an outdoor rated CAT6+ SFTP cable.

[@AdamsLab]

@@joansparky4439 - To be clear, I'm not defending the use of the proprietary connector, it is annoying but it's also not the end of the world. I'm just offering a possible explanation. I suspect though that the M12 connector would still be considered "proprietary" or at least "proprietary adjacent" by most.

[@joansparky4439]

@@AdamsLab what they got now reminds me of car connectors, with those rubber seals/lips. But those at least have some latch/hook mechanism so they don't come apart.. no idea how that is for the new one that SX got there. The M-connectors usually come with swivel nuts that keep them connected, even if you pull on the cable and with it the antenna from the roof ;-)

[@supercheetah778]

"...[Musk] is somewhere in the middle for me..." For me too. Nuance seems so difficult for so many people that they can't imagine someone as famous and influential as being nothing more than a superhero or a supervillain.

[@stitchfinger7678]

Teslas still don't have full AI and their windshields explode spontaneously, the hyperloop was a literal immediate failure, the Boring Company makes more money selling toy flamethrowers than actually digging, and this is literally a video about how Starlink isn't working out that great. Even if he isn't a villain, he isn't doing much good either. But he's still very much a villain.

[@supercheetah778]

@@stitchfinger7678 They actually have some of the worst driving AI in the industry. The difference is that they are the only ones with actual production code. The one thing I will admit to giving him credit for is that he's probably getting a lot of people to buy EVs that probably wouldn't have otherwise with all his antics.

[@rubenburns5132]

Thanks for the info. I’ve had my Starlink system for a couple of months now. Several outages and currently it has been out for 3 days. Absolutely no customer support at all. Any suggestions or phone numbers you might share with me?

[@az.tek.00]

your vidz are phenomenal. thx so much.