Starlink is getting slower

Starlink's been out of public beta for a while. But the customer experience isn't getting better-it's _worse_.
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Mentioned in this video:
- Starlink speed tracker (historical): starlinkstatus.space
- FCC approves dishes in motion: arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2...
- Starlink coverage map: starlink.com/map
- Starlink customers report congestion: www.pcmag.com/news/starlinks-...
- Custom Starlink PoE++ Board: / a_friend_created_these...
- tabGeeks' Starlink Business setup video: • Starlink Business: Unb...
- Starlink Maritime: www.starlink.com/maritime
#Starlink #SpaceX #ElonMusk
Contents:
00:00 - It's slower now
00:42 - Oversubscription
02:54 - Cheaters... prosper?
03:15 - New router, new problems
04:11 - Firmware hell
04:53 - Support nightmares
05:18 - Refurbished dishes?
05:45 - Starlink Business and v2 Sats
07:10 - Better, but not great
07:58 - High speeds on the high seas

[@Ruhrpottpatriot]

Not allowing local updates could get Starlink in serious trouble with upcoming EU legislation that mandates five years of software updates and replacement parts, and some countries even pushing for up seven years.

[@bknesheim]

As I understand it the problem is that if you are not connected at all for a longer time the onboard software can be so out of date that it no longer can run the update procedure. Starlinks that are connected get updates all the time.

[@quarteratom]

What's that? Does it also affect smartphones? 5 years of software updates would be great, even Android One only offered 3.

[@bknesheim]

@@quarteratom Yes, that is the plan for all "lasting" products. Smart phone is defined as an lasting product so if the directive goes through they have to supply updates for 5 years-

[@Ruhrpottpatriot]

@@bknesheim Which would/should still be a problem, because nobody can force you to use your system all the time. Furthermore: When the time comes and starlink isn't the hot stuff anymore there's decent chance that a vendor bought a bunch and then they sit in inventory for 2 years or more, and then the end-user can't use the product. So where's the cut-off?

[@bknesheim]

@@Ruhrpottpatriot A good thing is that there are no vendors for Startlink beside SpaceX and the problem is software that is incompatible with the later software not that there is a cut off date. It is not a good thing that it is like that, but it not unusual that old software have problems with much newer updates.

[@mikapeltokorpi7671]

Using three generations of GSM modems as Nokia engineer (2,5G ->3G->4G) as first user on cell tower I can say, that this was expected result. Every time connection felt lighting fast before neighbors started using the same channels. Let's see how big of an issue this will be.

[@magfal]

The part of 5G that the ISPs aren't communicating clearly enough in their marketing is that the package switched network starts at the tower which will decrease a lot of latency and a make the network scale a lot better when the number of users per tower increases. The share of friends and family that went from not caring about 5G to becoming excited for it when they I explained this to them is quite high. Having said that I still get low double digit millisecond latencies and 100+mbit duplex connections pretty much anywhere with LTE

[@mikapeltokorpi7671]

@@magfal We have well over 90% national coverage for all major ISPs. Even with 4G. 5G is rolling in and should now have at least 60% coverage. Though I have never had problem with speed on 4G (unless there is multiple heavy users at the same time, but hey - kids can use their own phone for it, then).

[@cdl0]

@@mikapeltokorpi7671 Yes, it has always amazed me that you can be out is a frozen swamp in the middle of winter in Finland, along with the elk and reindeer, and yet still have full signal strength on your phone. Thanks, of course to Nokia: 'collecting people'. ;-)

[@randybobandy9828]

Well starlink is and has been sending up more satellites In to orbit about twice a month. In May he launched 3 rockets with 53 satellites each. My concern would be that he is selling more ground dishes faster than adding more satellites which will keep lowering speeds.

[@conceptrat]

It's all good they can blame the 5G rollouts for the dropped connections 👍

[@thetoasterisonfire2080]

Meanwhile I’m still out here pissed that they change the perfectly good Ethernet connector with a proprietary one.

[@JeffGeerling]

That too.

[@gummybands]

pros and cons i got the first gen and always worried about the permanently attached wire decaying from the sun or damage

[@djcvmusic1]

Think different 🤣 $$$

[@fieryscorpion]

That's what you get for trusting a con artist.

[@JB-fh1bb]

Not like it does any good in the end anyways: Every time a company makes some anti-standard nonsense, enthusiasts (and then enthusiast companies) just make devices to work around them. Then what? Pull and Apple and make it different + harder for the next gen? How far do you go down that road before you’ve sold your soul?

[@JackPunter2012]

The no local firmware updates thing is insane to me when Elon is so vocal on the internet about doing things to help save the planet, this is something that has a real effect of increasing E-Waste and reducing the reusability of hardware. Just more proof that he loves to talk a good story, but is still, at the end of the day, a businessman :(

[@rpavlik1]

You don't get to be the richest person on earth by doing the right things, the right way.

[@tissuepaper9962]

@@rpavlik1 money is power, and we all know that those who desire power are the least fit to hold it.

[@TwoForFlinchin1]

Electric cars are horrible for the environment too

[@JimJamTheAdmin]

@@TwoForFlinchin1 it's pretty much all mass transportation that solely focuses on the individual getting to only where they want whenever they want at the cost of everyone else. Any system like that will always be wasteful because it's going to produce absurd amounts of material to begin with. Also, don't forget to throw your electric car batteries in the ocean when you're done with them.

[@verbosi7y275]

@@TwoForFlinchin1 ok now even I know this is blatantly false when compared to a gasoline vehicle whether you dislike the muskrat himself or not.

[@MrNick0230]

A family member just got their Starlink dish. Only a week after they ordered it as fortunately they live in an area that is still open. Now that the dish is mounted in a location without obstructions they get about 250Mbps down and 10-15Mbps up. Better than I expected and way better than any of their other options which would all have worse speeds and tiny data caps. I’m not a fan of Elon’s hyperbolic marketing and it’s sad that others are having issues but I am very glad Starlink exists and I really hope they improve and succeed.

[@JeffGeerling]

Nice! That doesn't seem to be the norm, though-250 Mbps is one of the higher speeds I've seen reported! Hopefully it stays nice and fast for them over time.

[@Voyajer.]

Same. Our farm got starlink and we've been getting great performance from it. The separate ethernet jack was stupid though, my dish is on a barn so I had a period where I didn't have internet inside the house.

[@Saintcause]

@@JeffGeerling I dont like the product's that fall out of elon but at least they are running.

[@mrocklewitz]

Every time i stop at my parents i do a speedtest. Last week got 120 down

[@CorySticha]

Out here in rural Montana, I regularly get speed tests over 100 Mbps, and just ran one that hit 250 Mbps. That being said, I have seen as low as 40 Mbps and the "Starlink pause" is a real issue in video conference calls.

[@mapguy]

I can tell you Starlink for Business is amazing our remote campground went from multiple outages with Viasat to Starlink with 5x the speed and the outages have been minimal.

[@bknesheim]

The nature of Starlink really is that the more remote you are the better it will be. Since there will be a limit on bandwidth and channels the fewer nodes the better it is. The real game changer is that you now can get internet that is usable nearly everywhere on earth even if there isn't a cell tower for hundreds of miles. If you compare against the first generation of geostationary services Starlink is a much more mature product, even if it is fare from perfect and probably will not be for the next 10 years.

[@garrettzkool63]

are you in arizona? just curious. i have a lot of waiting to do before theyll send me a dish. if im waiting for 16 months i might just cancel it.

[@bknesheim]

@@garrettzkool63 No i'm not . I will have a longer wait since just a few of the satellites the can cover where I am are so fare in orbit. 🙂

[@randybobandy9828]

@garrettzkool63 you probably will wait 16months. I pre-ordered my dish back in February 2021 the first week it was available and I just got my dish in June 2022. That's over 16months of waiting.

[@lakejeaz]

@@garrettzkool63 I waited 17months and just got my dish last week. SE Phoenix area

[@ryanjcole]

It is illegal for Starlink to see a used/open box item as new. if that's what they are doing then they'll have the FTC crawling up their legal department.

[@KimYoungUn69]

Ok

[@mechanomics2649]

It wouldn't be the first time one of Musk's ventures have had government agencies crawling up their legal department, and it won't be the last. I'm pretty they're all on a first name basis at this point.

[@o0julek0o]

Starlink maritime is a BIG deal. Right now, there's very few sat based internet solutions for the oceans and all of them are insanely slow and extremely expensive. The starlink option may in fact be 'cheap' in comparison, especially for the speeds and I imagine latency. I worked for an Iridium reseller right out of university. Even the insider prices are nuts.

[@JeffGeerling]

The key, I think, will be getting their laser links working so they can get coverage across parts of the ocean. Currently it's coastal regions only, since the sats have to bounce back to a nearby ground station.

[@o0julek0o]

@@JeffGeerling It'll be interesting to witness the progress. Please do more videos on this as there's more news!

[@ottermanuk]

@@JeffGeerling do the sats not relay between each other? I thought that was one of the features of the constelation? Or is that what the laser links are

[@MordecaiV]

@@ottermanuk that's what the laser links are. :)

[@JeffGeerling]

@@ottermanuk That's laser links, and they still don't have them operational (yet).

[@markconger8049]

This reminds me of what it was like when the iPhone 3G was getting popular. At the time Apple had an agreement with AT&T to be the only carrier to work with iPhone. BUT, AT&T’s network simply couldn’t handle the bandwidth - like, at all. It got so bad that Apple scaled back the cellular radio chip in one of the iPhone models just to regulate the speed!

[@fobinc]

AT&T is the only company that made Comcast feel like a luxury service provider in my area. Everything they have to offer are ass. At peak hours and remote areas only thing I can comfortably predict is AT&T service wouldn't work.

[@kodywillnauer9422]

We were on the waitlist since feb 2021 and last week my reservation came available. Fiber was buried down the country road never thought to be. With al these hassles you describe I think I’m glad I went with fiber, and I was so excited about Starlink. Speaking as a former Viasat user 🙃

[@mobiuscoreindustries]

If fibre is aviable, take it. Starlink is not targeting people that have acess to fibre as the only way starlink beats it is with a permanent end-to-end laser link which is not numerically feasible for normal users and reserved for special users ready to pay literal millions for the fastest physically possible thing. Starlink targets anyone and anything that fibre isn't reaching or cannot reach. Anything that is in motion, as well as geographically isolated areas are the primary target. The secondary target is any region being relentlessly fucked over by their ISPs due to anti-competitive behavior. Tertiary target is special users for the permanent laser links, and those that require communications that are entirely separated from any open network (think military). If you aren't within one or the other then you are not the kind of people that star-link is made for.

[@FlorinArjocu]

@@mobiuscoreindustries Why do you say "laser link"? As far as I know it will never use laser for home to satellite connection, that will never be feasable as light will be stopped/reflected by... everything (clouds, fog, snow, rain...) and you will have no internet. Only satellites are meant to communicate between them with laser at some point.

[@kodywillnauer9422]

@@mobiuscoreindustries so, I agree. However when I preordered Starlink at no point did I expect fiber. It took the state to incentivize rural broadband with buckets of money. Lucked out, really.

[@manmadeaids]

@@kodywillnauer9422 I live in a rural area and I pray for fiber every day. I’m waiting for t mobile or Verizon home 5 g to come where I live. I’m glad you got fiber us rural people need high speed net.

[@kodywillnauer9422]

@@manmadeaids Agreed. My brother lives rural and has only a CenturyLink dsl at 1.5mbs. The verizon/tmo home wireless service is 1 mile away from his address. Yet he has perfect Vzw cell service. Technology can't advance soon enough.

[@ethanlauricella]

Great video on acknoledging the problems and benifits of Starlink! Really hope they would watch this and address these problems

[@Pepsidot]

Love your Starlink coverage would be great to see another video about it!

[@STDRACO777]

This makes perfect sense, I always seen this as an option for people on farms or places without fiber. for those people even 10 MBps is a huge upgrade.

[@fxshlein]

I get 30Mbps down and 11Mbps up... not with Starlink, just with my regular internet in a decently sized city here in Germany. Really love the amazing infrastructure we have for internet!

[@kneekoo]

Hahahaha! Actually, no... Germany lags behind a few European countries regarding internet services. My 1&1 service in Germany costs 38 EUR for a 100 Mbps down, 30 Mbps up. It looks reasonable, but the price is not. My Digi service in Romania, with 500 Mbps down, 250 up, costs 6 EUR. That's pretty much unthinkable here in Germany (I moved here a few years ago). Mobile data is in the same hole. When I buy credit for my Orange SIM card, I pay 10 EUR and I get 250 GB traffic. I can literally do whatever I want on vacation, and make my phone a wifi hotspot for my family, and don't run into the traffic limit. I know it's doable, I'm an IT guy, I can kill it in a day if I want to, but normal web usage, even KZbin, Netflix, Amazon Video, etc, won't easily consume that much traffic in 2 weeks on vacation. For 10 EUR I got 3.5 GB data traffic from Lebara in Germany. Nope, Germany is waaay behind.

[@fxshlein]

@@kneekoo Come on, people already think Germans are bad at picking up on jokes and sarcasm, don't tell me we've already rubbed off on you! :D

[@kneekoo]

@@fxshlein Oops. :))

[@W9HJBill]

18+ months later, I'm still waiting. The dates just keep getting pushed out and out and out and the price goes up and up.

[@JeffGeerling]

:( Hopefully capacity limits are raised soon. Though I wouldn't hold my breath at this point. I'm guessing Tesla Cybrtrk orders will ship around the same time as Starlink preorders, for people who still don't have either :P

[@glenn2452]

Yes, and that's why I cancelled mine yesterday.

[@shadowbanned3716]

i used to work for a WISP. they lost a lot of customers to starlink. i knew it would slow down, but when it comes to what that WISP could do at 100mbps max and the LOS problems causing customers to pay for towers. starlink is still the better buy

[@agps4418]

Yes, as an indonesian in a remote region, who is waiting for starlink to be available, i curse on these ungrateful people

[@ChatterontheWire]

Mine showed up Monday evening, I'm not 100% sure if it was new or refurbed when it showed up, but as you mentioned, those of us in rural areas are just happy to have something decent compared to cell or dsl options. For me it is probably a stop gap as the local DSL company is going to be rolling out fiber in the next year+. I've seen speeds upwards of 130Mb/s, will be interesting to see what it looks like once I get it permantly mounted and once all the RV's show up in the area this weekend! Thanks for always on your vids though.

[@KameraShy]

Depending exactly where you are at relative to distance from nodes, they may refuse to connect you or try to charge thousands to run the line. Many bad stories on YT about experiences with that situation.

[@ChatterontheWire]

@@KameraShy It will be interesting to see what the cost will be, though I was also looking to have to pay to have the phone line run for DSL anyway. Depending on what that cost is and then monthly cost for fiber internet vs the $110/month for starlink, will have to see how many months/years to break even and then also consider 1Gb speed vs whatever starlink is at the time.

[@wayland7150]

They call it Starlink but really it's just a booster for a ground based tower. You could probably use mobile phone tech if you put it on a tall pole.

[@Clark-Mills]

Wasn't she in an area that Starlink didn't have spare capacity or coverage? I recall that being a reason why you couldn't relocate. Has this changed or are you using Starlink's "mobile" service - which is degraded. Trivia: I'm in Auckland, New Zealand and get 136.25Mb/s down, 22.37Mb/s up, 38ms latency. I'm happy but understand it's an evolving and growing system.

[@lemonofish869]

Isn't pretty much the entire Auckland covered by Chorus's FTTH network? To me it seems UFB is a much better deal than Starlink.

[@hikareti9503]

@@lemonofish869 Was thinking the same thing, I've got Gigabit fibre in Dunedin. Starlink only makes sense for rural locations or areas with poor infrastructure as far as I can see.

[@mueffe1357]

0:50 This made me nostalgic about the days of my internet connection in my university dorm. Its not just oversaturation per say bc the dorm router have enough connections for every room, but from people -abusing- downloading p2p too. You are lucky if the page even loads in the day. The only time the internet was fast was around 4-6am window. Lol

[@realcartoongirl]

they dont care enough to block p2p

[@asoteunh345]

Great video as usual! Thank you!

[@AudreyRobinel]

I'm getting an Apple vibe here. Removing common ports that have been standards for decades, not allowing you to properly admin your hardware, telling users that "nothing can be done" on simple problems... I wonder if this is a trend in megacorporations, that feel they can get away with this, or if it is specific to some? Is microsoft acting similar with their hardware? i have not heard stuff like that, and as far as i know, they have standard ports on their machines. But i suspect that microsoft has more secretive ways of f***ing the customer over, without them noticing.

[@hubertnnn]

Each company has its own methods, Microsoft is mostly stealing customers by abusing its power and bricking competition (eg. by making Windows run like crap on Dr DOS so people would buy Ms DOS in 90s, or installing heavily outdated version of OpenGL with no updates, so people will think that DirectX is better, or breaking MsOffice every time someone makes it run fine on Linux).

[@Holiday_Ringo]

Suble steps towards totalitarianism

[@tissuepaper9962]

@bob bobthebobbobofbobby it is, in fact, one of the driving forces that spurred FOSS. You don't actually own your computer unless you can access and modify every single instruction.

[@autohmae]

Thst's what a Tesla car is too

[@mechanomics2649]

It's absolutely a trend and has been for decades. They heavily invest their resources lobbying to make sure they can get away with as much as they can including monopolizing markets while not "technically" monopolizing markets.

[@austenlo_ol]

I’ve been on Starlink for close to a year and the experience has been going downhill fast for several months now. Speed and stability notably degrade during non-business hours. My previous internet was 14 Mbps down and only 1 Mpbs up, so Starlink has a very long way to fall before becoming not worth the trouble, but it still kind of sucks having my concerns about oversubscription seemingly being validated so shortly after starting service.

[@azargelin]

Yeah unfortunately I don't see how there going to keep it up, the cost r crazy and sending data by laser is on the bleeding edge of tech especially in space at speed and vast distance so the kinks r huge. There also betting on startship which it too is unproven tech its way to risky but maybe there is something i don't see

[@milos4794]

@@azargelin completely wrong. The technology to send signals across space is very good we’ve been doing it for almost 6-7 decades. I think everyone forgot that Elon has moved a bunch of star link satellites to Ukraine to help them with the lack of logistics . If Ukraine has No internet they have no communication. Lack of communication in a war is instant death. If Elon has moved satellites that’s means there’s less information and energy being transferred to more people trying to use star link, causing the connections to bottle neck the information. Satellites kinda act like a server and use each other satellites to balance the data bit transfer . It’s the same thing how electricity works, your computer web browser, water flow in a dam. It’s called “flow of electrons”

[@azargelin]

@@milos4794 i believe sending signals with lasers is pretty new and with targets moving so fast it hasn't been done before to my knowledge

[@milos4794]

@@azargelin I study this for a living it’s a very well known part of science we use everyday, look it up. “It's been a while getting here. As far back as 1964, NASA toyed with the idea of using lasers for airplane communications. The idea was to convert a pilot's voice first into electric pulses, then into a light beam. A receiver on the ground would then reverse the process “ Source:Hadhazy, Adam. "How It Works: NASA's Experimental Laser Communication System." Popular Mechanics. Sept. 6, 2011. (Nov. 15, 2013)

[@azargelin]

@@milos4794 when was the commercial application, going from experimental to commercial is a huge jump and this stuff is at the edge of my field, do u know the cost involved? Anything about the data rate or reliability I would appreciate ur input

[@7lllll]

i haven't looked much, but this is definitely the most informative video i've ever seen about the current status of starlink

[@gordschultz1980]

Been a Starlink customer from when Beta hit Canada. When we first got it, super fast, surprisingly stable… the last few months, higher bills, throttled down to under 50mps, drops from “congestion at peak times”. Really disappointing over the last couple of months

[@OShackHennessy]

I’m in the US and have experienced the same thing. Not happy with the current product.

[@7evive]

Where are you in Canada I'm in Quebec and will get my dish this week

[@gordschultz1980]

@@7evive I’m in Southern Ontario. Every night for the last 3 weeks we have gone from 50 mbps to under 5 with the warning on the app that there is network congestion. Very simple… they over sold the service, have been halted from sending up more satellites due to the size of them and requiring a new rocket to take them Into orbit (the rocket still doesn’t have a full successful launch yet) and the last gem is their ground stations need to upgraded / resized properly. Oh and you’ll now pay $160 per month for this privilege. A few months ago this service was stellar… not so much now

[@r00tyschannel52]

This is pretty much what I said to friends that were very positive about Starlink. My view was, that in order to keep up with new subscribers they will need to keep putting satellites up. Meaning the price will either go up to eye watering levels to bring supply and demand into equilibrium, or they will never recoup the cost of putting up new satellites.

[@crsv7armhl]

Its almost like Satellite internet has been tried by multiple companies before and failed....Oh Wait, it did!

[@pcgameshardware867]

It will crash and burn sadly the digital divide is a real problem Elon isn't the one who's gonna to solve it

[@stevefxp]

I would like to see Starlink succeed, so it spurs competition and lower pricing all around. I fear Musk has ADHD and only focuses on the shiny new object in his office(can you say Twitter?).

[@JeffGeerling]

Yeah, Musk is the type of person that could do some interesting things with his wealth and obsession... if able to focus on one thing at a time. It seems like he hops in his jet and flies from project to project on a daily basis. And he doesn't leave hands-off enough for other people to step in and help lead the charge. (Or at least not so much judging by what he says.)

[@stevefxp]

@@JeffGeerling I hope his impulse is tempered with the debacle around Twitter. Whether or not you like his decision to buy he should have let his business folks thoroughly vet the company before agreeing to a 44B sale. Its going to cost him at least 1B to do away with the sale. As someone taught me many years ago....plan the work and work the plan. Do not deviate!

[@avhuf]

I sincerely hope there will be no competition. 10k satellites is already enough pollution.

[@TheWkd111]

I don't agree with the competition or lower pricing part of the equation. The solution he is supplying is by far more expensive than any terrestrial solution, the entry cost alone is high albeit heavily subsidized. And as for competition he is the only game in town when it comes to those that really benefit from his product. That would be those that have no internet at all or are stuck at speeds from 20 years ago.

[@Ruhrpottpatriot]

I hope it burns and fails hard. Not only is it far costlier than any ground base solution, it's also cluttering up the orbit so much, that other, far more vital services, are already impacted.

[@strayobject]

You lol at the number of tabs, I lol at the ads...

[@qzorn4440]

King Midas is popularly remembered in Greek mythology for his ability to turn everything he touched into gold. 🥰 The muskie touch is turning everything to lead. 🤣82 vs 79 protons.

[@chadrobinson3504]

I have experienced that local firmware update issue. Starlink had to send me a whole new dish to get it working. Still 100% worth it.

[@nucl3arn30n]

Man I wish starlink will deliver. Internet speeds are horrendous in austria

[@nathancooley8459]

Glad to see that Jeff is also a Scott Manley fan! haha

[@JeffGeerling]

Fly safe!

[@rickjames4181]

When I first got my StarLink in souther Ga I was getting speeds of 200+mb down and about 20up with 30-40ish ping. Now 6 months later I barely get 2-3mb with 100+ ping, it’s so unstable as of right now I’m unable to use it.

[@izzieb]

More and larger satellites? I'm sure astronomers will absolutely love that information.

[@wollinger]

Mimimi

[@wsbsteven]

The future is more James Webb type projects, not on the ground.

[@emanggitulah4319]

First step for a Dyson sphere /s

[@izzieb]

@@wsbsteven Firstly, I doubt most scientists will have access to the JWT. Secondly, you do realise the frequency used by these satellites also causes issues to large radio telescopes too (while JWT is almost entirely IR)...

[@bzuidgeest]

@@izzieb those problem where always going to happen. Musk is just accelerating it. More and more satellites, more and more communication noice The future of autonomy is in space. Launches are getting cheaper. And in the end we will just put more and larger telescopes in space. No more light pollution, no more radio pollution and no more atmospheric effects to account for.

[@mrbb1731]

During Beta I was getting over 300 down and 70 up. Now I I typically get 40-60 down and 20 up. Quite disappointed.

[@joansparky4439]

Why did you expect those rates to stay where they have been during beta with a handful of users sharing a limited resource compared to now? Why the hell do you people watch tech channels like these here if you don't grasp the basics of something like this? I'm pretty sure the fine print will have stated those rates anyway.. but you didn't read them, why would you..

[@fedemtz6]

There will never be a replacement for a good fiber connection. A lot of people say that "starlink is the future" or "5G internet for the home is the future" but the reality is that the cost of installing fiber to neighborhoods that can supply gigabit internet to each house is probably lower than installing many more cell towers (specially 5G MMWave that have to be very close to the user) or satellites that have a very hard capacity limit and that could be a problem for future space exploration and for telescopes. Of course good satellite internet will always be a good choice in rural areas, in the sea, and for airplanes.

[@maxwellsilverhammer2205]

I was on a low capacity rural terrestrial radio connection getting about 2-3 MB down and 75k up and it was patchy... When the signup for Starlink was announced I could'nt sign up fast enough. With an expected delevery date mid 2021. I patiently waited as the year passed and then in November of 21 my expected delivery date changed to late 22. Needless to say I was dissapointed, ...As luck would have it, my service provider showed up a couple of days later with a hardware ugrade (free by the way) that gave me reliable speeds of 18-20 down and 5 up. I could'nt cancel my Starlink order fast enough, and now, I am sooo glad things went the way they did, because I know after paying $500 + and $100 a month I would hate to be in the position that a lot of these customers are reporting.

[@freezerman5871]

Hi, where did you get the 500k customers figure? I hear it quoted everywhere but can't seem to find any actual quote/source for it.

[@Factory400]

There have been a number of credible sources that point out the delta between promises and practicality. In general, the deployment and operational expenses are extreme which requires an enormous user base to be a profitable business. That same enormous user base overloads the system. The current user base is fairly small, yet the limited capacity is already showing. Welcome to Elon's world.

[@scbtripwire]

Dang, dishes might not get patched if stowed too long? Hard fail, especially considering SpaceX then requires that you spend *more money* only to potentially run into the same problem.

[@snaplash]

That's a no-buy for me. Also, because of this, you'll never want to buy a used one unless you see it demonstrated first.

[@Spyke7]

Thank you very much for investigating and critizising the starlink development objectively while having positive expectations for the starship and co. Very good video!

[@aws-china]

I think the next family dinner topic should be why your cousin doesn't use an adblock...

[@jwstolk]

Yes, SpaceX guarantees that the version 2 will burn up completely, it's designed to be or else they would not be allowed to launch it. SpaceX has indicated that camera/laser lenses where the most difficult to get right, because of their relatively high density and melting point.

[@2ebarman]

Yea, but that's after it enters atmosphere. If there's a collision, larger satellite will make more debris. It seemed to me that was the implication there ...

[@zanderwohl]

@@2ebarman It is in low enough orbit that anything not deliberately station-keeping will fall to earth in a matter of months... for the lowest layer, at least.

[@2ebarman]

@@zanderwohl They are? I remember previous, or current I should say, starlink satellites had orbits with different rights. Some had 1000 km orbits even ... hope I don't remember wrong. Keeping orbit very low would certainly be wise idea.

[@firstduckofwellington6889]

@@2ebarman I thought the highest shell was at 570km. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#:~:text=First%20shell%3A%201%2C440%20in%20a,km%20(340%20mi)%20altitude%20shell

[@VirtualBSHere]

I was considering getting starlink, but then I realized that for a fraction of the cost I could get a 4G CPE modem to mount on a pole outside my house that would be able to achieve a decent connection at signal levels that a cell phone would consider weak. As long as you're not completely out of range of any and all cell towers, it's probably the better option. Equipment is cheaper and has none of the starlink design flaws. The service subscription is much cheaper too. Speeds are decent, and spending a bit more to upgrade to a 5G cell modem may even outperform starlink.

[@crsv7armhl]

Yep. My 5G antenna is literally blocked by my neighbor's house 5 feet away and I still get 200-400mbps. YMMV, my cell tour is about a mile away.

[@itismiguel6526]

Are you in the United States? I was wondering what kind of sim card I would have to use

[@VirtualBSHere]

@@itismiguel6526 Just like what goes into a phone. A sim card from whichever network operator has the best service in your area and either offers unlimited data or a very large data cap. You also need to take into account the network bands that are used by your service provider in your area when purchasing a modem to ensure compatibility. The size of the sim depends on the equipment you have, but sim cards these days generally come with a precut breakout pattern for all sizes and adapters can also be bought. I just took one out of my tablet and stuck it in the modem and now I have internet for the whole house instead of just that device.

[@atrueghost6450]

7:18 , easier said than done, the most obvious answer is to pause new customers while infrastructure catches up for existing users.

[@MathiasHomann]

on a sidenote, I noticed you have a grafana panel showing detailed internet performance stats, did you already do a video on how you built that?

[@michaeldholley1]

Elon promises but is always late and under delivers. We have been waiting 18 months and there is no sign or communication from Starlink about when, if ever, they will deliver. The only email we got from Starling is to tell us that we have been waiting so long the price of the ground unit has gone UP! Rather than honoring the original price, they are graciously granting us a reduced increase for the Ver2 set. Nice huh? Oh yea, we now also get to pay extra for a wired ethernet dongle (a connection method that was included in the ground set we ordered). We haven't got the service delivered and it already sucks.

[@joansparky4439]

@S K his companies still deliver more than all the 'competitors' who wanted to overtake his companies in volume/quality. It's kinda funny that the best you're being compared to is yourself not matching up to your publicly made bold expectations. And it's hilarious that people do not realize this and trash him over it.. LOL

[@___echo___]

@@joansparky4439 just because you think elons products are better than his competitors, doesn't mean he should keep getting away with overpromising and underdelivering, the product quality part is irrelevant here.

[@joansparky4439]

@@___echo___ if his products aren't good no one will buy them.. problem solved. No need for your communist committee to step in and demand that Elon removes his products from the market so that his "competitors" can keep selling the stuff that is not being bought as long as he sells his.. LOL

[@joansparky4439]

@S K If the bean-counters take over that's a given (and their goal of creating a monopoly). That's what competition is there for (if not being prevented by Gov and anti-competitive rules like patents, tariffs, licenses, etc.).. but comp. only appears as soon as the market leader is overcharging.. just like Adam Smith wrote: _"The interest of the dealers [referring to stock owners, manufacturers, and merchants.. anyone really], however, in any particular branch of trade or manufacture, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers. To widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the interest of the public; but to narrow the competition must always be against it, and can serve only to enable the dealers, by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy, for their own benefit, an absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow-citizens."_ & _"The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it."_ Adam Smith

[@quarteratom]

Literally scam.

[@VeniVV]

It's like an internet connection should be considered an actual utility that has become an intricate part of the human experience... good and bad.

[@stewie4467]

nah

[@mechanomics2649]

@@stewie4467 Yeah. Acting like society hasn't evolved to heavily rely on the internet is willful ignorance.

[@mechanomics2649]

As far as the US goes, service providers have put in a lot of effort to keep internet access from being a public utility.

[@Diabolotherium]

I will be installing the marine versions on 2 vessels very soon... looking forward to it.

[@JeffGeerling]

Would love to see a blog post / video / anything about that process! It seems like it would have its own set of challenges, and I'd love to see how well the phased array antenna can keep a lock and if it affects latency much.

[@andiszile]

Having looked at plenty of MikroTik blue power LEDs, that made my day :D

[@JeffGeerling]

Can you still see or can you only see non-blue colors now? :D

[@andiszile]

@@JeffGeerling Fortunately my vision is still fine :)

[@JohnADoe-pg1qk]

Good that it works and others want to build something similar. But ... competition in the area of Internet via satellite results in X times thousands of satellites that (can) cause problems. Globally, a collaborative approach with fewer satellites would be better but not easy.

[@tobiwonkanogy2975]

but infinite coverage . even out in the middle of the ocean where regular infrastructure would fail or not exist. its way crowded now if you look at orbital object map.

[@randybobandy9828]

A collab wouldn't really use less satellites, you need 1 satellite for X amount of users so it wouldn't make a difference imo.

[@randybobandy9828]

@Tobi Won Kanogy have you seen starlinks monthly price for internet for the middle of the ocean? It's about $5-$10,000 a month and a even more expensive upfront cost. There are reasons for this ofcourse but still crazy

[@jjdawg9918]

"physics can't be beat"... you nailed it and that's /I why turned down a job at Starlink. Why do you think 5G talks about moving to micro and pico cells etc...marketing talks about throughput but carriers care about "capacity". Satellites do the the exact opposite with their unavoidable broad coverage....even when mitigated with many small satellites(and that's without discussing the inherent latency..again physics). Satellites will NEVER replace high speed, high throughput ground systems. They are for remote locations that don't have ground coverage and over time someone will eventually put a tower up to cover even those areas. I see this system becoming and adjunct to military systems if it is already because it' primary benefit is that it can't be easily affected from the ground.

[@shannonkohl68]

Since space is bigger than the surface of the earth, it would seem that they can deal with capacity issues by the same way terrestrial carriers do, add more capacity.

[@crsv7armhl]

The miitary alread has a contract with Inmarsat.

[@Lambert7785]

great info, thanks

[@thekakan]

Great video, but I can hear some sort of coil whine or fan spinning, a high frequency sound, in some parts of the video at least. I'm curious, what is it and where did you record :P ? _or it could simply be my headphones going haywire?_

[@JeffGeerling]

it's probably Elon's audio wiretapping 🙃

[@thekakan]

@@JeffGeerling damn i gott-

[@shanejustice6414]

Uggh... After waiting over a year in Southern Arizona, I FINALLY received my Starlink Ground station. Im miffed for several reasons- 1) the install kit isnt selectable as an option, and when you get the announcement, there is no pick kkist presented, so you have to order the kit or parts later, delaying installlation, 2) the trial period is very short, and doesn't allow for proper evaluation, 3) return window is only 30 days, and 3) the sppeeds are very, very slow- i have seen sub- KILOBIT speeds, and speed so far has maxed ouut at 10 Mbps, for a very short perioid (most of the time I"m seeing 1-2 Mbps, 4) I am assuming that there is some kind of performance "hole' down here East of Tucson, likely due to lack of satellites, but my inquiries to Starlink customer support only received a single reply that I must have wifi connection isssues at my house. I did get a 50% credit for service ON MY NEXzT BILL- NOT ACCEPTABLE, 5) NO 800 number??? For $110/month, I want to be able ro have a button hole i can grab onto to get someone's attentionn! Otherwise, I want Elon to buy this groundstation back from me and refund my expenses! I'm wondering if Starlink is classified as a common carrier? If so, they should be called on the carpet. You're not in Beta anymore, Elon!

[@tylerbaldwin1633]

I'm seeing a pretty constant 150-250mbps up here in the middle of nowhere in Canada. It's definitely a over subscription issue for certain serivce cells. I have seen a bit slower speeds during peak hours since I got it 5 months ago but it still streams HD video no problems and online gaming but the ping is kinda high at 100-170 but I still won't complain. its a night and day difference from my old satellite internet 900 ms ping and 500kbps download for $250 a month. I'm also lucky that I live in one of the least populated provinces in Canada so there is like 3 full cells here around the city's that's it lol so we'll never see capacity problems.

[@tyoung9012]

I also live in saskatchewan 🤣

[@807800]

Starlink Maritime is IP56 rated, "Protected against strong jets of water, e.g. on the ships deck, limited ingress permitted." And also rated for +174 mph of wind. It can stand against a rocket landing close to it, after all. Also, Starlink V2 mini with a mass of around 800 Kg has started launching on Falcon 9. And they track to be profitable this year. Maybe, they know what they are doing after all.

[@natep121]

Haha! Keep making more videos and we'll keep getting new things the next day!

[@outcast6187]

Hate to be the bad guy, but people have to accept there are absolute limits on sat internet and just like how we don't have fixed price "all you can eat electricity" plans the same thing should happen on sat networks. Maybe 2,000GB per month and maybe $20 per every 200GB you go over (same rate basically). People will find ways to not waste their internet like its "free electricity". I was going to sleep every night with a KZbin 9 hour stream of "Cozy Window Rain & Thunder", I assumed it used almost no data because the image is static but after finding it destroying my mobile data usage I found it was over 1GB per day. I just downloaded the mp3 to my iPad instead and found it saved a ton on my iPad battery as well as wasteful internet data usage.

[@outcast6187]

Either monthly limits or we kick CNN off their satellite broadcast spectrum and have it re-allocated to Starlink, that will x2 the speed for everyone.

[@wyohman00]

Thanks Jeff. It's refreshing to hear real-world info in a non-fanboy way.

[@TheOverExtrudedHuman]

Thanks Jeff! You rock! -Christopher R.

[@johngore3364]

300mbps when we got it last summer. Now averages 100ish. Still happy for $140 a month. Alternative was $86 for 0.40kbps and many many outages dozens and dozens of times a day. Read they’re having caps and cutting price in half, fine with that too. I’ll pay extra as I’ll likely go over 250gb a month. But I’ll probably still be paying less than the $140 I am now. Totally works for me.

[@happilicious]

The firmware update issue is probably due to their sota strategy/arch oversight during development. My guess it is related to security.

[@JeffGeerling]

Could be, but in that case they should work extra hard to make sure every firmware revision is upgradeable OTA (even if it has to do a cycle of a bunch of upgrades to get to latest)... making hardware less than 2 years old obsolete because it wasn't switched on for a few months (or even a year) is crazy!

[@goldfingerdash]

That is a pretty big oversight to not have a way to sideload. I could see an oversight on v2 since it does not have an ethernet adapter. In any case, power could go out during firmware updates. Starlink probably reverts to the old firmware, but if that breaks, they should have a way to sideload. The firmware binary files can be signed which is good enough for security. On top of that, Starlink could provide a minimalist binary file that gets the dish on the network to fully update.

[@WobblycogsUk]

What a timeline we live in. Massive over promising and under delivering is significantly better than the alternative from the established industry that had at least a decade head start.

[@Aereto]

Particularly when the land based ISPs are offering far worse alternatives for remote locations.

[@SgtKilgore406]

My biggest reason for getting Starlink was for upload speeds. My DSL is 25d/~1u which is absolutely abysmal (for upload speeds). I have a NAS that does daily cloud replication for offsite data backups and that 1Mb upload just couldn't handle it. Even with Starlink's fluctuating speeds I often get 4-10x better upload performance which has made a huge difference. For context: I ordered Starlink late November 2020 and have one of the original beta Dishy's (black base and stand) and have been very happy with it. I have never used the Starlink router since I prefer to have Dishy directly wired to my pfSense firewall. A speedtest just now gave me 73Mbps down and 13Mbps up which is fantastic (in my opinion with the current options available to me). My local ISP, which I have DSL service with as a backup (in case Starlink suffers an outage), is rolling out fiber in my area and will hopefully be coming down my road (rural) in the next year or two.

[@PhantomPanic]

You are easy to listen to and you get to the point. I stayed focused the whole time. For that you have earned a new subscriber.

[@JeffGeerling]

Thank you Mr. FSM!

[@PhantomPanic]

@@JeffGeerling 😆

[@jordananderson1594]

I've got Starlink and I went ahead and ran a speedtest just now to see where I am currently sitting at. The results: 161 Mbps down and 13 up, which is really good! I ran the test directly from my router (which is pretty much a best case scenario). I do have records, though, and Starlink can be quite variable, usually running somewhere between 60 and 180 Mbps down, so don't expect the same performance all of the time from Starlink, at least not as is. I also should note that I have had some serious connectivity issues during thunderstorms. That isn't usually a problem around here, I am essentially in the desert, but when there is inclement weather it can be a problem. However, I am also in the camp Jeff was talking about where Starlink is INCREDIBLY superior to anything else I have access too. They are providing much needed competition and it is great. Thanks as always Jeff for presenting the product in it's true state, good, bad, ugly and all.

[@jwstolk]

Also tested right now, after almost 1 year of use, and I got 204/19 with about 35ms ping. (it hovers between 25 and 45ms, which is pretty good considering my country doesn't even have a SpaceX ground station so the connection is always on a bit of an angle.) I have no obstructions in the viability map and usually no reported outages in the last 12 hours.

[@theondono]

It’s almost as if having your network backbone in the hardest serviceable place known to man was a bad idea!

[@Catnippy]

wouldn't that be the ocean? lol

[@theondono]

@@Catnippy scuba diving is far cheaper than space EVA

[@efcon8646]

I live in a somewhat rural area. Centurylinkk offers 1.5 mb download, and I used to use that to game for years, then finally starlink came around. I've had a few issues with it, some disconnects and high ping here and there, but man I'm so grateful for having internet that's literally 100x faster then my last provider

[@iamdinosaur9504]

The one thing I want most is support for IPV6, static IP's and for them to switch off of CG-NAT.

[@HelloNotMe9999]

I signed up for Starlink in February 2019 based on being told my kit would ship “in about two weeks”… It’s now (nearly) August 2022. Still waiting.

[@AtomsLab]

Ouch... I ordered mine July 6th this year and got it delivered July 17th. Is your service cell overpopulated?

[@garrettzkool63]

what state are you in?

[@MarcoGPUtuber]

Check the dish for acne. It might be a teenager.

[@Gotmoniesification]

What’s the name of the software your using to monitor that speed and ping ?

[@JeffGeerling]

It's this setup: github.com/geerlingguy/internet-pi

[@kangarumpy]

I'm one of those happy customers that's just glad to have numbers in the double digits. Was using cellular before.

[@alexlandherr]

And I’m still waiting (+4 years and counting) for a contractor to finish laying fiber to my family’s house. It almost seems comparable. They’ve dug down most of the fiber runs but we’re waiting for the important equipment “in the middle” and having it all being connected to the outside world. EDIT: Thanks for the response. It’ll be nice to watch my favorite streaming services without them freaking out over long ping times…

[@JeffGeerling]

That's painful! Similarly, AT&T buried fiber to a termination box in my neighborhood, and even sent reps out to our houses to hype up Gigapower-three years ago. Since then I drive by that box every day, knowing there's fiber in there that was never run the last few hundred meters to my house :(

[@alexlandherr]

@@JeffGeerling Like your termination box we see a protective “tube” stick up from the ground along with some fiber shield at the end, this has as of writing been the status for about 4 months. The company that offered the deal and organizes everything claims to be ready by the end of this year.

[@JeffGeerling]

@@alexlandherr Heh... I also called up AT&T and eventually got to their enterprise sales team. They said they would run a fiber straight to my house for the low price of $12,000, plus about $1,000 per month for 100 Mbps :D I said I'll just continue being patient. Someday they'll run fiber to the entire neighborhood... someday.

[@unclerubo]

Starlink is a symptom of the defficient Internet infrastructure in the US. My ISP in a city in the lower end of the top 20 most populated in Spain provides me with 600 megabit symmetrical fiber and my phone and mobile internet plan for 40€ a month including tax. And no router rental on top of that. It is provided as part of the service.

[@bzuidgeest]

Agreed and that holds true for many parts of the EU and even outside that.

[@unclerubo]

@@bzuidgeest I wish we had in Spain the kind of Internet prices and speeds that Romanians enjoy ;)

[@IoriTatsuguchi]

This is how I see it for now as well. It’s like they’re polluting space for American problem - but I suppose there’s still a chance for anyone to benefit from this if things goes well. Not that I have high hope for company that makes hardware that are strongly controlled by proprietary standards though.

[@bzuidgeest]

@@IoriTatsuguchi the satellites can be useful for seas an be backwaters in the rest of the world, so it's not a total waste. And the proprietary thing is mostly because the US is badly regulated. Look at Tesla's. They have a proprietary charge port in the US, but they don't in the EU, because the EU forced an open standard for that early on.

[@IoriTatsuguchi]

@@bzuidgeest Yeah that’s what I meant anyways. The idea is brilliant but it means nothing if it’s unreasonable (not only about price but regulations and whatnot). This whole idea of company for profit being responsible for infrastructure has fundamental flaw. It’s not always bad especially for the US citizens who buys the idea though.

[@RyanWolfFerguson]

I just found this channel and it is great. Good content. I do have to ask though, are you related to Steve Buscemi? I'm sure this is not the first time you have been asked so I'm sorry if this is the umpteenth time you've been asked. Keep up the good work.

[@scottwilliams895]

Jeff, don't hold back, tell us how you really feel!

[@capsulate8642]

Starlink would've been (and probably still will be) great for rural areas and roaming but now most of those people would probably get stuck on a saturated connection because they're a few hours away from a big city. I wouldn't trust Elon's magical future solution to come around (especially not on time), so it's a bummer.

[@kmcat]

Once the US starts pushing out fibre and LTE to rural areas this will be the only real solution; and will be a lot cheaper as well. It's kinda sad that people are happy with Starlink as they are comparing it with junk to start with. Putting 1000s of these satellite in space is already having effects on equipment on earth - such as asteroid detection system and telescopes

[@capsulate8642]

@@kmcat Yeah, it sucks watching companies and our government build out so many alternative internet solutions just because our shitty ISPs won't let us even use the full speed of our current copper cables.

[@mechanomics2649]

@@capsulate8642 Who do you think allows those ISP the ability to restrict usage of those copper cables? It's the government. ISPs have put in a ton of resources in lobbying to do what they're doing.

[@jayare7750]

I used to live on a farm where only 1.5mbs centurylink was available. I was one of the first ones to receive a dishy. I moved to a location where I have gigabit speeds, dishy is in storage never to be seen again… by anyone… you can’t have my dishy

[@SgtKilgore406]

Make sure you bring it online at least semi regularly to get firmware updates. Otherwise it will become a paperweight unless Starlink gives users a local way to install firmware updates.

[@TheZolon]

Been waiting with my pre-order since Feb 2021.. It went from "mid/late 2021" to "early 2022" then to "Mid 2022" .. and I expect it to change again. While 2 of my neighbors have it and didn't do the pre-order.

[@will2see]

6:43 - Which concerns are overblown? The Kessler syndrome???

[@yjk_music]

Not a Starlink user, but watching your Starlink videos gives me a general theme about Starlink: Very very proprietary, they want more ways to get money from customers, and don't care about user experience. Statlink could've made better, but I can already see where they want to go by just looking at routers with ethernet ports removed. It almost feels like they are making it worse intentionally.

[@marcogenovesi8570]

That's more or less all ISPs ever, Starlink just offers a better coverage

[@yjk_music]

@@marcogenovesi8570 I haven't experienced how terrible an ISP could be(though I've heard about some terrible experiences over the years). So that's clearly something I've missed when writing the comment.

[@KameraShy]

Temporary solution: double the charge for roaming. As for speeds, for me 25 MB is sufficient for general use, viewing YT, etc. which I get through Comcast hot spot wifi.

[@TheTooBig]

Sorry to be that guy, but do you mean 25 Mb? 25MB is like a 200Mb connection. Connection speeds speeds are usually given in bits. What you download is bytes. My 4g+ connection gives around at maximum 15MegaBytes down speeds and thats like 120 Megabits which is pretty much all I need. 8 bits is 1 byte. I know, its confusing.

[@fin101m]

the problem isn't the speed its the packet loss when you get to 25 MB you can lose a lot of packets using starlink making a lot of internet applications useless

[@Charlayo]

I get about 150-250mb on average but I’m in New Zealand. Sad it’s getting congested over in the US but give it some time and it’ll be amazing soon

[@randygreen007]

I just got another delay-mail from star-stink telling me it’s now going to be mid 2023 before it’s available to me in western North Carolina. It says that because my area “remains at capacity” it’s not available. Please explain to me how my area has reached maximum capacity when I’ve been on the waiting list since 2.5 years ago or when it was first announced!?!?!?!?

[@olivier2553]

I am very happy with my 1 Gbps fiber. Unless it is hard to cover area (extremely low density) or mobile fiber will always be the best choice by far. And my current fiber could go Tbps with a simple change of the routers. No need to lay a new fiber.

[@Cybertruck_69]

If you have fibre you are Not a Starlink candidate. For me, I had a 5mbps connection with a crap low data cap. Starlink is absolutely amazing for the intended use cases.

[@olivier2553]

@@Cybertruck_69 But how comes a country that is not among the top 10 world economy, Thailand, has fiber everywhere and USA does not?

[@Cybertruck_69]

@@olivier2553 physical area is so large??

[@cliffwright1970]

Great video as always. I'd like to just applaud you for NOT starting every video with "Hey, what's up guys?" in a cheesy voice like it seems every other KZbinr does. Nobody will ever answer that question. Folks should think of a more creative opener to YT videos.

[@JeffGeerling]

Hey, what's up Cliff! Thanks for commenting! Leave a thumbs up and subscribe! :D

[@cliffwright1970]

Already there buddy 👍

[@gus473]

​@@JeffGeerling 😂🤣🍻

[@mikepembo8297]

@@JeffGeerling And smash the bell :D

[@johnanthonyalberola2341]

THE DEVIL LIT THE FIRES HE IS SITTING BACK AND ENJOYING THE FLAMES

[@SProz69]

is there a way to tell how many SL dishes are connected in a region?

[@gannas42]

I appreciate you sharing your observations and opinions here. I'm a little concerned about what satellite internet competition looks like... already I've noticed several times while star gazing the increase in reflective transits from Starlink deployments. Not looking forward to more trash in orbit. And I challenge anyone who thinks this isn't trash we're putting into orbit. Yes, today they provide a service. But what about when Starlink moves entirely to the 2.0 satellites? Do we honestly think they'll invest the time and money to responsibly de-orbit their older sats? There has to be a better option than this.

[@dorvinion]

All Starlink sats have thrusters to maintain orbit. The thrusters can of course help with deorbit as well Even if a Starlink was completely dead its orbit will naturally decay in a matter of a few years

[@morosis82]

As David said, such a low orbit is nowhere near stable. They need to constantly boost themselves in order to maintain orbit, just like the ISS. It should be about 2 to 3 years for a sat that either has no fuel or is being decommissioned to deorbit naturally, but SpaceX has always said they would do it using the booster. After all, if they're replacing with better versions they want that space to be not taken up with older equipment.

[@Hackney_Boy-DoesntReadReplies]

I've been working in networking for 22 years, Starlink are delivering the kind of hardware I'd expect from a Chinese IoT company. Big comms companies don't do stuff like this, removing the ethernet port was a miserly cost cutting exercise that will bite them.

[@VirtualBSHere]

I'm sure that it's not a cost-cutting exercise as much as a money-grubbing upsell. They probably only saved a few cents, but now they can sell you a dongle for several dollars. Like DLC in games: the content could've been included in the release, but they only give you the bare minimum so that you can pay again to unlock the full experience. Or Teslas that have the hardware installed, but the upsell features you didn't pay for artificially locked out. It's an unethical business practice of selling the consumer a defective-by-design product to solicit additional fees to actually use it as intended.

[@austinsloane3353]

So strange, I have notifications turned on for your channel but I didn't get anything for this video. This is important news! We had hoped this technology would raise the level of the competition...

[@JeffGeerling]

Sometimes KZbin's weird like that... for some reason this video has a *lot* fewer impressions than most of my other recent videos, so no clue what's up with that! Maybe it's been too long since I did a Starlink-focused video and the all-knowing algorithm doesn't like it :D

[@hubertnnn]

Easy solution for the problems: 1. Roaming users get lower speeds the further from home they are. Less than 10km, full 200MB/s, then loose 2MB/s per km, dropping to 10MB/s if you are more than 100km from home. This way you can still use the internet (and 10MB/s is enough for most uses) without overcrowding full zones as much. 2. For updates problem, just add a secondary antenna to 1/9 of the sattelites. That antenna will have wider range but speed of only 10kb/s but will be designed to be compatible with fallback/service mode of all dishes (regardless of version). Effect: every dish would be able to connect in service mode and download updates. It might take a few hours, but eventually it would update itself.

[@tjmichael]

Much as I think starlink is immeasurably important to developing and rural communities, the real solution here isn't with musk or with spacex. Internet service is an essential utility, and time and time again we see the only way to garuntee quality access to less income dense areas, is for governments to step in and mandate access. No one is complaining that it isn't profitable to hook up remote communities to water, mail, and electricity, there is no good in reason not to count high bandwidth Internet access among those in 2022.

[@dorvinion]

If governments hadn't 'stepped in and mandated access' to grid electric, many rural houses and homesteads would already be operating with on-site generated power, likely small wind turbines. Or the coops that the rural people used to have before the government 'stepped in' would have grown Or these areas would have been voluntarily depopulated People choose to live where they live. My old man still lives in a place (farm) w/o high speed internet. A lot of times even cell service has difficulty working at his place That is his choice. If he ever needs HSI he just goes to my sister's home (he's there about every other day anyway).

[@joansparky4439]

@TJ Michael I suggest you watch a YT video by Asianometry about Vietnam and the CPV's success re "stepping in" and taking care of the most basic need a people have - food. LOL, what a misguided and naive comment.

[@tjmichael]

@@joansparky4439 are you familiar with the slippery slope fallacy?

[@vlitz]

How a company is allowed to destroy the nightsky and produce tons and tons of future space Junk is just unbelivable!

[@ozzybloke4830]

Its already falling out of orbit some of it landed in the snowy mountains in Australia.

[@nevilleaufdermaur]

just watched that video in 4k on board a moving ship using starlink, it still works well in europe

[@YasinNabi]

To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream, not only plan, but also believe.... When you believe, you start working on it.........

[@kissingfrogs]

and lets not forget that SpaceX Starlink wins nearly $900 million in FCC Federally funded subsidies ...

[@joansparky4439]

providing better internet for people in the sticks, while the companies who have been given billions over the years DIDN'T do anything for the money they received. What crap is this Justin?

[@RogierYou]

What about the comcast monopoly protected by your local government?

[@Dr_b_]

poor quality and customer service are a constant theme with elon's empire

[@joansparky4439]

Where is the problem? Competition to the rescue.. oh wait, they are even worse and do not even try to deliver.. it's way easier to bribe government to get tax dollars and do nothing by fleecing the customer by creating monopolies with the governments help. See ULA or the telcos.. I suggest you read 'The Myth of Capitalism' by Tepper and Hearn (2019) and find out what companies Warren Buffet likes to invest in - hint: monopolies.

[@bzuidgeest]

Opening up space and jump starting the electric car market and other bold steps are also a theme. It can't all be good. For every success there are also failures.

[@Dr_b_]

@@joansparky4439 So its ok to provide crap CS because they are the only ones actually delivering the product? Expect more from companies.

[@Dr_b_]

@@bzuidgeest SpaceX, the rocket division has excellent customer service. Starlink does not have good quality CS. Expect more from companies taking your money. Im not going to keep paying for bad service just because the companies are doing great things in other areas

[@bzuidgeest]

@@Dr_b_ your right about that. But you more or less made the claim that everything in the musk empire was bad. And that is just not true

[@JAN0L]

How many customers and what density do they need to break even?

[@Fetidaf]

I’ve had starlink preordered since 2019… still waiting for it, dealing with .5-1mbps with no other options, it’s awesome

[@CrimmzZT]

that sounds miserable im sorry bro wish I could donate some bandwith

[@randygreen007]

I guess by now you have received your delay email? I joined the wait list when you did and the service has now been pushed up to mid 2023.

[@Fetidaf]

@@randygreen007 I didn’t but i don’t have that email handy to me right now. I’m about to cancel my preorder and just get the RV one… I wish a half decent ISP served my house… I was gonna say “area” but I’m literally like 500ft away from gigabit fiber being available so that wouldn’t really be fair