SpaceX Starlink Public Beta Begins: It's $99 a Month Plus $500 Up Front (arstechnica.com) 236
Rei writes: According to an email sent out to the Starlink mailing list, Starlink is now moving from a private, free, invite-only beta to a much larger, subscription-based public beta. Bandwidth estimates have risen to 50-150Mbps, while latency remains similar, at 20-40ms. This is expected to decrease to 16-19ms by summer of 2021. As it is a beta, the email cautions that "There will also be brief periods of no connectivity at all" as they enhance the system. Pricing involves an antenna purchase ($500) and a $99/mo subscription rate. There is no data cap. The beta currently only appears to be for the northern U.S. and Canada, but SpaceX expects to quickly move further south; "near global coverage" is targeted at summer of 2021.
That's quite generous (Score:2)
Re: That's quite generous (Score:2)
I thought they said (Score:2, Funny)
I thought they said it was going to be cheap internet access. It is expensive for what you will be getting. One thing for sure, not for gaming. Streaming could have a lot of buffering.
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No Cap at $99 a month? (Score:5, Insightful)
Still a way, way better deal than Comcast.
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Beware "no cap" though, some ISPs offer it but then throttle your connection when they notice you are trying to use what you paid for. Best to see how it works in practice before shelling out $500 for a modem you can't use with any other ISP.
Pay for beta software??? (Score:2)
Shipping, Rural (Score:2)
Oh, the whining... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is for those in Alaska, the Canadian wilderness, Colombian jungle (you know who), the Australian outback, pretty much whole of Africa, the South pole, all the ships and boats in all the seas, all small Islands that are far from an optical cable, all the planes (maybe), and likely many others as well.
Cable connection (fiber, ethernet) will always be technically superior and more cost effective in densely populated areas, but these cover something like 3% of earth's surface. [livescience.com] and not all of them have high speed Internet available.
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There are even great swaths of the lower 48 states in the USA that are without high speed internet. Places out west where homes are literally miles and miles away from each other.
Or even a friend looking recently at property in upstate New York. The cable company wanted $5000 to lay a line to where he was looking to build a home.
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We didn't put in an offer because I wouldn't be able to do my job over what I
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Don't forget a bunch of other clients who would be happy to pay extra for prioritized bandwidth and latency, like stock exchanges, the military (any military), the owners of large yachts.
I just checked the pricing for Iridium, and $99 buys you 90 minutes voice or the data equivalent. Which, sure, if you're climbing a mountain on your own you can't replace due to the size of the device, but in a lot of other cases it becomes obsolete, as do other companies that have launched on SpaceX rockets, like SES.
Fuck that shit (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Fuck that shit (Score:5, Informative)
This is why their recent advertising for it calls the service "better than nothing".
As lots of people pointed out, this is not completing with FTTH or existing cable installations. It's competing with other satellite services, and it looks competitive there.
Re:Fuck that shit (Score:5, Funny)
Too expensive
Yea why the fuck would I pay $99/mo for 50-100mb/s when I already pay $70/mo for 18mb/s?! Fucking garbage!
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Re:Too Expensive (Score:5, Informative)
For a lot of people/businesses this would be great. I've worked in businesses with hundreds of sites where broadband is completely unavailable that would snap this up without thinking at this price. Satellite networking isn't going to compete on price if you're in a densely populated area where top-end wired or wireless connections are available and cost effective, if you're somewhere where you're stuck paying $25-50 a month for less than 20Mb/s then $100 for 50-150Mb/s isn't exactly a rip off even for a home user.
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That doesn't really solve the problem though, so the called "digital divide".
Now you can get half decent internet, although 50Mb is not enough for some services already, but if it's expensive then it still puts you at a disadvantage compared to people who can get cheap fibre.
With COVID-19 it's become an urgent issue as children have to take classes from home and parents have to work from home. Often the people with poor broadband are the least well off too, forced to live in less desirable areas because the
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My point is only that if we want it to solve this problem it will probably need some subsidy.
That's the modern business plan, right? Find some way to convince the government to give you profitable subsidies? Like selling a $250 antenna for $500 and then getting the government to subsidize it at $500, too?
To be fair, I have no idea how much it costs to build the antenna, it might well cost $500 at this point (in small volumes) and come down later. But the subsidies won't be reduced voluntarily...
Re:Too Expensive (Score:4, Insightful)
Well internet should be a public utility like roads and water and electricity. If it is run by private companies rather than being nationalized then there should be a universal service requirement. For remote areas where apparently the cost of running fibre is too much then satellite might be a good alternative.
Having said that I'd be a bit concerned that rural areas would still be left behind. 50Mb and 16ms ping was okay in 2005 but as everyone moves on to gigabit fibre it's going to become limiting, especially as the spectrum is shared and limited.
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50 Mbps is more than enough to do anything but stream 4k video. You can have multiple [compressed] 1080p streams going in that. It's really not a problem. 16ms latency is no problem either, it would only affect pro gamers or really fast typers on a CLI session. Most people will never notice. It will be essentially imperceptible on VoIP for example.
Maybe once VR is widespread it will be an issue, but not until then.
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it's not even the bandwidth, it's the latency. I'm in a similar situation to you; our satellite connection is 'okay' for streaming, impossible for gaming, and frustrating as all fucking hell for VPN. Cellular tends to work if you have a single device, but if you try sharing that connection it gets throttled.
In all honestly I think we'd pay triple what starlink is asking for, if it gave us a connection on par with cable. (2 adults working from home, plus kiddo needing distance learning while in school.)
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I think this will help the digital divide. In poor areas you will likely see local community centers, schools, libraries etc get a dish and provide computer terminals. You might also see internet cafes provide such services for free to drive foot traffic. It will help people upload their resumes, do basic banking, exchange emails, and access online government services where this was previously impossible. I just think you are missing the key thing - some areas are truly internet deprived.
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Public terminals don't help with the digital divide very much. Aside from privacy issues when doing things like banking or email, the two big use cases are studying from home and working from home. It's clearly not going to be possible for large numbers of people to use the service for 8+ hours a day 5 days a week.
Re:Too Expensive (Score:5, Interesting)
Those of us that have internet in the country now like myself have already paid more than this for setup and operation.
Three years ago my nearest tower was 19.7 miles from my house. To have a solid connection they recommend a 3.2 ghz licensed radio. Which I had to purchase. And 120$ a month rate for 25 mbps unlimited plan. 40 ft pole all installed with radio was 1200$, at least they had 12 month payment plan.
So 500$ self install for 500$ doesn’t seam bad to me. Though I will wait until enough sat’s are up to have uninterrupted connection.
Lusers with gigabit to your house for less than 100$ free install, and complain about a 10$ a month, please do not apply.
Re:Too Expensive (Score:5, Interesting)
Those of us that have internet in the country now like myself have already paid more than this for setup and operation.
Three years ago my nearest tower was 19.7 miles from my house. To have a solid connection they recommend a 3.2 ghz licensed radio. Which I had to purchase. And 120$ a month rate for 25 mbps unlimited plan. 40 ft pole all installed with radio was 1200$, at least they had 12 month payment plan.
Another data point: I'm also in the country, and to get a decent connection to my house I had to get a licensed microwave relay link. $6000 for the equipment (both ends) and installation, and $450 per month for 100 mbps unlimited (symmetric). I didn't need a pole; the tower my house connects to is on a mountain so there's plenty of elevation on that end to avoid obstacles. The microwave dish is on my roof.
To those who are undoubtedly thinking that $450 per month for Internet is ridiculous, I consider it just a part of the cost of living where I want to live. Given what a house and lot the size of mine would cost in places where fiber is more readily available, I'm money ahead: I save more than $450 per month on my mortgage payment.
So 500$ self install for 500$ doesn’t seam bad to me.
Seems absolutely fantastic to me.
Though I will wait until enough sat’s are up to have uninterrupted connection.
Lusers with gigabit to your house for less than 100$ free install, and complain about a 10$ a month, please do not apply.
I'm actually getting fiber, in the next week or two. A bunch of neighbors got together and paid an ISP that has fiber running alongside train tracks a couple miles from us to hook us up. Per-home cost to get connected is $5k, but then I'll be able to get 1gbps down / 100 mbps up for $100 per month. Since my monthly Internet cost is going to drop by $350, I'm seriously considering spending part of that on Starlink as a backup. I'll wait and see how reliable the new connection is (the ISP has a mixed reputation) first, but if it's at all flaky it'll be worth it to me to pay another $100 per month for Starlink as a backup.
What will be even better is if there's a way to enable/disable the subscription as needed. My brother-in-law just bought a cabin and this would be a great option for getting Internet there. Much better than HughesNet -- higher bandwidth, lower latency and I think maybe no caps? I wouldn't want to pay for it year round, but a few weeks here and a few weeks there would be great. And I'd have no problem shelling out $500 for the equipment.
Re:Too Expensive (Score:5, Interesting)
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The top line Internet where I lived two years ago was 100 Mb/s, 1 GB cap, ~$100/month. Starlink seems pretty competitive with that, and you can take it with you.
My relatives in the country, where Starlink is actually targeted, have "up to" 10 Mb/s, 500 ms ping, 1 GB cap satellite for $100 a month. Starlink is a godsend there.
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Why not just tell them to offer it for free and pay customers to have a dish, it'd be just as insightful without understanding the finances... For a lot of people/businesses this would be great. I've worked in businesses with hundreds of sites where broadband is completely unavailable that would snap this up without thinking at this price. Satellite networking isn't going to compete on price if you're in a densely populated area where top-end wired or wireless connections are available and cost effective, if you're somewhere where you're stuck paying $25-50 a month for less than 20Mb/s then $100 for 50-150Mb/s isn't exactly a rip off even for a home user.
Exactly. This starts making better broadband available to ares not well served due to low population density. At those speeds, sharing an antenna between several locations would be a way to lower the upfront costs as well as the monthly costs. Netflix recommends 5 MBPS for HD movies, for example, so allowing for various losses if you allocate 15MBPS per user you could conceivably have 3 - 10 people on lime concurrently. Granted, that won't work for someone whose nearest neighbor is 30 miles away, but it do
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You're an idiot.
That's also an opinion.
Re:Too Expensive (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not the AC poster but agree with him: zenlessyank is an idiot.
Re:Too Expensive (Score:5, Informative)
Its not an opinion, and they're almost certainly wrong when they say "Its too expensive". An opinion would be: "I don't like the price."
There is an objective truth regarding whether the market will or will not pay for something, and many many already pay upwards of $100 a month for broadband, particularly in rural areas, and $1000 for other providers' Satellite internet equipment, or $1000 for an iPhone, and those services are successful despite having a fraction of the performance.
A less than $1000 equipment+install is pretty darned dirt cheap compared to many options.. hell getting a DIA fiber circuit to a remote area can be more than $10,000 in install.
Its probably necessary to understand that Satellite services such as this are Not for people who are in the dense areas where an inexpensive DSL, Cable, or FttH internet connection is available.
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I would say it is too expensive. The whole point of starlink originally was to bring "cheap internet everywhere". This pricing scheme is missing their declared main target audience.
If anything they should have tiered service - cheaper and slow for those that just need anything to get on the internet, and more expensive "I've actually got the spare cash in my budget for decent speeds".
The biggest kicker though it the stupid antenna. The same people who they want to serve ( rural areas where there is no other
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What part of "public beta" do you not understand? Pricing may or may not in any way reflect the final market price. But considering that they're primarily targetting rural areas that currently have few if any options, $100/month *is* cheap - heck, it's cheaper than a whole lot of existing options in better connected areas. I pay $60/month for 20mbps from the only provider in my area. They'd be happy to sell me a more expensive plan, but having tested it their hardware can't actually deliver.
Also, you n
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I'd love to try it out, and get away from the hot mess that Charter / Spectrum has become over the years
Based just on this statement I would say that you aren't the target audience for Starlink. Starlink is geared more to areas that cannot get any form of hardwired connection. As an example, I would say that I would be a more typical customer Starlink is geared to. Currently the only Internet connection I have access to is a cell based system that tops out at ~2mbps and isn't all that reliable (the Internet connection will just stop working for extended periods). I must confess that I do have access to geosyn
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I think you misundestand; there are A LOT of people who would love to live in a sane rural environment with cheap property but can't because they rely on internet access for work.
Also I think you're naive as to how much existing satellite services cost (mentioned earlier in this thread, but the most reasonably useful plan from Viasat is 160/month. for less bandwidth and far greater latency) starlink blows them completely out of the water.
I don't think starlink is for city dwellers; there are plenty of other
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The whole point of starlink originally was to bring "cheap internet everywhere".
Well. Its pretty darned dirt cheap for satellite internet - afaik Starlink's point is Not that they will make it cheaper than Fiber or Cable, but that they will solve the performance limitations and make it inexpensive. Inexpensive does not mean $0 it does not even mean less than $100 - relatively speaking things are expensive.
The nearest alternatives that currently exist on the market eg HughesNet come in with $250 upfro
Re:Too Expensive (Score:5, Insightful)
Software Beta testing maybe less costly, but this is HARDWARE, with fixed costs, and not-cheap phased array antennas. They are charging high amounts at first, which is exactly the way Tesla promoted it's initial products. Sell high, verify service / support / infrastructure. achieve manageable volume, sell lower cost later, get more volume.
Not all companies are like Comcast.
Re: Too Expensive (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Too Expensive (Score:3)
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Even under optimistic ramp up its still going to be something for low populated areas
That *is* the plan, yes.
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At the kinds of prices consumers will stand for I can't see it ever paying for itself.
Obviously you have never had to search for decent rural broadband.
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How much do the satellites cost to manufacture, launch, operate and dispose of? How many users can they support?
Re:Too Expensive (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Too Expensive (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it is a way to likely make a lot of money for Space X.
$99/month for a good internet connection is great news to people who live in places with no internet options except satellite or really bad options only like being on edges of cellular networks.
That is actually a lot of people worldwide.
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> only like being on edges of cellular networks.
Oh, it is what means lletter E, which my phone shows when internet connection is really poor.https://tech.slashdot.org/story/20/10/27/2337258/spacex-starlink-public-beta-begins-its-99-a-month-plus-500-up-front?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29#
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$99/month for a good internet connection is great news to people who live in places with no internet options except satellite or really bad options only like being on edges of cellular networks.
Hell, lets assume that you have a 3 year contract for services. $500/3 years ~ $14/month, so your average monthly cost over that 3 years is $113/month. If you can use the antenna longer than that, it goes down.
There are a lot of people in rural areas looking at internet costs well over that. If you need to run a line "the last mile" to your property, you're probably looking at $10k-$20k in startup fees, vs this $500.
In my area Charter Spectrum internet is $70/month when not on promotion. While Starlink is a
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I'm guessing their market is not people in cities with better options for cheaper already. For rural users, who don't have a lot of options for broadband, the upfront cost and monthly fee could be good value for the bandwidth on offer.
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Their market is explicitly not cities, because the one thing that Starlink can't handle is a lot of users in a small geographic area. Each satellite is tiny and has low bandwidth, but looks down over hundreds of square miles. It's ideal for low population density areas, which is the target population.
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Except that you are clearly not the target market if you can already get decent internet at decent price. Many people can not.
Re: Too Expensive (Score:5, Informative)
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Maybe rural land prices start to go up as it becomes more feasible to live there. With more population will come more jobs and amenities, and less reason for people to stay away. It sounds like a bit of a self-perpetuating cycle. Everywhere becomes the suburbs. It won't take as long as you think, considering the majority of the population is currently urban, and each apartment dweller that makes the exodus would take up 5-10x the land footprint they do currently. Multiply that by population growth. Within a
Re: Too Expensive (Score:2)
They are a monopoly at the moment. Once competitors get their constellations up it will be different.
SpaceX will be a testing/demo platform for the others to see if this can be viable.
I am not eagerly waiting that there will be +100k satellites up there from multiple operators, but if this works that will happen.
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Fixed wireless (cellular) runs about $99-130 per month and has data caps. Pushing the equipment costs on the customer keeps the monthly rate as low as possible.
But yeah - if you already have good Internet available, you wouldn't know what a bargain this is. Plus early adopters always pay more.
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Try half that price and a free antennae or dish or modem or wtf ever. .
This is an early adopter beta. Starlink's monthly pricing is identical to what I'm paying for fast rural broadband, which I have because I live on a major street that has cable. In my town there are movie star compounds that because they are away from the road suffer Internet access equivalent to 1980 dialup. These are the customers who have been waiting for something like Starlink.
Re:No other choice (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to affordable for the average person.
It is not being targeted at "average people" (yet). The early adopters will be people in remote areas with no good alternative.
StarLink is $99 per month for 50 to 100 mbps.
Many Alaskan villages pay $1200 per month for a 15 mbps shared satellite connection.
StarLink is 20 times better.
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If remote Alaskan villagers are this service's target audience, Starlink's gonna go under pretty quickly. How many paying customers does it take to cover the cost of even one rocket launch?
Re:No other choice (Score:5, Informative)
A Falcon 9 launch sells for about $50 million. Starlink satellites have a rated lifespan of 5 years, or 60 months. $100/(month*customer), so with 10 000 customers per launch you'd make a decent profit.
I'm unsure how many launches they'll need, and costs are going to drop massively once Starship is available, but I imagine they'll need on something the order of a million subscribers to be profitable in the long run.
One launch contains 60 satellites, so each satellite would have to serve, on average, 166 customers. If one satellite can manage 4 Gbps total, each user would get 24 Mbps. Plenty for gaming and surfing, probably good for compressed video, but 4K is out.
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Re:No other choice (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: No other choice (Score:2)
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This was my thought as well.
Starlink may well exist just to subsidize Falcon 9 launches. Elon is on record saying that their payback time on Falcon launches is 2-3 launches. So every launch after the 3rd is effectively free.
This means that by the time he hits launch 4+, it's a no-brainer to fill the rocket with Starlink satellites and toss up some more. It effectively costs him nothing to do it, and provides a passive income.
The more money this brings in, the further the first 2-3 launches get subsidized. A
Re:No other choice (Score:5, Insightful)
It is not only remote Alaskan villages. But also other places with really bad internet options. They actually exist in surprisingly many places in US and worldwide.
When I was driving through US in 2017 I was surpriced at the number of times I lost cell coverage totally and yet there were houses visible in many of those places.
Further there are many under served areas elsewhere in the world too today with only real option being current fairly poor satellite internet.
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I'm wondering how they plan to serve more dense areas. Are they able to jam more satellites over a specific city to give enough bandwidth? Are they going to just sell 1 megabit internet in these areas and let the brand image take a hit? Jack up the price based on geography so that people in dense areas don't sign up? Or maybe just not enter these markets at all...
I suppose it all depends on how many actually want to sign up. I'm interested in how they handle it if it's more than expected.
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I pay close $80 a month for fixed LTE from verizon and I only get 15 gigs of high speed for that after which its 600Kbps. I don't get any say in how the high speed is allocated either its use it all first than throttle. So there is no slow lane download and ISO overnight etc. Oh and 'high speed' is only about 4Mbps.
So you bet I will gladly pay the extra $19/mo if it means un-metered 50Mbps connectivity. Compared to the costs of getting anything even near to that with the other options available to me, that
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Re: No other choice (Score:2)
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I live in a rural area. I got almost 4 acres of land and a 3000+ square foot house for well less than $200K. People ask why I don't move to a bigger city I tell them when I can get the equivalent house/land 20 minutes from work for the same price I will move.
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Also ... $500? $100/mo? Are you crazy?
You should look into the specs on existing satellite services.
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Also ... $500? $100/mo? Are you crazy?
No, you're the one who's crazy for imagining this is being offered to you .
Re: Bandwith will go down massively. (Score:2)
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Actually the ping times should be much better than current satellite internet as their satellites are much closer.
Re: Bandwith will go down massively. (Score:3)
On the contrary, light moves faster through space than through glass, so starlink is capable of BETTER ping times than fiber. The extra distance to go up and down to the satellites is not much greater than the distance around the surface of the earth, because they're in such a low orbit.
I learned this by watching a youtube lecture by Mark Handley, a researcher in the networking group at University College London.
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I think for most people the issue of latency comes up if they are playing games, not accessing a big provider. If you are playing against someone far away (say US player vs Australian one) then your latency will be limited by the distance between players, not distance to your nearest hop. That would be the fair comparison. Otherwise, sure you can get insanely low latency playing on dedicated hardware against someone in the same room. That's not a reasonable comparison.
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Working from home has made latency an issue for many more people. RDP gets less responsive as latency goes up.
For games most now try to match players who are geographically close to each other to keep latency low. Some also have a "wifi filter" that blocks players on wifi, allowing you to choose to only play against people with wired connections. I expect that will be expanded to Starlink and eventually to DSL as fibre becomes more common.
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I tried it just now, consistently sub 1ms. Windows only provides ms accuracy, maybe I'll try under Linux later.
That's wired gigabit ethernet. I have no idea why yours is so slow... 10Mb ethernet with a hub rather than a switch? Even an original Raspberry Pi 1 can easily get sub 1ms consistently on 100Mb ethernet.
If you look on YouTube there are loads of videos showing 1ms ping times to commercial speed test sites too, e.g. https://youtu.be/52P37iHy9JQ [youtu.be]
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The speed test to ookla seems strangely slow for me, giving 2 ms times to all the nearby servers. Or maybe it is the windows computer that is slow.
Hmm.. no it gives constant 1 ms pings to our servers so it is the speed test I guess.
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You might want to consider checking your local network and router if you get 9ms local pings..
My connection from home to the work servers about 30km away for 120 attempts/2 minutes is:
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.343/0.429/0.646/0.070 ms
So pretty normal and consistent 0.35 to 0.65, those are pretty normal values for me., though I remember at some point in the past having seen a 1.2ms value.
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This service isn't meant for people like you, who live in a city or suburb and already have decent internet service offerings. This is for people who live in rural areas, where cable and DSL aren't reasonable options. There are lots of people who don't have decent high-speed options available, and they'll happily pay $100/mo. for decent internet service.
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Add on the cost of installing the dish too. You can put it on the ground if you have room, roof mount kit is an optional extra and you may need someone to get up there and attach it for you, and then run the cables (power and data) indoors.
Re: Bandwith will go down massively. (Score:3)
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Ok, will you provide that ADSL at that price to my cabin?
My cabin is located about 10km from nearest phone line and the locals say that those lines cannot handle more than 2 mbit adsl..
I talked with the locals as I was thinking at some point of possibly building a private wifi link from there.. but then we got low end 3g connectivity after a new mast was put up and we put a directed antenna up.. so that was dropped.
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Re:Bandwith will go down massively. (Score:5, Informative)
I am sorry but I do not understand what this has to do with the person saying "where can you get unlimited broadband for 10 month and a good ADSLrouter 50$. 100$ is a bit high permonth as i currently spend 40£ for that 50Mbps"
And we telling that that is not an option at my cabin.
There is no cable, no phone(for any reasonable price) and only low end of 3g mobile network available at the location.
That has nothing to do with the companies, here is no business reason to provide service for such few people. Or for governments, as it is not their job to provide me with internet service.
I was trying to comment that the prices he said are only valid in some places and not as example on my cabin.
Maybe I missed something?
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As a rule we don't have ADSL of that speed in the USA. Most of it is puttering around 5Mbps, for $40 or $50-ish.
Some people can get cable internet, I've finally moved into town and have it now. Paying for 400 Mbps, getting about 200. Might consider downgrading to 100 Mbps, which I can actually get. It's forty bucks.
A few people can get fiber, which is an even better deal, but penetration is poor.
Right now this is about the USA, where there are a LOT of people not being well-served by the existing telecoms n
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All Tesla cars are already tracked (if leave the cellular data connectivity switch to on) - that's how you get the traffic-aware gps map routing.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
Well, as a reference HughesNet satellite internet is Download speed: up to 25 Mbps
Upload speed: up to 3 Mbps
The latency on that is pretty bad and their service has pretty strict data caps until it throttles to basically almost nothing.
So starlink should be better connection in most cases.
HughesNet has cheaper "starting at" prices with $59.99/mo for a 10GB/month plan. But even their $150.00/mo plan is only 50GB/ month :(
They do claim that they have no data limits, but after the limit, dialup is usually faster according someone who actually uses the highest tier and often goes over the 50GB.
So if Starlink has better data caps, better speeds and better ping times.. well my friend is sure to swich over. He is no Elon fan boy, but is definitely looking forward to hopefully getting a more reasonable internet connection.
I am personally also looking forward to getting a decent internet to my cabin. Currently I can kind of use cellular data there, but at low end 3g speeds.
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I'd be very surprised if there are no limits at all on Starlink. The available spectrum is shared and they will be dividing it up dynamically.
They might throttle speeds. They might limit the number of customers in an area if too many try to sign up. They might do traffic shaping where the more you use the lower priority your traffic is.
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I would be surprised too if there are no caps or similar.
But given the current limits on satellite internet, starlink should hopefully have higher such due to having so much higher bandwidth available to them compared to traditional satellite internet.
If so, my friend will be happier than with the current service.
Re: (Score:3)
High cost? I think the word you're looking for is "competitive". Huge swaths of the US pay prices on par with what we're talking about here.
For instance, I live in one of the top 200 metropolitan areas in the US [wikipedia.org], but there's only one company serving broadband speeds to my address, and their cheapest unlimited plan costs more than $100/month (it used to cost just $35/mo., but once the broadband DSL competition dried up several years ago, they began raising rates with impunity because of the lack of competiti
Re: (Score:2)
It's more than you get from Exede (Viacom, on Viasat-1) for the same money. Their install price is lower, but not fantastically. And their latency is shit. I was seeing real-world latency of 750ms on clear nights, with minimums of about 500ms. That's worthless for anything interactive, and actually perceptibly annoying while websurfing. A lot of pages require quite a bit of back and forth, third party scripts and so on, just to load the content. These sites are problematic on GEO sat. reCaptcha literally wo