We VIOLATED Starlink - New Email Ultimatum - Ep 227 - Lady K Sailing

[@nelsondiaz4344]

I use to be a Sat /Comms/Network engineer. Worked for two major Cruise Lines. As per your possible inquiry on 8:45 - No, it does NOT cost Starlink any more if you are on land or ocean. Starlink satellites do not work the same as the old satellite style does. The old style was that a customer linked/pointed to a satellite that was in high orbit (geosynchronous orbit) Which just means it's stationary above one area like satellite DISH TV and therefore cover MANY customers with one Sat. With Starlink satellites the customer links to one satellite that orbits in a non-geostationary orbit and your dish finds the next following starlink satellite and connects to it before losing the previous link as it moves out of your line-of-sight hence the need for many starlink satellites (hence the starlink net). Since these Starlink satellites are circling the Earth and passing over land AND WATER the "Many customers to one satellite" (old way) does NOT apply and therefore does NOT cost any more. -- What does cost is the production of so many satellites and rocket ship launches to put them up in space and so to get as much money for funding as quickly as possible they charge more money to those customers that are "different" using that "different" excuse to charge more. Those satellites are NOT doing anything different to ocean connections as they are to land connections. --- Great video, thank you.

[@CommentRedacted]

I was going to add the same comment, Starlink satellites are at a much lower orbit, which is why internet latency (ping rate) is much better than old geostationary satellite internet. If I remember correctly geostationary orbit is ~36,000 km above the earth; I think Starlink orbits at 550 km? So with such a low orbit, they have to speed around the planet orbiting earth once every ~1.6 hours. They have to put a bunch up there anyways to always have satellites over land so why not treat the ocean like a regular day of internet seeing as there are satellites there anyways, not like there are a tonne of people overloading the connection between satellites over the ocean. I agree, this seems more like a method to recover infrastructure costs. EDIT: Change geosynchronous to Geostationary

[@patraic5241]

So the sooner starlink needs to get the idea that cruisers are a bonus source of revenue to the fixed land based customers.

[@mikegrindstaff]

So...I think that there are far fewer users to satellite that covers the ocean areas...so...it costs more per user. If these near shore users are part of the on land group...then the maritime service has even fewer users. Because there are a finite number of boats in the world that would pay for this service...having those near shore users act as if they are on land...undermines the potential profitability of the maritime service. All of this has to be paid off by itself within a certain amount of time and make money before the end of life for the maritime satellites. This is why they are doing this.

[@TheStealthbob]

The one thing not mentioned, the inter satellite links are not established in a meaningful way, so the down link is a possible bandwidth limiting issue. No ground stations out there so everyone is sharing the limited available downlinks.

[@nelsondiaz4344]

@@mikegrindstaff The Starlink Sats "don't know" there are no customers in the oceans, not more, not less....Starlink sats just have to cross the oceans no matter if there are zero customers. The HAVE to circle the Earth.

[@Thfeyhvfdetyhbvcd]

I remember my dad looking for a used car in the newspaper. Before deciding on calling the owner, he would page through the phone book to see if that number was a local call, a zone call, or long distance. How things have changed!

[@tactileslut]

Now the landline runs around $70/mo before the first call and the phone book doesn't tell you which prefixes will raise that. (living in a cellular near-dead spot)

[@gbear1005]

What's a "newspaper"?

[@MrSafetyForever]

You very accurately conveyed what has transpired. Look forward to Amazon satellite packages! Competition can be quite beneficial for consumers. Take Care

[@gabedude68]

Amazon has a good reason to learn how to get something into Orbit, then, which it never has so far. $250/mo for 50Gb is $5/Gb, barely more than my cellphone data contract.

[@TheDigitalMermaid]

The call-back to the cell-phone and internet of the late 90s/early 00s was really insightful, and accurate.

[@AmyMrsR]

yep

[@callmebigpapa]

Another work around that might help some is to setup a Raspberry Pi and run Jellyfin on it with modest sized SSD ~2gb and store all of your media backups for your own off grid boat based Netflix !

[@TimHayward]

I do this with my phone and a 1tb sd card.

[@callmebigpapa]

@@TimHayward Thanks for sharing that too !!! You could cable connect with an OTG cable for a larger drive but I really like the simplicity of your setup plus you could just have multiple 1gb sd cards !

[@BangBangBang.]

2GB for "hosting your own Netflix"? How's that going to work when that's barely 3 movies at 700mb each.

[@callmebigpapa]

@@BangBangBang. Haha ....correct I meant 2tb ...... most of the compressed movies are 1.2gb with still pretty good quality probably get about 150 movies on a 2tb...give or take

[@matteframe]

Great analysis of this. I do think that $250 is still a pretty amazing price for oceanwide, on demand, high speed internet. This price will be driven down, but it's a groundbreaking technology. It won't be cheap for a while.

[@Joedisney]

Do you realize his billionaire, has put up satellites in space That's not his area.. when are people going to wake up and realize that these billionaires shouldn't be getting all these subsidies. And if they get them they shouldn't be gouging us. Funny thing if the government raised taxes on people they'd be crying up and down the storm. Let these billionaires make a fortune, oh it's okay. People you've got to wake up

[@yoshy2628]

Some sailors got a very tight monthly budget, for some that extra 250 per month is too much.

[@matteframe]

@@yoshy2628 so they don't get fast internet. My point is, 5 years ago it would have cost 10s of thousands of dollars for starlink speeds, if you could even find a consumer product to do it. At least $250 is achievable.

[@Steve-qn8gn]

@@yoshy2628then they can’t afford the luxury.

[@vince4835]

Tim, you do a really good job of communicating. Well done!

[@k1mgy]

I wish Starlink was listening. Having an internet connection while traveling on the open sea is a huge safety gain. Using the service to watch videos is not on my menu. But getting accurate and timely weather data, connecting with shore-based support (engine trouble, for example), and keeping loved ones assured with our progress reporting are all extremely valuable. I wish they would offer a lower-speed version so that email, text messaging and basic phone service stayed up.

[@grandsoleil56]

They could even make a slow connection for less $ for sailors even 1 or 2 mbps is enough

[@2011blueman]

That's what Iridium is for, and why every sailboat I know that sails internationally has an iridium satellite system.

[@bradley3549]

I think you're onto something. Even though Iridium GO is a thing, having a single service that can do both sure sounds like a good idea. Honestly no reason why they can't just make that the default behavior rather than shutting off access completely.

[@jasongrinnell1986]

@@2011bluemanexactly, I think some people would complain no matter what.

[@Gnosim]

Whats the speed on iridium? Whats the bandwidth? Whats the monthly cost? There are options to Starlink, but thats like going back 20 years to dialup era for same price lol.

[@mykinchesapeek]

Well done, as always. Thanks for doing the digging and the honest (and spot on!) explanation of what it all means.

[@evinwhiteson4902]

The way i see it. 250.00 a month for internet at sea is cheap as chips. 8.00 a day. I remember intennet caffe at 6.00 per hour or maybe 2.00 at a cheap shop. The ability to pause is key for me. If that goes away, so do i.

[@williamSailingWindDragon]

Very level headed expiation of the current situation! Thanks

[@wesleyw.terpstra1902]

You're right that infrastructure for boats costs more, but for the wrong reasons. Starlink satellites are not in geosynchronous orbit. So they MUST have enough satellites to cover the ocean, just to get good coverage on land. ie: each satellite goes all the way around the Earth, so you need to fill that ring with enough satellites that your target service area is always covered. However, Starlink satellites can communicate with three things: your dishy, a ground-based access point, and each other. To service the land, the dishy sends to the satellite which sends to the ground-based access point. On the ocean, there is no ground-based access point, so instead, your dishy talks to the satellite which talks to a satellite which talks to a satellite which eventually reaches a ground-based access point. So to service requests on the ocean takes significantly more power and bandwidth than over land.

[@FlipCouvillion]

Anyone here remember pagers? In the beginning only ER doctors could afford them. Before they became completely obsolete they offered unlimited text for about $8 a month.

[@doonhamer252]

Remember VHF radio tel service .. my trucks all had the,..

[@RonKris]

I remember 8 track tapes....

[@doonhamer252]

@@RonKris I remember roadsides festooned like buntings with jammed tapes ... sitting for hours in a sleeper rewinding them along with the 4 tracks..

[@Sembazuru]

ER doctors and drug dealers... ;-)

[@cam545]

One of the problems not mentioned here is ground stations. Satellites require ground stations to function. Until there is a heavy saturation of inter-satellite links (laser), data must be transferred via (legacy) radios from sat to sat until there is a sat with a viable ground station link. Since there are no ground stations in the middle of the ocean, this makes it very hard to predict throughput/load/bandwidth/etc throughout the system, possibly degrading service for people that are using the service according to the agreed terms.

[@AarononYoutube]

50gigs will stream more than 100 hours of KZbin at 480p, honestly do we all really need to watch 3-4 hours of KZbin everyday? I guess on an ocean passage that might be nice, but I'm going to blow your mind right now; Every movie ever made in existence is on the internet and available to download right this second.

[@tyvandm]

Also, what's the point of going to sea if you're just going to spend the whole time watching TV? Seems like an expensive and bumpy couch to me!

[@TheBowen747]

a very fast cabnle internet connection ,frostwire, expressvpn and a windows laptop and 3 external usb internet antennas and one very big ass external hard drive for storage.. in two years you can collect over 5 terebites of movies.. tv series, and youtube videos.. when i hit the water next year, ill have all the entertainment i will ever need.. and i wont even have a cellphone on my boat. gunna toss that sucker in the water...

[@ronclancy40]

Starlink sats are in low earth orbit (LEO) which means they orbit faster than the earth rotates in order to stay up in orbit (generally about 30,000 km/h) - as opposed to geosynchronous orbit (such as most television and communications satellites) which orbit at the same speed that earth rotates (roughly 18,500 km/h). What this means is that they need more satellites, moving at faster speeds in order to make sure that you always have satellite coverage. Also, the lower down a satellite is, the smaller its coverage area, again necessitating more satellites. Priority for the early satellites was for the orbits that would cover high population densities, however now as they complete the network, the lower densities are also being filled in - remember this is Starlink’s main competitive advantage that they cover areas that are not well served by high speed Internet (let alone affordable broadband). All of this is to say that your analysis at 8:55 is a little bit off - there is actually no additional incremental cost to Starlink for the offshore coverage since the satellites must move through those areas of spares population regardless as they orbit in LEO. What is different is that Starlink has competition from those lower cost options that you mentioned via cellular networks for land-based customers. Furthermore, Starlink could make agreements with those cell providers and make use of a hybrid cellular/satellite configuration in order to achieve max speeds while reducing traffic on the space segment of the network. So all that to say that the only differences between at-sea and near-shore or onshore is competition and that at-sea customers are more willing to pay more because of fewer options - both things that you touched on. And totally agree that this absolutely mirrors the cell phone wars of the late 90s and early 2000s.

[@GregiiFlieger]

Small tidbit- the first sstarlink sats were for connecting the financial institutions (stock market transactions) and cost a fortune to use. They had better latency (speed) which enabled faster transactions wich generated huge $s out of milliseconds. Time is indeed money!

[@battlehymn6389]

On the satellite coverage of starlink ... no. Starlink is contellations of leo sattelites that basically fly across the sky in formation. The dish is actually a phased array antenna that can track and steer the beam to multiple sattelites near simultaineously ... as one sat begins to pass out of view the next sat in view becomes active. In a maritime environment the signal has to be crosslinked from satellite to satellite until it gets a sat in view of a NOC ... could be 2 hops, could be 10. There are near impercetable breaks in the data stream, vpn services don't like it and often drop. All of these extra crosslinks do have a monetary value for starlink. Most boaters are using either the RV or Business antenna, which arent really designed for marine use, the roll, pitch and yaw of a boat will excessively wear the tiny stepping motors. With US DoD and many commercial shipping companies contracting Starlink services i suspect they are going to be a bit more draconian in enforcing the terms of service so they can more accurately determine what bandwidth they can guarantee to those contracts. As it is, many boaters are intentionally and willfully breaking the terms of service which they agreed to and are now angry Starlink has finally had enough ... Havent seen the approvals for amazons service ... Also ... no I dont work for Elon ... but I am a communications manager for a very large shipping company.

[@omstout]

THANK YOU !

The reason why Starlink is doing that is that their satellite mesh is fed the data by ground stations. They cannot have any ground stations in the ocean, so getting the data there requires many more hops between satellites and loads the mesh significantly more than a typical ground usage. (The low earth orbit satellites are always orbiting at high speed, so there are no satellites above a certain location permanently.)

[@jmsask]

We received a email 4 months ago from Starlink (ground based) saying our service will be cut back because we use to much data (2 seniors with IPads on most of the time and internet TV so we were sometimes using 1T an month so we cut back on our usage to prevent our service from being downgraded. Yesterday we received a email saying that our service will not be downgraded and we can use as much data as we want anytime peak or off peak times as well our monthly cost will be going down and if we want we can buy a additional dish for 20% ($1000) of what we paid for our present dish. It’s all a bit confusing just like Twitter 🤪

[@doonhamer252]

we did too , and it's our getaway cabin at lake ..

[@inqonthat1463]

I liked your video and learned a few things about billing options. I just have the static land version at the moment. I did want to comment on how Starlink works in relation to your comment about out in the ocean. It doesn't really cost them more, but it is a limited resource (at the moment). Two things are going on: (1) There are pretty much the same number of satellites over any given latitude at any one time. IOW, there are just as many serving over the mid Atlantic at 40.7 degrees latitude as there are over New York city. Since there are no users out there (relatively speaking) the satellites have really nothing to do. Having anybody hitting one would be just free money to them. (2) BUT...over land, when you browse to some site, it goes to the satellite and then directly back down to a ground station then to the site. At mid-Atlantic, that satellite that is serving the boat, can't see the ground station. It must relay to one or more other satellites to finally reach the ground station. So... you are using more resources for your connection out in mid ocean. The problem is... the first generation of satellites did NOT have this relay capability. It is my understanding that the first ones that did are the ones launched on a polar orbit out of Vandenberg in California... and there are very few of those satellites comparatively, but enough to handle the current high-end ocean customers (and the military). As time goes on, all the satellites are supposed to have that capability and hopefully there will be no reason for high costs, except to gouge what the market will bare.

[@ronblack7870]

it's not gouging. i hate how people think a business making money is evil. NO people expecting free stuff is EVIL. consumers are the biggest parasites around. like blaming oil companies for global warming. absolutely wrong. it's the users not the suppliers that cause the problem

[@inqonthat1463]

@@ronblack7870 Well, maybe in your mind the word gouging conjured up negative visions of some socialist. I don't have any problem with their capitalism. The point I'm trying to make, Starlink has limited resources at the moment, so they can justify the huge price for mid-ocean Internet AND they have to, to keep it from overburdening the current resources. Once they flesh-out with interlinking satellites, I'm sure they'll re-address the "bottom line" where the lower price can permit private sailors of sub-million $ boats to justify getting it and thus make even more profit by numbers.

[@guenther1]

Hey Tim, thanks for your quick response to this recent news. Always appreciated. Cheers.

[@JohnBraman413]

if you do business from your boat, should be able to deduct cost as a business expense.

[@JosePedroEspinosa]

Here in Chile, today, Starlink Chile is offering a maritime plan worth Ch$257,411 (Chilean peso) per month, that is, US$320.21, with equipment worth Ch$2,536,000, which is equivalent to US$3,153.84.

[@2011blueman]

Here in the US the maritime plan costs $250 a month now, so you're being ripped off due to exchange rates.

[@jwstolk]

@@2011blueman Starlink prices are different in each country, depending in local internet prices. I'm paying about $70 for (non-mobile) Starlink in the Netherlands.

[@MicPain]

Glad I've waited. I'll continue to wait to see the Amazon offering in 2024.

[@ivojara]

Yeah, maybe in 2024 they might get a rocket into orbit... 🤣

[@skywongsuwan365]

Launching a single satellite into space can cost anywhere between $10 million and $400 million, depending on the vehicle used. A small launch vehicle such as the Pegasus XL rocket can lift 976 pounds (443 kilograms) into low-Earth orbit for about $13.5 million. That works out to be almost $14,000 per pound.

[@jwstolk]

The re-usable Falcon 9 flight costs is about $20 million for 55 Starlink v1.5 satellites, 675 lb each, so about $540 per pound. (Internal cost for SpaceX. External customers pay upto $60 million per flight, still 10x cheaper than Pegasus XL.)

[@cinemaipswich4636]

Starlink has just deployed a set of "high Earth orbit" (instead of the common low Earth orbit) satellites. They are further away with a bit of time lag. There are only a few of them and they were deployed for airlines, ocean-going freighters and cruise ships. They are huge, compared to the earlier version.

[@Araye]

these satellites are for (what we call) backhaul functions. they are not used by the subscribers on the ground.

[@HVM_fi]

Both 1.5 and V2 minis have laser links, also so few of V2 have been deployed that, those can't really yet to make difference in coverage. And 1.5 and V2 are near same orbital height. There are V2s in 950 km orbit but those are for SDA e.g. military coms.

[@josephplace9754]

I just got my Starlink with a Roam/Mobile Regional service for my boat on Lake Ontario. This works for what I am doing since not on the Ocean. The option for the mobile priority that allows for use in motion and on the water is like double to cost and only 50GB. The Canadian price I see is $320. As Tim says this will all change. So stay awake!

[@rfdinesen4027]

Thank you. Very helpful.

[@TobyDK91]

It's one of the best use cases for their product. I can't believe they would make it this difficult/expensive to use it that way. If i was Starlink i would do everything to prove they power of my product.

[@BangBangBang.]

You need to see that Elon Musk just cares about bringing in tons of money from his customers while him and his company is always focused on government money (Tesla tax credits, SpaceX competing with NASA, etc)

[@gabedude68]

How much does it cost per Gb? That makes the difference between it being extortionate and the price of a burger. I get 6Gb a month on my smartphone plan. How much would that cost me?

[@jaimeduncan6167]

There are many reasons, including the fact that they need to provide land users that are using the service according to the contract, and minimal bandwidth to comply with the regulation for the frequency lease.

[@ronblack7870]

@@BangBangBang. well he has spent megatons of money on the system and they are not yet breaking even . so there is nothing greedy about it. they have like a million customers so far. that's only maybe 150 million/ month . yet it costs like 15 billion to put the system up . and they have operating costs as well . spcex6 has over 6000 employees.

[@eiloen]

I got that email.... I'm a TRUCK DRIVER. I couldn't sail anywhere if i wanted to!

[@rainfinger]

You are doing an amazing job, keeping us informed, especially about Starlink.

[@tyvandm]

Regarding cost over sea vs over land - Starlink is very different from satellite internet before. The satellites are not geosynchronous!! That means they are not stationary over an area; instead they use a vast network/constellation of little and relatively inexpensive satellites all zipping around and communicating with each other. This means that the coverage at sea is mostly just "accidental". Of course they are happy to proved service (and collect revenue) by supplying internet to boats at sea. But those satellites would be there regardless even if they only wanted to provide internet to land. So no, it is not more expensive for them to provide internet to boats. They just know that people with boats are more likely to accept a higher price tag. I've been waiting to see what happens with starlink to see if I get it. Thanks for testing the waters for the rest of us!

[@bryantarms]

From what I understand: The number of starlink satellites over any latitude is effectively constant. But, they need to relay each other's signals to one that is over a ground station. Apparently that becomes more difficult as the amount of satellites that need to relay signals increases. That and the capacity of ground stations seem to be what's limiting starlink for a lot of regions. Also, some jurisdictions are preventing ground station installations.

[@johnmagnan759]

I can't even begin to imagine how much this infrastructure is costing. Heck the rocket launch alone. What is it like 15-20 satellites per launch? Like Bryant mentioned all the ground stations needed. I'm pretty sure Starlink is operating at a loss right now. Now Amazon is wanting to put their own version of starlink in the sky. Me personally could get by with the $250 plan on a boat. I'd be mainly just be using it for weather updates, and doing research on how to fix problems that come up on the boat if I can't figure it out. 50Gig should be plenty of data for that. Last time I did the cruiser life style there was no civilian internet and GPS was unaffordable. Yah I'm old!

[@smilesm1a262]

We used to use iridium in The antarctic those plans were something like 5k a month for 10gigs 250$ sounds like a bargain

[@Regal2800]

Traditional marine satellite internet is still insanely expensive. $250 a month for the speed starlink offers is a great price.

[@DrRusty5]

The issue is the service there doesn't seem to be a difference between the service offered on land or at sea? So the only reason for the higher cost is it seems a bargain against other existing options.

[@Regal2800]

@@DrRusty5 Technically the marine starlink panel is higher latency, but yes you are right. He is charging more because comparatively speaking it's still a 'great deal." While I understand how his pricing might seem unfair, his service is still far better and cheaper than his competition so I still view it as a "win."

[@fatherwilliam7256]

I know the $250 a month for only 220MBps seems expensive to folks who have gotten used to sub $100 per month Gigabit terrestrial broadband in urban areas. But sailors at sea have been paying around $100 per month for Iridium Go service that has a 2.4 kbps (no that's not a typo) data rate that reminds me of my childhood CompuServe dial up. I think sooner rather than later, Starlink will treat RV's and Sailboats the same and allow the RV service to be used within a couple miles of the coast as long as they are "stationary", meaning anchored or in a marina. The easiest way to do it would just be to geofence the unit when you power it on with a rule that says something like, "the service works only within 250 meters of the powerup location". Just my opinion. I could be wrong.

[@2011blueman]

You're assuming that Starlink doesn't go out of business. I think it's going to go bankrupt just like Iridium originally did.

[@Shrouded_reaper]

@@2011blueman Starlink is currently billions in the black and growing massively every year. Do try to get your information from places other than CNN.

[@skipjacksailing8986]

Thanks for this timely video. I was planning on getting Starlink (thinking it was to be at $130/mo) in just a few months. Well done.

[@shadowsandfire]

As a kid I watched startrek and and wished I had a communicator and when the motorola startac 3000 dropped in the 90s i said to my mate look this is literally the startrek communicator from 15 years ago and we just both sat there spinning out that what we watched as kids is now a reality, now i look at today and see the replicators as 3d printers from digital to physical in minutes, i cant wait to see where we will be in 50 years, BEAM ME UP SCOTTY!!!

[@LG-qz8om]

What about Emergency service. On land we had to include 911 & GPS positioning emergency service. I would expect that same from every provider.

[@omstout]

Imagine NOT being able to send an SOS because the JackAss in the sailboat pitching about watching reruns of Friends while uploading his kids Only Fans accounts...

[@3rdWest]

Hope all is well. I'd help if iI could. And yes, starlink's new plans do sound like the early days of cellular.

[@dw4834]

what you call early days of cell plans is pretty much the modern setup in australia lol

[@doonhamer252]

considering I use to pay 6 bucks-ish a minute for sat phone service ..working in Sub- Sahara Africa with a Calgary phone number .. was cheaper to travel to town and use the consular phones a data links ..

[@tlgibson97]

I think the land-based Roam plan is all non-priority. The new plan gets you the certain amount of priority internet. When that runs out it goes ack to the same speed you get from Roam. I would think unless you are moored near a city, you won't notice much of a speed drop because traffic will be low. I don't have it so I could be wrong. But I am looking to pick it up soon and will get the $250/mo plan. We still work from the boat and it is worth the cost to us at this time.

[@davidwarnes5158]

The biggest reason for the starlink changes ,, is that us boaters found a great loophole and had the world, but instead of staying quiet they went shouting and bragging on every media N.a. na na , and here we are , the secret is out and the loophole will close,

[@paulkopp3634]

Or , the loophole was placed like a baited hook .

[@davidwarnes5158]

@@paulkopp3634 look at the sailing world compared to van livers , its a tiny market , the amount of live aboard that actually move country to country is a fraction of less than0 .25% of 1% the population ,, so no more like he didn't evan think about sailing , and still doesn't, but one of his staff read whats happening , for get live aboard, most don't leave there local area so not effected

[@cwgruber1]

@@paulkopp3634 Yep people rushed out and bought hardware who were going to by now....

[@cwgruber1]

@@paulkopp3634 Yep people rushed out and bought hardware who were going to by now..

[@davidwarnes5158]

@@cwgruber1 still loads will buy , its still a great deal ,

[@westmc45]

I bought my starlink here in Mexico its 1350 pesos per month which is about $72 a month and 40 pesos per GB which is about $2.00 per GB so for me its cheap

[@TheThunder005]

Switch on/off billing is simple, Starlink made it when you switch on, it converts your entire month to the new plan for the month, even if you turn it off.

[@TheStealthbob]

The one thing not mentioned, the inter satellite links are not established in a meaningful way, so the down link is a possible bandwidth limiting issue. No ground stations out there so everyone is sharing the limited available downlinks.

[@frankstocker5475]

Let's buy a boat & escape from this mad world. "Only if we can have Starlink". Hello.

[@CharlesAnsman]

😄

[@LilyGazou]

It’s like the people who tell me they are going camping but show me pictures of themselves inside their giant trailers equipped with big TVs and all the modern conveniences. I think there is more adventure in ocean cruising though.

[@MarinaBatham]

Thank you. This is the best explanation I have seen yet!

[@itmike23662]

Tim, beware turning your dish on/off. If you 'land' in a country where service isn't offered, you might not reconnect.

[@TheSharkGirls]

Yeah nah on the Starlink. $250/mth is crazy. Thought about it for the yacht but maybe better off without the distractions, potentially the only ad-free place on the planet.

[@Mike7O7O]

Thank you for the most reasoned brief on what's happening, that I've seen so far. And I don't expect a better one, anytime soon. Experience definitely enables us to take a broader and longer view of events. In my own case, this ability took far too long to develop! ;)

[@ToddMoore1]

👍🏼glad to see you back

[@philiporourke7896]

250.00 smackers and there's cap FOGETABOUTIT! Great vid btw, thanx.

[@allynonderdonk7577]

When you switch plans you have to wait out the rest of your billing cycle to switch back in most cases. That's what I've heard...so you can't just switch willy nilly whenever you want without a penalty period...I think there might be an internal tier system to that governs how quickly you can switch.

[@LG-qz8om]

Over 70% of Earth's surface is water. That means those satellites doing next to nothing. What are they worried about? It isn't like they'll be that busy in the middle of any ocean.

[@in4theride75]

Correction, it does not cost them any extra to service oceans because of the style of satellite being used. Geostationary satellite such as viasat do cost more to service the ocean because they have a cone of service that has to be directed at an area to supply service. SpaceX satellites are in LEO which means they have to cross the ocean anyway to service land based customers. They only charge more because they can charge more.

[@lyfandeth]

When cell phone plans charged by the minute, cell phones all rounded DOWN the number of minutes you used. So a 2:30 call showed as two minutes, while the billing system rounded UP and charged you for three minutes. Every carrier did this, so if you dared to use 59 minutes on a 60 minute plan, you'd get an extra charge for ten or fifteen overtime minutes. Clever fraud, huh? All it takes is one change in one line of code to correct that, but none of the carriers ever did.

[@NicholasGray]

A few things... it doesn't cost Starlink anything more to operate over water than it does to operate over land. The satellites are not stationary, so they all travel over water to create the constellation that they have now. When the satellites travel over water, they are simply not getting used as much as the ones that are over land. From a financial perspective, they would want more people using the ones over water more often since it allowed them to reduce their operations costs. As far as data goes, 50GB per month is more than enough for the average user. That would equate to roughly 60 hours of Netflix watching or 2 hours per day. When we lived in the RV (family of 4), we used about 65GB per month and that was with me working a full-time job where I was online for 8 hours per day and our children attended online school classes.

[@DvHedensted]

For what the product offers, IMO 250$ is cheap. But as this technologies matures prices will go down

[@maurice_walker]

7:24 15 months later and switch on / switch off is still available. Get a Mobile Regional plan ($150 US / €59 EU) for unlimited data on land. While on the ocean or in motion, switch on Mobile Priority data and pay $2 / GB. Sounds fair and is probably not going away anytime soon.

[@6minutemedia543]

Great explanation. I'm grizzly enough to remember very early cell days. We are on a journey no doubt.

[@WorkhardHDLBTC]

I love how Canadian the “I’m soarry was”

[@kamikazekunze]

I was under the impression that the small dishy is NOT authorized for in motion use. Regardless if you change your plan.

[@lowellmccormick6991]

I see that Delos is crossing the Pacific and has been posting, I think with Starlink. I wonder which plan they are using. The Viasat system they were using was removed because it doesn't cover the Pacific. I think the cost of the Viasat was $5,000/month, if you had to pay the fee.

[@SailingBakoua]

That's not entirely correct.. You don't have to power down your starlink when you go sailing... once you leave hexagonal zone of land your internet will just stop working and then you'll have a choice to opt-in for the mobile priority at $2/Gb that works on ocean. And yes, even when your internet stops working, you can access your account page to do that change.. Then when you get back in the land zone you opt-out and problem solved... That's very reasonable approach! Most of the cruisers spend a lot of time on anchor pretty close to land anyways, which is in land zone per starlink map. instead of getting maritime plan you just pay for what you use. On top of that, they don't charge you for any updates and location data starlink uploads/downloads while connected in motion. This is the best result of breaking their T&C we could get.. They don't want to block us, they would lose tons of subscribers, what would be the point of that?!

[@Streamweaver]

There is a specific package for ships and a lot of sailors are using the mobile base station indented for campers. I'm sure there is some opportunistic pricing going on here on the part of Starlink but this isn't just that. TCP packets ping back and forth, when the packet fails or you fail to get a confirmation, the internet keeps sending it over and over again. So using the wrong service causes more packet problems and you are resending again and again and clogging up the entire network. The sailing package prices in the extra bandwidth you use, and the hardware adjusts faster to reduce the package loss. So again, they may be gouging you on the cruising plan but there is something real behind it all.

[@darrenmanser2847]

Personally I see Elon as a reasonable guy that is probably totally unaware of this as he has a thousand bigger issues to contend with daily. Yes early adopters always face the increased pain of higher prices but I believe if the sailing community is smart and unites under the banner of safety and the wonderful opportunities that starling provides for saving lives the pressure and the marketability of this will encourage special concessions for the sailing community. Possibly

[@jordano6162]

Thanks Tim, really relevant commentary

[@ontheroad_again]

People outside of the USA often don't realise that they have no legal protection against Starlink, whereas if they used a local service their own country laws would/may offer some protection. For example UK, Australia or New Zealand have fantastic consumer protection laws as well as misleading advertising protection laws, unlike the USA.

[@Yura135]

9:20 good points about few customers in the ocean, but... Starlink satellites are not on geostationary orbits, which is a huge drawback of the entire system: they can't target more satellites to the denser areas, every satellite they launch has a coverage band that goes around the world, most of which is ocean. Starlink is literally charging sailors more just because they can, they actually have way more unused capacity over the ocean than over land, and always will, due to how the system is designed. As for "building infrastructure", Starlink satellites have a lifespan of 5 years. Because they are in low earth orbit, they need to constantly boost themselves up to stay in orbit, and fuel runs out. So the entire Starlink constellation of thousands of satellites needs to be re-launched every 5 years. TLDR: Starlink is price gauging because they are desperate to stay afloat a little longer. They will go under as soon as federal/invester money runs out, as re-launching thousands of satellites every 5 years, most of which spend most of their time over the ocean simply is not economically viable. Either that or the .01% will suck up all the money in the world economy, and the superyachts alone will pay for the whole thing.

[@tw6955]

Please consider doing a video on sailboats for tall folks. 6' 5" and good luck finding a boat with headroom and a berth long enough to sleep well in. Thanks.

[@doonhamer252]

my late brother had same problem

[@stargazer7644]

You can't really say it costs more for starlink at sea because they cover more people over land and not at sea. The satellites are in orbit. They don't have a choice of whether to cover the ocean or not. If they want to cover land, then the satellites will a few minutes later be over the ocean. What it does do, is it requires the satellites to relay signals from satellite to satellite to get to a ground station. Normally on land, you go through up to a satellite, then down to a ground station. At sea, they may have to relay you 1/4 of the way around the planet before the packets get to a ground station.

[@crankshaft007]

I think you need to compare it to the satellite mega Yacht prices and services. And you can see why starlink is raising prices to be similar. Why would they want to give it away

[@lachielvaher9168]

I wonder given Tim you are on a Lake... I did not get that email but I have not used my Starlink away from the doc yet.. as my boat is not in the water yet this season... so my question is... do they consider the "Great Lakes" at sea? the satellites that cover the land near the lakes are going to be the same ones that we use while on the lakes.. so.. :D just currious

[@Pixelplanet5]

the comment at 8:50 regarding if its more expensive for starlink to offer service on the ocean would only make sense if their satellites would be in geo stationary orbit which would mean they need to launch a specific satellite to cover a specific area of the globe and its gonna stay there at all times. that is not the case with starlink, their satellites pass over the ocean all the time because they simply have no other choice. If they wanna get full coverage of all the land areas they automatically get almost full coverage of the oceans at the same time. The truth is they charge more for starlink on the ocean because they can and because starlink is not profitable so they need to get more income from ships.

[@MR-yp7mu]

Sometimes it makes sense to be unplugged. I know that people need the internet for work but I appreciate moments when I don't have access to the web.

[@doonhamer252]

in a way it's what offshore is all about, however, there are those that need the security of being infinitely connected like an umbilical.. Tech is moving forward at a fast pace, so options are opening up .. and then there is the peace and quiet offered by the on-off switch..

[@waltsailing2009]

We used att last year -- for a number of months using the international day pass. No SIM card swaps, 10$ per day for first 10 days..then 0 for rest of the month… adds to your plan… same number, unlimited. Worked most places in the Bahamas. We could watch KZbin anchored most places…not perfect, but it worked fine in the Bahamas’s. The cost difference between a local sim and the complication and nuisance made it just not worth the trouble…Our friends used this starlink this past winter… it worked fantastic. Solved the dead areas while off shore in the Bahamas. The question is how often can you switch the plan? Can I put it on the 250 version prorated for a day or two… that’s about all one would need? Would it be automatic? And what defines ocean? If I’m in the icw? Or anchored? Can I activate it while at sea if I need to?

[@johncampbell9216]

Good one, Tim.

[@stanleybest8833]

Terms of Service? A friend had an IMTS mobile phone active in his car when a large piston airliner crashed on takeoff. He parked his car in the middle of the mess, opened the doors, and let every emergency, doctor, fireman, and aviation person call unlimited and unhampered. The result was a mobile phone bill that needed a handtruck. The phone company realized that almost all these calls were dire unselfish emergencies, and they plucked out the monthly fee, circled the rest with a red pen, and made them disappear. Sailboats are among the most likely Starlink users to find themselves in the rescue role. They are the most likely customers to find a collision, fire, piracy, storm wreck, or plane downing of any vessel. ...About sea bandwidth. Sea bandwidth utilizes almost completely unburdened horizontal relay Starlinks. The relay eventually reaches shore based Starlink ground connections. If every Pitcairn, Galapagos, Midway, sailboat, junk, and swordfish sailor surfed Starlink, heavily, they would hardly put a scratch in the service, and they would be dipping into the cheapest bandwidth of all. Starlink was supposed to become friendlier and cheaper. They have lost their way.

[@TheMachoGabacho]

I use Starlink at my house, but I have the mobile package because it was available immediately, and residential was a two year waiting list. Odd, considering it’s the same equipment. Anyway, I just went into the app and looked at the mobile option for use on the ocean, and it says “In motion use supported with approved hardware.” Does that mean you have to buy the more expensive Dishy to use it at sea?

[@SpiralDiving]

Starlink satellites are not geostationary so it doesn't cost them anything more to keep connection at sea I think.

[@davidloewen5528]

Being on the ocean requires use of the new V2 Starlink satellite which can communicate sat-2-sat via laser. There are not very many of these launched yet. So service is limited. Near shore the v1 says can directly communicate with ground. I doubt these expensive rates will last more than a few years.

[@lairdofdunstan1093]

my first cell phone that i used was provided by my employer ,it was the size of a car battery and cost about £1.00 a minute to use ,that was about 40 years ago , now look at what you can get on an unlimited plan, Starlink has different charges world wide , i believe its $50.00 in the Phillipines ,Its £70.00 here in the Uk and $150.00 in the US per month

[@richardstubbs6484]

I don't think it costs starlink much more for maritime coverage because the satellites are set in their orbits anyway giving coverage. What differs is the competition : what else is available on the sea vs on land - other satellite coverage is also expensive...

[@FasterLower]

The satellite costs does not vary with coverage for LEO constelations, like Starlink, Iridium & O3B. The network must be global to provide local coverage. The only potential issue is that the first generation Starlink satellite have to up and down link vthrough a single satellite. So the ground station has to be able to communicate to the same satellite that you are. Ok for coastal but not oceanic. For Geostationary satellites, like Inmatsat and Viasat these are regional/local.

[@sxmNice]

Sat count does not justify cost increase for most oceanic areas. These sats are not geostationary because they are very low orbit, thus you need a constellation of sats with orbit trajectories all over the globe, hence covering most of the oceans.

[@AJA-ne7op]

.... Wired describes the lifecycle of a platform..... "Here is how platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die." The comparison to mobile phone companies will only be valid once there is significant competition. For our use that means Satellite Data aimed at recreational boaters. Once that comes, it is just a commodity where price competition drives the purchasing decision. I'm just afraid that may be quite a few years out.

[@brucemacsr.6776]

That was really a great explanation. Thanks. Send it to all the macro econ teachers you know. It's all in there: supply and demand, elasticity of demand, competition, fixed costs, variable costs, monopoly power, government regulations, and of course avarice. And much more. Oh, also the historical perspective, And maybe send it to the engineering. Heck, put the whole thing on the internet. Oh, yeh. It is. Never mind.

[@MrJhchrist]

I remember getting a $25,000 cell phone bill once while on the first ever unlimited plan, lol. Wonder how long before a family forgets to turn off their dish and the kids blow through a few terabytes at $2/gig?

[@richames3608]

Wow! I thought our $1200 bill was outrageous. I work on the road all week, so we got my wife the free nights and weekends plan. They changed her plan without notifying us, so she was calling me every night for a couple of weeks thinking it was free. We got the bill dropped, because the contract stated that although they had the ability to change the plan, they had to notify you in writing prior to doing so.

[@AmyMrsR]

Sending good vibes your way, I have some heavy personal stuff going on as well and taking some time out for yourself is necessary & good. I had heard about the Starlink Kerfuffle..good video :) ..I remember the early days of cell phones "oh, you want to have a dial tone? That will be extra...text messages???? whooooowheeeeeeee, sign this loan application"

[@AmyMrsR]

@@Toniitony it is a mantra these days

[@Araye]

starlink is not geostationary. that means one satellite does NOT cover a specific geolocation. the satellites are in constant motion and when it leaves the area, then next picks up. (i'm simplifying here because you're always covered by more than one satellite). so the satellite that covers you at first will move to other locations in it's path around the earth. the starlink satellite constellation always moves and covers the entire earth, even the oceans. tl;dr: your explanation of how starlink works is entirely incorrect.

[@pieterbarneveld9518]

When is go my first cell ph in New Zealand the calls cost $.70c/min a txt was $.70c and monthly plan was $70. The ph system cost $16000… you had to order it and wait for the call on the land line to come in and pick it up.. tot was a big deal in the telecom office and people would clap as the deal was done…. Saying that it made me hide money in the marine fishing industry… I could call thru with problems and order stores and fuel and trucks to unload fish for the export market. Things continue to get better all the time .

[@DarkSevariant]

I Heard Starlink's Satellites Cover the Planet, It's Just Some Aren't Active. You May Be 100 Miles from Cook Islands, and There Are Sats Up There, but Not Active Because No Customers. If You're in Shipping Lanes, You May Get Better Prices, Internet Speeds. Yadda, Yadda...Now, I'm Just Rambling. Great Video!!

[@svsaguaro]

You actually don't need to upgrade to enable the $250/mo mobile priority. I have regional roam (high perf dishy) and i can enable it/disable it whenever i want.

[@LaughterOnWater]

The cell phone analogy is spot on. We are in the wild-west of satellite pricing. When the European and Chinese competing satellites go up, it’s going to be quite interesting. There are so many rabbit holes to go down but, I will agree with @tyvandm about one thing: Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites could offer coverage across almost the entire sailable area of the globe. In fact, service over the ocean would be clearer because there are no obstructions across the entire horizon. Additionally, because the density of users in the middle of the ocean is so low, service would be quite fast. It wouldn’t cost the internet service provider anything extra to provide service across the entire ocean because the satellites are already there. Like with cell phones, the end product is going toward cell phones and iPads equipped with satellite connections at the price of something just above regular cell-phone service. Land service will be made moot, just as most people no longer own true copper landline POTS telephones. Amazon Kindle readers came with free 3G and no ads if you bought the most expensive machine. Of course that’s deprecated now, but for a while it was a thing. It’s likely a decade from now there will be some bottom-dollar machine with similar satellite service that will allow you to text, email or browse regardless of your global position. Love watching your channel and hearing your excellent perspectives. Stay safe out there!

[@CaptWho]

The Starlink service is technically capable of working worldwide right now. The satellites are designed to communicate with each other via an optical link so that when a one of Starlink's earth stations is unavailable due to a customer being in the middle of the ocean or the system just being down or perhaps bottlenecked, the feed will bounce from satellite to satellite until a working ground station is available. This means that all the infrastructure over the open ocean is incredibly underutilized. There's no way that they can orbit non-geosync LEO satellites to only be over land. I guess that Starlink can look at it a couple of ways. One way would be that there's a huge amount of infrastructure floating around up there for just a few users, so the cost per user is very high. The other way that they can look at it would be that there's all this infrastructure up there that's not being utilized, so any money that they make from customers using it is better than nothing. For now, it looks like they're going with the first scenario, even though my gut feeling is that they'd make more money charging people less and having a significantly larger number of users on the system out there.

[@n86121]

My guess is this may be due in part to international “landing rights” for satellite services. Basically as I recall, the space over a country is considered “sovereign” up to some altitude. So communicating from space to the ground crosses those vertical national boundaries. My wild speculation is nobody cared until those governments realized they could tax it, and therefore restricted it, until they negotiate a deal w provider. For example some countries consider certain satphones illegal. Usually because they are trying to force those under their own laws to use that governments licensed networks.

[@waltobringer2928]

Thanks!

[@zachansen8293]

The cost of supporting ocean service where your satellite cannot reach a ground station is incredibly high, that's why you get charged more for it. I wouldn't assume that amazon will be successful launching a LEO constellation.

[@yowatup9329]

Yo! Thank you at the end with your explanation of why it is expensive and the cell phone analogy is a great one.

[@TimothyWhiteheadzm]

Re: your comment about customers per satellite. In fact the satellites are constantly moving and currently they are doing nothing over much of the earth and they will be over the ocean and available whether or not SpaceX gets customers in that area. The main difference is that there are no land stations so as soon as you get far enough from shore the satellites must relay the signal between them possibly over multiple hops and so the overall bandwidth available may be lower and because SpaceX can't predict where you go you may be competing for bandwidth with land based customers etc. I don't know what distance each individual satellite covers or how many downlink stations they typically have on land. They probably also pay different license's for providing that bandwidth to you, although again I know nothing about spectrum lisencing in international waters.

[@kennethmoore5068]

I wouldn't get too excited about Amazon's service. 15+ years of Blue Origin and they can't even launch their dinky rocket at a useful cadence; let alone the New Shepard or New Glenn rockets.

[@CharlesAnsman]

True