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The Internet

Starlink Is Getting Daytime Data Caps (theverge.com) 198

"Internet provider Starlink is reviving the old concept of soft data caps with the introduction of a 'Fair Use policy,'" writes Slashdot reader thegarbz. "Users who consume more than 1TB of data per month will find their connections deteriorated." The Verge reports: Residential customers will now start each monthly billing cycle with an allocation of "Priority Access" data that tracks what you're using from 7AM in the morning until 11PM at night. If you surpass that 1TB cap, which Starlink says less than 10 percent of users currently do, you'll be moved to "Basic Access" data, or deprioritized data during heavy network congestion, for the rest of your billing cycle. If you want to buy more Priority Access data, you can, at the cost of 25 cents per GB, and any data used between 11PM and 7AM doesn't count towards your Priority Access tally. "This announcement comes off the back of a recent article by ArsTechnica, showing that Starlink's median download speed has dropped to 62Mbps in Q2 of 2022 as the network struggles under the load of increased subscriber numbers," adds thegarbz.
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Starlink Is Getting Daytime Data Caps

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  • Who's Daytime are we talking about?

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Whose, not who's.

      Me, I would really prefer to be able to switch to "basic" when I don't need lots of speed and switch to the "priority" allocation when I really do need it.

      • Yes, something like this would be good. It would allow you to be "good fellow user" when just browsing Slashdot or similar and allow someone on say video call get priority.

        • by DarkOx ( 621550 )

          This is my objection to how caps are implemented at most places. I am stuck on verizon LTE.

          I live in rural area - I really doubt the tower is ever truly over subscribed. They sell me 150 gigs of 'high speed' a month; after that is choked down to 600kbps. Now reality is 600kbps is quite painful for a lot of online activities now. They don't play around either - you can watch the counters roll past the 150 mark and very immediately the thruput drops off a cliff. So you can't tell me they suddenly ran out of

      • Does it have to be so net neutral ? how about it punishes transgressors progressively, for example by first blocking all the ads, then blocking things I don't use, like junior's xbox.
    • by idji ( 984038 )
      your own regional daytime.
    • Who's Daytime are we talking about?

      StarLink Internet is provided by satellites in LEO, so obviously, it means daytime in the area covered by the satellite you are accessing.

  • So glad I didn't sign up. Data caps are for the birds. There ought to be a law against them, since we have so many no one knows what they are and you have to hire someone who supposedly does. Except when they don't.

    • by Luckyo ( 1726890 ) on Tuesday November 08, 2022 @03:30AM (#63034773)

      Bandwidth is a limited resource, and you always oversell it because otherwise almost no one could ever afford internet. There are connections that are guaranteed full speed at all times, where they actually give you priority 100% reservation. The cost is usually between 20 and 100 times that of a similar speed residential connection, because that's closer to the actual cost of service at that speed.

      Satellite bandwidth is even more scarce of a resource. Frankly it was surprising they didn't get enough clients to not hit data caps, or that the data caps are so high for satellite internet. You compare this to their strongest competitors like Viasat, and theirs is a ridiculously good offer.

      For now. Wait until they're properly oversubscribed.

    • by dwywit ( 1109409 )

      I'll sign up to your unlimited service just as soon as you make it available.

      Still waiting...........

    • Data caps are for the birds.

      They're not for the birds, provided -

      a) The goalposts aren't moved on you, i.e. you sign up for "unlimited" and then six months later your service is capped.

      b) You're able to pay less for a capped service vs uncapped. My elderly dad would never exceed his cap, so he should be able to pay less vs someone who chooses to pay more for unlimited.

      c) There is an easy mechanism to monitor what percentage of your cap you have used in any given billing cycle.

    • I noticed that my speeds have improved substantially since they put on data cap. I was getting about 50Mb most of the time before, but last night during peak time I was getting 100-150Mb.

    • Starlink isn't really intended for those who have decent options. If you have any wired option of 25Mbps down and at least 5Mbps up, you'll be better off than Starlink. I switched only because the best we could get was 3Mbps DSL. As I cancelled my service, they told me one of my neighbors will be happy because they were only allowing 1.5Mbps for new signups. If Centurylink ever increases their capacity in our area and I can get fast speeds from them, I'll drop Starlink without a second thought and switc

    • My favourite one is "fun size". Nothing upsets a kid more than finding out his Marsbar is "fun size" instead of normal size.

  • As expected (Score:5, Informative)

    by enriquevagu ( 1026480 ) on Tuesday November 08, 2022 @02:31AM (#63034683)

    The area covered per satellite is huge and the bandwidth is shared by all users. Thus, the system cannot provide a good service (i.e. high speed, as in the early network tests) when the number of users grows. Forget about video calls or Netflix.

    • by Bert64 ( 520050 )

      Exactly this.. Anything wireless based is going to be subject to the available spectrum in a given area, with no way to increase that.
      That's why wired connectivity should always be used wherever possible, as you can always add more wires if demand grows.

      • With fiber its simply a new color spectrum running along side the other over the same fiber. Gpon and 10Gpon run side by side with tx and rx also working in different ranges. It beats even running new lines. And while multimode has its limitations, single mode has survived new transceivers, increasing bandwidth by multiple factors. Back in the 90s a company called QWEST ran 96-strand singlemode fiber along all the railroad right-of-ways. This was before we had multicolor tech. Imagine the bandwidth of each
    • To be more precise, each "area" is a hexagonal cell covered by a spot beam, and each satellite provides so many simultaneous spot beams, gradually rotating them as it moves. The aggregate bandwidth per cell can increase over time as the technology advances and more birds are deployed.

    • They should have either expanded the services or not market things they cannot provide.
      This on them for not meeting customer expectations.
    • The area covered per satellite is huge and the bandwidth is shared by all users. Thus, the system cannot provide a good service (i.e. high speed, as in the early network tests) when the number of users grows. Forget about video calls or Netflix.

      This is really only an issue for users of Starlink in areas where Starlink really isn't the best option anyway. Starlink's value is that it provides global access, even in areas of very low population density, where traditional wired or cellular Internet service isn't const-effective. For users in more remote areas, there's no difference between Priority Access and Basic Access anyway, because the satellites have enough bandwidth that they don't have to prioritize.

  • by Alcari ( 1017246 ) on Tuesday November 08, 2022 @02:41AM (#63034697)
    The system with only 20gbps per node would have issues providing enough bandwidth to its users.
  • Well obviously (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DrXym ( 126579 ) on Tuesday November 08, 2022 @02:46AM (#63034709)
    There are a finite number of satellites and a growing number of customers. Services is going to sag in certain locations unless they impose datacaps. Moral here is don't use StarLink unless you have no other choice because it's probably only going to get worse and more expensive over time. It would still be a fantastic option for maritime use and for rural users though.
    • >It would still be a fantastic option for maritime use and for rural users though.

      That and planes are the intended use cases according to Elon Musk, not those who have other reasonable options for internet.

    • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      Military users are also very much primary customer base, as Ukraine's usage of the system has demonstrated so far.

      • by DrXym ( 126579 )
        The military *was* a primary customer base. After Elon threatened to cut service to Ukraine unless he got some money it's safe to say that armies around the world will look for an alternative. He probably lost billions in future military & space contracts because he couldn't keep his stupid mouth shut and tried to extort a government in the middle of an armed conflict.
        • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          That is the narrative in the mass media, which was obviously taken from their twitter cliques.

          In real world, nothing about the idiotic twitter narrative that was propagated throughout media was true. He didn't threaten to switch anything off, he asked Pentagon to pay for it. At no point did the service get cut beyond the standard problems with figuring out which terminals are still under Ukrainian control, and which have been captured by Russians (an ongoing problem which several Ukrainian senior officers t

          • by DrXym ( 126579 )
            He did threaten and the message was received. Doubtless he was told in no uncertain terms of the risk he was putting his existing or future contracts involving SpaceX or Starlink. Absolutely no doubt about it. So he backpedaled as fast as he could. It does not repair the lasting damage he did to his reputation or his companies. He managed to turn a PR win into a monumental fuck up which seems par for the course for him.
            • Doubtless he was told in no uncertain terms of the risk he was putting his existing or future contracts involving SpaceX or Starlink. Absolutely no doubt about it.

              /doubt

              I don't see anyone telling a large company "We'll not give you contracts unless you stop asking to be paid."

            • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

              I have no problem with you holding on to stupid, long debunked conspiracy theories.

              I'm just going to point out how fundamentally idiotic of a statement it is to claim that "if you ask you get paid, we're going to cut you off". It requires delusion so extreme in nature, that this is not something you're going to be talked out on the internet.

              • by DrXym ( 126579 )
                "long debunked conspiracy theories". What are you even blithering about?
                • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

                  >That is the narrative in the mass media, which was obviously taken from their twitter cliques.

                  >In real world, nothing about the idiotic twitter narrative that was propagated throughout media was true. He didn't threaten to switch anything off, he asked Pentagon to pay for it. At no point did the service get cut beyond the standard problems with figuring out which terminals are still under Ukrainian control, and which have been captured by Russians (an ongoing problem which several Ukrainian senior of

        • Wat? You actually think the various militaries won't just pay 1-2 years in advance to ensure coverage anywhere they operate even if they have to go to war? Really?

          • by tragedy ( 27079 )

            The problem is that he's shown his service to be unreliable. Frankly, given his temperament, the 1300 terminals that were apparently cut off probably were not cut off for non-payment. It was probably because he felt insulted after what was said about him after his ridiculous "poll". Currently, Twitter accounts mocking his poorly thought out Twitter subscription plan are being suspended for posing as him and making fun of him due to an ex post facto rule. Even ones clearly marked as parody, which are suppose

        • by DarkOx ( 621550 )

          Sure because other defense contractors are known for providing unlimited amounts of product without payment...

          • Other defence contractors don't act like twits. And they don't offer it free only later to decide we wanna get paid now or else. They act like adults. And full disclosure I worked for one in the 80's. Musk's behavior is going to be the end of future contracts. Unstable people and military do not co-exist well. Maybe they should do a rendition of musk over to ukraine for a month.
          • by DrXym ( 126579 )
            Other contractors wouldn't make open ended offers of internet to Ukraine and then whine about it on Twitter 7 months in with the non-too-subtle threat that "it's a nice internet and it'd be a shame if something happened to it". Instead they would work with the State Department & DoD to sort out sustainable funding.

            But Elon is Elon and he did say that and a bunch of other shit. I might add that the majority of terminals *are* paid for and Starlink is charging an eyewatering $2500 a month per terminal t

            • The majority of the terminals were paid for by people, but the majority of the service is being supplied free and at the highest level service. The service is the most expensive part

          • Other defense contractors don't throw Elon's sort of ridiculous dimwitted hissy fits. Has Lockheed-Martin ever had a tantrum where it stomped its feet and threatened to throw a switch to make all the F-35s fall out of the sky if it didn't get its way?

    • by Alcari ( 1017246 )
      They'd have to get the laser-link pipedream working first though, otherwise it'd only work within a few hundred km of the (landbased) uplink station.
  • by Pravetz-82 ( 1259458 ) on Tuesday November 08, 2022 @02:49AM (#63034715)
    When the last-mile connection is over a shared medium, there is a need to incentivize users to play nice with others, because the medium is not dedicated just for that one user. That's why I think we will always see data caps on things like mobile, starlink, docsis (and maybe PON).
    When you have dedicated media like ethernet cable, direct fiber or a leased frequency just for you, there is no excuse for data caps.
    As long as the rules are clearly stated (like here) and they don't bill you automatically some astronomical amount for going over the limit, I think it is fair.
    • Or we could build infrastructure that accommodates and bandwidth people expect. Sure that's hard when launching satellites, but it's less hard when providing cable internet. You wrote DOCSIS but that's a prime example of somewhere I haven't seen data caps on for over a decade. I remember it being 3GB, then 10GB, then an undefined Fair Use, then 1TB and then dropped completely. And mobile operators are also offering unlimited plans these days.

    • by enriquevagu ( 1026480 ) on Tuesday November 08, 2022 @04:09AM (#63034829)

      You are making two mistakes with your argument.

      First, you are presenting some examples in which your argument does not apply. Consider GPON (G.984) as an example: Nominal download speed is 2.48 Gbps, shared by up to 64 users, and ISPs often sell up to 1 Gbps per user. Thus, each user may be allocated, in theory, a sustained 2.48x1/64=3.87%, or 38.75 Mbps, regarless of their maximum "paid-for" speed. However, the typical situation is very far from these numbers of the worst case: The number of users per fiber is typically lower than 64; not all of them are downloading simultaneously; and even in a typical use case (web, HD streaming) 38 Mbps is more than enough.

      Additionally, in GPON there are many fibers per OLT (the headend device at the provider's premises), so they can serve more users. Same applies to DOCSIS. The problem for starlink is that there is only one satellite (not one satellite with many fibers) and the number of users in an area can be huge, way larger than the 64 limit in GPON.

      Your second mistake is that you exclusively focus on the last mile, whereas any network is always shared among many users. Even if the last mile is private (e.g. a dedicated Ethernet wire), after the headend router from the ISP the backbone is shared by many, many users. Depending on the oversubscription factor, the congestion point may occur in the last mile or the backbone after the headend. In Starlink the bottleneck will clearly be in the last-mile (or maybe "last 250-miles"?), but this does not occur in all cases (in GPON it will be probably in the backbone).

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Even terrestrial broadband has limits on the cabling used to deliver it. The big difference is that with cables, especially fibre optic, you can upgrade the equipment at either end to increase the bandwidth. With Starlink they don't have that option, unless they want to give everyone a new terminal.

      It seems like Musk's big projects are all coming unstuck lately. His Twitter take-over has been a disaster, his "full self driving" cars are under multiple investigations, including a criminal one, his predicted

  • With a connection like Xfinity (Comcast Residential), once you go past the cap, you are automatically billed $10 for every extra 50GB. For someone who already hit cap, they are going to blow through 50GB very quickly and will likely see a huge increase in their bill. Starlink does nothing like that. It's still unlimited, but past a certain point, your data becomes lower priority. Unfortunately there seems to be almost no actual data on what that means exactly. Best-case scenario, speeds slow barely if
    • by dwywit ( 1109409 )

      The lower priority speeds will only become obvious when there's congestion within your cell or within your local ground station footprint. Your traffic will be moved from the priority service queue to the basic service queue. That won't result in a speed drop unless there's local congestion.

      IOW, one or more people who share your cell are hammering away with multiple 4K streams.

      So unless they're limited somehow, my speeds will suffer because of that congestion.

      Bring it on, and screw those people who think th

  • I know there are a lot of purists out there who think everything should be absolutely unlimited. I get that. But Starlink is probably your choice when the alternatives are either abysmally slow (like rural Internet) or non-existent. You're sharing the best alternative to no Internet. So some limitations are just unavoidable.

    Having said that, 1TB is a LOT of data. If a typical movie in 1080p runs around 20GB, that's 50 films. World of Warcraft needs about 36MB/hour, or 26GB a month if you're playing non-stop

    • Another way of looking at it is that 1TB is only 360KB/s over the month.

      And Tesla has come out and said it would affect just under 10% of its users, so don't underestimate just how much data a modern household can consume.

      By the way your numbers are way off. A typical 1080p movie runs 2GB not 20. A typical 4k movie pushes upwards of 8GB. Yeah I'm helping you make your argument but you should see how a typical TV runs in a household. By your numbers and given the average viewing hours, most households would

      • Yeah, way back when the big TV was usually streaming soap operas during the day and news and made for TV specials and MASH at night. Meanwhile the smaller TV I watched most of the time streamed Scooby Doo, Bugs Bunny, and Saturday morning cartoons. So glad we didn't hit the bandwidth cap, or maybe we did and that explains why the small TV only showed in black & white. :>

      • by dwywit ( 1109409 )

        A 1080p movie in 2GB? You're experiencing some serious compression artifacts, there.

        A standard 1080 blu-ray disc runs to about 25GB. Take off even 50% of that with additional features and you've still looking at 12.5GB. Compress that to 2GB and it'll look OK on a phone or tablet, but not your 40" TV

        • I did say 20GB.

        • by jwhyche ( 6192 )

          A 1080p movie in 2GB? You're experiencing some serious compression artifacts, there.

          It's a little more complex than that. The final size will depend on movie length(of course), the codec you are using and the setting you use in the codec. What type of movie that you are dealing with will have a huge impact. A action movie will have a lot more fast action than a romantic comedy. The more movement and action the more bits you need to keep it clean.

          A 1080p, 90 min. romantic comedy, using a h.264 codec, soft encoded, with proper settings will fit inside 2 GB. Even better if you are usi

    • I regularly do 1TB in my household with streaming and downloading. But I do agree that starlink isn't the appropriate service provider if your plan is to download 24/7 data hording....
      • I regularly do 1TB in my household with streaming and downloading. But I do agree that starlink isn't the appropriate service provider if your plan is to download 24/7 data hording....

        Some households can exceed this just with completely normal activity, and starlink was billed as a credible alternative to terrestrial broadband. Now we find out that's not true. 1TB is a pathetic cap by modern standards. If Starlink can't meet modern standards, it definitely doesn't deserve to exist given the resources it requires. We would be better off as a species spending the money on fiber internet. At least that could provide backhaul for WISPs.

        • Well considering that 1) other satellite providers are *way* worse with their limits (100GB ViaSat, anyone?), and 2) you're apparently *not* getting throttled after being deprioritized, I don't quite see what's the issue here.
          • Well considering that 1) other satellite providers are *way* worse with their limits (100GB ViaSat, anyone?), and 2) you're apparently *not* getting throttled after being deprioritized, I don't quite see what's the issue here.

            The issues are that 1) starlink was marketed as being an effective replacement for terrestrial broadband, not just satellite, and 2) starlink was marketed as having no hard caps, and now it has a hard cap... It's a classic bait and switch.

            • starlink was marketed as being an effective replacement for terrestrial broadband

              And it is. It has parameters comparable to low-to-mid broadband connections, even if it obviously can't compete with things like 1 Gb/s fiber.

              starlink was marketed as having no hard caps, and now it has a hard cap

              No it doesn't? This is not a hard cap.

            • So, no, it doesn't have a hard cap. A hard cap and you'd be facing "no internet". It's a very soft cap. And I don't recall Starlink being advertised as a replacement for terrestrial broadband. A link to such would be nice. As far as I know, they've always been for the unserved, or poorly served. Even at the height of their claims they never pretended to approach wired services.

    • by Duds ( 100634 )

      So you watch a film a night, at medium resolution, and you've used 2/3rds of your entire allocation.

      Or more to the point, as TV goes ip only for a lot of people, you can watch 3 hours of TV a day. Total. If you do nothing else.

      And that's in 1080P not 4K.

      It's a cap from 2005.

      • That 1 TB should be enough for over 300 hours of 1080p video streams. That's not "3 hours a day".
      • by suss ( 158993 )

        1080p TV isn't 100GB an hour, i think you put a comma wrong somewhere...

      • Somebody didn't RTFA. The counted hours are between 11AM and 7PM local timezone. Outside this window there is no cap.

      • by fazig ( 2909523 )
        Depends on how the TV thing is realized.

        If it's done the traditional way, where it's broadcast, then all the receivers get the same data with no competition. "Dish" has been doing this for decades, where the quality of the signal that you receive for all intends and purposes is the same whether you're alone in some remote area where you're the only one with a dish or in a densely populated city where there's a million dishes. The same goes for traditional terrestrial TV be it analogue or digital as well a
      • Welcome to the tradeoff. If your life needs are such that you must have unmetered capacity suitable for frequent 4K consumption, move somewhere with land line service. But if you insist on living in areas without such, that's your tradeoff. Someday your needs will be met... "but not today... not today!"

        It's a cap from 2005 - sure. But also satellite capacity is more similar to 2005 than to modern land-based systems.

    • With all due respect, I don't think that you're in a position to be able to judge for other people whether 1TB is "a lot" or not. There is nothing inherently wrong with using a lot of data, especially if an ISP is offering "unlimited" service. While I was still within my Starlink return period, I went out of my way to make sure that using "a lot" of data would not be a problem: http://gotnorice.com/Starlink1... [gotnorice.com] It wasn't. But now that my return period has long since passed, I'm a bit bitter about having
      • The new cap only applies between 11AM and 7PM. So unless you passed that 1TB while only using the service between those hours you won't be deprioritized.

      • Okay, well, I understand your point, but I'll defend mine anyway. I suggest that using 1TB in a month isn't very easy for anything except mass entertainment consumption. If you passed 1TB last month, by how much was it? Since the 1TB would have been unthrottled, what would have been the real impact on the delta? We don't know that yet, as you said, but if it was a hard limit, how much of your month would you have needed to shave to hit it? A few streamed shows pushed past 11:00 on the weekends?

    • With modern encoding, a typical 1080p film should NOT have 20 GB. Maybe around 4-5 GB.
      • I was being overly generous, lest I be called out by the big-tv folks (of which I am one). And I was called out erroneously above by somebody who thought I said 2GB. :)

      • by DarkOx ( 621550 )

        Exactly a full ATSC broadcast at 1080p with no sub channels is only going be about ~12GB for 120mins. That is VERY good quality encoded in mpeg2video. Now realistically no terrestrial stations actually do that they all have two or more virtual channels sharing that bandwidth. So still benchmark quality 2 hour movie encoded in mpeg2video ends up being 6-8gigs if its delivered on their flagship channel. That includes the transport stream overhead!

        mpeg2video is obsolete in basically every way as far as stream

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Bandwidth caps based on usage, definitely not an innovation by Elon. I thought at the very least he'd get more creating with something like "all traffic gets prioritized based on prior 30-day peak time usage, meaning those who use the most get pushed further and further back in the priority queue", with some minimum always allocated using some sort of equal share algorithm. I think Elon is getting old and/or spreads himself too thin between all his companies, so those companies fall back onto old ideas whi
    • "Exceeding day time usage of 1TB per month may result in a slowdown of services."

      - Easy to quantify
      - Easy to explain
      - Puts the onus on those closest to the congestion
      - Simple to implement
      - Nobody gets cut off

      Or are you looking for some sort of answer that boils down to, "Using whatever I want results in no change of my services."? In which case, sure - ask for innovation.

  • Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

  • Next up, charging more for different data / sources? Extra cost for streaming Advertisements inserted into content
  • Meh, still good (Score:4, Informative)

    by pi_rules ( 123171 ) on Tuesday November 08, 2022 @09:08AM (#63035419)

    I'm on a Starlink program where I'm a low priority user so I get bumped to a lower service level if the network is congested. I haven't seen it drop below 20mbps down and 10mbps up.

    I do get the occasional cut out during a video call, but I've only placed it in my yard and there are a fair number of trees in the area.

  • nfl sunday ticket streaming only will fail big time with shit like this.

  • by clifwlkr ( 614327 ) on Tuesday November 08, 2022 @09:28AM (#63035477)
    First off, it is not actually a true cap. Your connection will just be deprioritized after 1TB of data usage during 7am-11pm each day (local time). You are then placed onto the same level of service as an RV unit, a Best Effort service level user, or a Residential on portable. You are not cut off or charged anything more, unless you want to pay for more priority data.

    To put this in perspective, if you are in a non-busy cell you may not notice any difference. I have both a residential and an RV unit. I had them side by side and ran speed tests at a few different times of day, and there was virtually no difference at all. I, however, am definitely in a very rural area, so YMMV.

    That said, for the people who are really targeted by this system a cap like this is no big deal at all. I live off grid in a spot with zero cell coverage even, and had ViaSat before this. ViaSat cost 50% more, gave you a 100gig data cap (10% of Starlink), and when you were deprioritized there, your connection was pretty much unusable. We managed with heavy data management. That said with a 1TB datacap, and free downloading at night, this is not going to be an issue at all and I work tech full time.

    If you can get fiber or cable, don't get Starlink. It is not meant for that. For those of us who were stuck with Geo sats, or horrible DSL, this is still a great solution, and getting 'throttled' to 5mb+ connection is faster than what we got high speed before....

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