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SpaceX Says Its Starlink Satellite Internet Service Now Has Over 10,000 Users (slashdot.org) 95

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
SpaceX disclosed in a public filing on Thursday that its Starlink satellite internet service now has "over 10,000 users in the United States and abroad." From a report: "Starlink's performance is not theoretical or experimental ... [and] is rapidly accelerating in real time as part of its public beta program," SpaceX wrote in a filing with the Federal Communications Commission. Elon Musk's company began a public beta program of Starlink in October, with service priced at $99 a month, in addition to a $499 upfront cost to order the Starlink Kit, which includes a user terminal and Wi-Fi router to connect to the satellites.
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SpaceX Says Its Starlink Satellite Internet Service Now Has Over 10,000 Users More

SpaceX Says Its Starlink Satellite Internet Service Now Has Over 10,000 Users

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  • One exciting possibility about a fully deployed StarLink, s that you could get a camper van or RV and live pretty well just about anywhere with modern internet speeds.

    Of course you still have to deal with how to get electricity, but it could give some people a lot more freedom that are heavily reliant on network access.

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by One Haff ( 977193 )
      I love this idea as well, but it wouldn't be supported in Beta. From https://www.starlink.com/faq [starlink.com] Q: Can I travel with Starlink, or move it to a different address? A: Starlink satellites are scheduled to send internet down to all users within a designated area on the ground. This designated area is referred to as a cell. Your Starlink is assigned to a single cell. If you move your Starlink outside of its assigned cell, a satellite will not be scheduled to serve your Starlink and you will not receive inter

      • Your Starlink is assigned to a single cell. If you move your Starlink outside of its assigned cell, a satellite will not be scheduled to serve your Starlink and you will not receive internet.

        That's interesting to know, I figured it wouldn't be practical right now anyway with only pretty far Northern locations covered... I hope that's not a limitation that will be carried out of beta, I could see possibly for network planning purposes they might want receivers fixed for a while.

    • There you go (not my video): YouTube - I brought Starlink into the Mountains! Peak speeds of 150mbit/s Off Grid!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

      • There you go (not my video): YouTube...

        Thanks! I should have figured someone already tried dragging one of the beta units out into the woods to try, bonus points for setting up an entire server out there as well...

        I wonder if the faster download speed out in the wilderness was because he was sharing less of the network, though at only 14 miles away I wouldn't have thought there would be much of a difference as to what part of the StarLink network he was using... maybe just less air pollution helps.

        Cannot w

    • God Send for Cottages (Score:5, Informative)

      by mykepredko ( 40154 ) on Thursday February 04, 2021 @04:30PM (#61028606) Homepage

      My brother recently signed up for (cough) Beta (cough) program for his cottage and I asked why as the up front cost ($500 USD) plus monthly ($100) is a lot more than I'm paying right now, and at 100MBps a lot slower, here in Toronto.

      But, my brother's cottage, the current Starlink services is significantly faster, more reliable and cheaper than what he has available to him.

      • How much would the nearest ISP quote to run a cable out to his cottage?

        Pretty sure it would be an astronomically huge number.

        • Not available at all - it's cell service that is licensed to one ISP. Regardless, the cottage is on an island so I don't know what the cost would be.

      • Re:God Send for Cottages (Score:5, Interesting)

        by swillden ( 191260 ) <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Thursday February 04, 2021 @06:20PM (#61029038) Journal

        My brother recently signed up for (cough) Beta (cough) program for his cottage and I asked why as the up front cost ($500 USD) plus monthly ($100) is a lot more than I'm paying right now, and at 100MBps a lot slower, here in Toronto.

        In rural Utah I'm paying $450 per month for 100Mbps symmetric. Oh, and the up front cost for the point-to-point microwave relay was $6000 (I had to buy the equipment on both ends, plus pay for the FCC licensing process). My other option is $100 per month for WiMax which has nominal 15 mbps down and 3 mbps up... but it's heavily oversubscribed and bandwidth drops to nothing as soon as the neighbors' kids get home from school.

        I'd be all over Starlink. In fact I signed up for it, but the coverage over my region isn't yet good enough, apparently.

        As it happens, a bunch of neighbors' HOA paid a local ISP $250k to run fiber to the area, and for $10k I got them to run the line the extra distance out to my house. I should be getting connected in a couple of months, and then I'll be able to get a 1gbps down / 100 mbps up connection for $100 per month. Assuming it isn't too badly oversubscribed, I'll then cancel the $450 per month microwave link.

        So, by the time Starlink is sufficiently-functional in my area, I'll have fiber. I might just subscribe to Starlink as a backup service, though, or to have a mobile receiver I can haul around in my RV, or take up to my cabin (where there isn't even any cell service).

        There is plenty of area where Starlink is a huge improvement over the available options. In many cases, there are existing alternatives other than HughesNet or similar satellite Internet which is slower, more expensive, higher-latency, and with extremely limited bandwidth caps.

      • Yeh i wonder how reliable it is when its raining.

    • One exciting possibility about a fully deployed StarLink, s that you could get a camper van or RV and live pretty well just about anywhere with modern internet speeds.

      Of course you still have to deal with how to get electricity, ...

      Elon is planning to deploy satellites to handle that too ... :-)

    • One exciting possibility about a fully deployed StarLink, s that you could get a camper van or RV and live pretty well just about anywhere with modern internet speeds.

      You can live pretty well just about anywhere without the Internet.

    • boats, campers, being at 15K' or >5Km, small aircrafts, etc.

      The other thing that many ppl are missing is that elon will almost certainly send 100+ to the moon and then to mars.
      Basically, this makes it easy to build a comm net around moon's planets that we are studying. In fact, I am hoping that Starlink will add some laser coms back to earth with these.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Megane ( 129182 )
        The moon, you say? That should be interesting. I presume you've never heard of mascons? [wikipedia.org]
        • who said that the orbits had to be low? You can remain there for a long time simply by being in medium or even high lunar orbit. And without an atmosphere, the distance is not a big dea.
    • I'm just excited by the idea of being able to move somewhere less crowded and still work. When I'm looking at properties and see Hughes Net signs on the corner, I just turn around.

  • Users Needed (Score:4, Insightful)

    by crow ( 16139 ) on Thursday February 04, 2021 @04:15PM (#61028562) Homepage Journal

    Well, if you figure each satellite costs $0.75M between construction and launch (reported numbers are $30M/launch for 60 satellites and $0.25M construction cost per satellite), and a life span of 7 years on average, then each satellite will need 91 subscribers at $99/month to break even, though that's without any operational costs.

    So with 10,000 subscribers, they're covering the costs of more satellites than they've launched, but they need to scale it up to get the per-user operational costs down.

    They're in good shape to be highly profitable as they open it up to more users.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bug1 ( 96678 )

      But the satellites dont communicate directly with your router AFAIK, there still needs to be base stations and terrestrial backhaul to user.

      There will be other significant costs.

      It will be a useful addition to internet accessibility, but there is no long term advantage in providing services for fixed locations via satellite, other than redundancy to backhaul interruptions.

      • But the satellites dont communicate directly with your router AFAIK, there still needs to be base stations and terrestrial backhaul to user.

        The cost of base stations will amount to a rounding error when compared to the cost of launching satellites into orbit every 7 years. It is not like the stations will only work at specific locations, they can be picky and select the most cost effective locations with direct access to fiber internet.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by marcle ( 1575627 )

        Of course the satellite communicates directly with your router. That's the whole point. The backhaul portion is from the satellite to the base station, and from there to the rest of the internet.
        If you don't understand how the system works, you probably shouldn't be criticizing it.

      • But the satellites dont communicate directly with your router AFAIK, there still needs to be base stations and terrestrial backhaul to user.

        The only time your internet provider communicates directly with your router is when its not a fucking router, its a god damned modem.

        You do understand exactly how fucking retarded we just figured you out to be?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by bug1 ( 96678 )

          Read what i said, and think about your response, is it possible you have an anger management disorder ?

    • I looked around and could not find it. How much did Starlink pay for the FCC bandwidth? Was it free? I hope not, the cellco's pay billions and billions for their spectrum.

      • I looked around and could not find it. How much did Starlink pay for the FCC bandwidth? Was it free? I hope not, the cellco's pay billions and billions for their spectrum.

        Satellite spectrum is free of charge because there isn't much contention for it, and because with a little care satellites don't interfere with terrestrial operations. Satellite transmitters are relatively weak and the signals highly attenuated by the time they get to the surface, which is why you need a directional dish of at least a foot or so in diameter to receive them. Transmissions to satellites are also directional.

        The FCC does, of course, have fairly rigorous rules [fcc.gov] defining exactly how the spectru

      • The FCC is actually paying Starlink for providing internet to underserved areas https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/0... [cnbc.com]
  • Here's the problem. They're controlling the bandwidth shares by limiting the per-satellite user count. So everyone on it now is saying it's so fast and responsive. Yeah, because they don't have a realistic number of users. You really think in a dense but poorly wired up area they'll put a cap at X amount of users? Hell no! They'll sign up people until the satellites melt and everyone's sharing dial up speeds. Why would they deny more money? So once this launched, the reviews and accounts are doing to tell a
    • So many musk trolls.

      Look, you are making lots of assumptions which ppl have done on Tesla and SX and nearly all have been wrong.
      As this builds out, things get FASTER, not slower. Why? Because more connections to the ground esp. directly to servers, means that it will be easier and faster to distribute across their network.

  • Anyone noticing the competitors are responding (Score:5, Interesting)

    by FeelGood314 ( 2516288 ) on Thursday February 04, 2021 @05:16PM (#61028782)
    My parents are finally getting highspeed internet in their rural community. My suspicion is there will be a rush to connect a lot of these easy to wire communities before starlink is able to provide them service. Has anyone else noticed the same thing?

    • Re:Anyone noticing the competitors are responding (Score:5, Informative)

      by earl pottinger ( 6399114 ) on Thursday February 04, 2021 @07:21PM (#61029204)
      Yes. Go to the Starlink Reddit, and there is message after message of people saying they have been trying for years to get their ISP run a high speed line and not getting. Suddenly, in the last few months they are posting high speed lines are coming in. Check: https://www.reddit.com/r/Starl... [reddit.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Burdell ( 228580 )

      The company I work for works with a bunch of rural telephone and electric coops around the US. A number of them have been building and/or expanding fiber Internet service (or in some cases, fiber to the neighborhood and wireless to the house) lately due to an increase in grants from the federal government. That's going to increase significantly over the next couple of years as the recently-closed RDOF auction funds start flowing (of which Starlink was awarded nearly 10%).

      Nothing particularly nefarious about

    • Same thing happened with Google Fiber. When they announced that they were rolling out in areas they suddenly got gigabit. And kept those speeds. Which meant Google could get what they wanted (customers with high speed Internet) without even needing to build out. Musk doesn't have the same payoff, so I wonder what will happen when ISPs preempt him.

  • OVER 9,000!!!!

    Way to be precise.

  • when it goes live (Score:3)

    by renegade600 ( 204461 ) on Thursday February 04, 2021 @06:11PM (#61029006)

    so beta users will be paying 99 a month and 499 for equipment, I hate to see what the prices will be when it goes live for the general public.

  • And ye olde lock-in monopolism grip gets tightened. It always is.

  • Only 10000, how is that a game changer in a. world of billions ? Why do we hear so much about Musk and his companies ?

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