'Starlink Mini': High-Speed Internet, Fits in a Backpack, Now Available in the US (cnet.com) 73
It's weighs less than 15 pounds. It's 17 inches wide. And in June Elon Musk said it was "easily carried in a backpack. This product will change the world."
And now, CNET reports: Calling all digital nomads and van-lifers: SpaceX's Starlink Mini is now available everywhere in the US. The small antenna costs $599 and requires a monthly subscription of either $50 or $165, depending on which plan you choose. Thanks to thousands of low Earth orbit satellites, Starlink has the unique ability to send high-speed internet just about anywhere. Standard service is great for home internet in rural areas, while the provider's Roam service and new portable dish are ideal for staying connected on the go...
The Mini is a satellite dish and Wi-Fi router all in one that's about the size of a laptop. According to Starlink's website, it uses approximately half the power of Starlink's standard dish. It can be powered with a portable USB battery and can "melt snow and withstand sleet, heavy rain and harsh winds."
The article adds that users "can connect up to 128 devices, and it promises low latency... According to Starlink's broadband labels, your download speeds typically range from 30 to 100Mbps and 5 to 25Mbps in upload."
And now, CNET reports: Calling all digital nomads and van-lifers: SpaceX's Starlink Mini is now available everywhere in the US. The small antenna costs $599 and requires a monthly subscription of either $50 or $165, depending on which plan you choose. Thanks to thousands of low Earth orbit satellites, Starlink has the unique ability to send high-speed internet just about anywhere. Standard service is great for home internet in rural areas, while the provider's Roam service and new portable dish are ideal for staying connected on the go...
The Mini is a satellite dish and Wi-Fi router all in one that's about the size of a laptop. According to Starlink's website, it uses approximately half the power of Starlink's standard dish. It can be powered with a portable USB battery and can "melt snow and withstand sleet, heavy rain and harsh winds."
The article adds that users "can connect up to 128 devices, and it promises low latency... According to Starlink's broadband labels, your download speeds typically range from 30 to 100Mbps and 5 to 25Mbps in upload."
15 pounds is a lot (Score:2, Insightful)
In a backpack situation. When I'm backpacking, the last thing I want is my electronic leash blasting from space through Lord Musk's orbital junk.
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A lot of modern people do seem to appreciate having a fast and stable internet connection when otherwise off grid.
You don't need to be one of them. You can be that luddite shaking his fist at the sky and screaming about "Lord Musk's junk". In fact, it would probably be best for everyone if you only did that while backpacking far away from normal people. Because we really don't want to know about your feelings about "Lord Musk's junk". Really. TMI.
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Can see you've been taking "free speech absolutist" lessons from Musk.
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What does free speech have to do with recommending backpacking trips? I'm not a communist, so it's not a euphemism for sending someone to gulags.
Or did you project that?
Re: 15 pounds is a lot (Score:2)
Nothing says "Luddite" like a backpack made of synthetic fibers, nylon shoes, freeze-dried meals, self-heating MREs, and a Dacron tent lit up by LEDs after sunset.
Ya sure got me!
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You forgot the most important part. Pants. Remember, pants are important. Especially when thinking about other people's junk.
Re: 15 pounds is a lot (Score:2)
There isn't much off-grid left though. Yes, there is plenty of land and sea with no connectivity, but few people out there.
But what are your feelings... (Score:1)
...about Elon's Backdoor Musk?
Re:15 pounds is a lot (Score:4, Informative)
This is a weird article. I got my mini back in August...and it does NOT weigh 15 pounds. That, or I'm really strong and 15 pounds is nothing to me...
It's definitely backpack-able....though, I don't know what they expect you to use for a power supply. (obv anything that can supply 12v)
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Will this allow me... (Score:2, Insightful)
...to own the libs?
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holy crap (Score:2, Interesting)
They've really cranked up the monthly fees on starlink post beta. At over $100/mo AND insane equipment costs it isn't really plausible high speed for the masses anymore like it was at $40/mo unlimited.
Re:holy crap (Score:4, Informative)
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Yes and Hughes was already a failed and non-viable solution for the masses so how does that help anyone? This is a fairly useless comment.
It has nothing to do with pricing something 'how I think it should be priced', either it can be offered for the price the market has shown the typical consumer can afford ($30-50 is the typical/avg most popular tier in unlimited broadband offerings) or it can't.
Early on they touted unlimited service within this ballpark and at one point a business class service that would
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It is not trying to compete with services in places where you can get a good wired internet connection.
People living that close to each other would require much more bandwitdh than is possible.
There are a lot of people in the world who live in places where such is not avaible due to things like being too sparesely populated, so it is not financially feasible to put cables in place.
Such places have been traditionally either without connections, served by microwave link or by "old style" satellite network.
In
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Yes... that is what last mile means. I grew up in the boonies.
But people in less densely populated areas don't have larger budgets than those in densely populated areas, if anything the opposite tends to be true. The other killer app starlink had the potential to enable was for remote workers to earn inflated urban wages while enjoying sane cost of living without the horrible commute.
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They've really cranked up the monthly fees on starlink post beta. At over $100/mo AND insane equipment costs it isn't really plausible high speed for the masses anymore like it was at $40/mo unlimited.
I think you're confusing Starlink with something else. It was never $40 per month. It was $110 per month at launch, plus equipment costs.
And it has never been "for the masses", at least, not the masses with good terrestrial Internet options. It may someday be for the masses, but at launch it was limited availability access from fairly remote places. These days, it's unlimited availability access from anywhere... though if you have decent terrestrial Internet options it's likely those will be cheaper.
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According to this it was $99/mo though I remember it less. https://www.monmobo.com/en/art... [monmobo.com]
"And it has never been "for the masses", at least, not the masses with good terrestrial Internet options"
That's what last mile means. Basically everyone who doesn't live in the city. Nearly half the population of the US.
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According to this it was $99/mo though I remember it less. https://www.monmobo.com/en/art... [monmobo.com]
I don't think that's correct. I got Starlink during the beta -- very early -- and my monthly bills were never less than $110.
"And it has never been "for the masses", at least, not the masses with good terrestrial Internet options"
That's what last mile means. Basically everyone who doesn't live in the city. Nearly half the population of the US.
Nah, much of rural America has one or more terrestrial Internet options, some of them good. There are plenty of exceptions, which is where Starlink shines, but "nearly half the population" is an overstatement.
Take me, for example.
I live in rural Utah, and I have Gigabit fiber for $100 per month, though that arrived slightly after I got on the Starlink beta program. Before the fi
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Actually it now occurs to me that I'd seen Elon lament being robbed of last mile broadband service contracts for political disfavor by the Biden admin, service which those awarded never fulfilled. There is a good chance that comes back under Trump and we should all be buying some starlink stock.
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The goal was supposed to be to bring viable mass market last mile broadband coverage. They might have been depending on winning the bid on some previously announced government subsidies for this... Elon has been very vocal in calling out the Biden admin over a very legitimate yanking of its contract for political disfavor.
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The goal is to pay for Mars. And they're getting it done.
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not really, the goal is profit not maximising user value and I imagine that works well in that regard as it forces those that need more data to pay significantly more than they realistically need while those that settle for 50gb probably were never going to pay much more anyway.
Actually, at that level, it almost certainly will not work well at all. I think you're grossly underestimating how unusable that amount of data would be for most people.
Here's a quick reality check. The median monthly household data usage is somewhere around 500 to 700 GB per month. I doubt even 1% of users would be able to get by with a limit as low as 50 GB. Fifty gigabytes is:
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is $600 for an exterior grade portable satellite device really "insane" in 2025? I paid more for my last three cell phones and none of them were better than "premium mid-grade".
how much should a bleeding edge mass produced bi-directional portable consumer satellite dish cost exactly
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$600 for a passive antenna? Yeah, that's pretty insane. People pay $600-1200 for cell phones because they are financed and for a critical mass of the population the center of their world; people use it for everything and thus will drastically overpay.
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It's an active bi-directional transceiver, not an antenna. If you think it's a passive one way receiver that might explain why you think it's overpriced.
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"It's an active bi-directional transceiver, not an antenna."
It's both. The former requires the latter. And I think it is tech that matured 20yrs ago and we need it to cost less, not fit in a backpack. $600 is two weeks GROSS pay for the minimum wage rural worker who might need this device.
If they are targeting small and sexy they are missing the mark on the engineering objectives for such a device by a large margin.
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it's a phase array transceiver with a whole bunch of patents it's definitely bleeding edge stuff otherwise they would have put it in the V1 two years ago. being able to beam 200mbps to space from a portable power supply using a device you bought off the shelf at best buy is nothing short of miraculous roy rogers shit.
that a much more complex transceiver by definition has an antenna in it.... doesn't somehow justify it needing to be cheaper
Most analysis I've read is that they're still selling
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Migrant farm laborer? Dude I'm talking about the small town folks who working at walmart and the hucks off the interstate exit or on farms in real America not illegals in Cali. The roughly 40% of the US population who needs this, not the wealthiest 1% of said population.
"that a much more complex transceiver by definition has an antenna in it.... doesn't somehow justify it needing to be cheaper"
People not being able to afford it justifies it needing to be cheaper. But as I said, the one off fixed cost of the
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I'm paying almost $85 a month for DSL that is usually a half a megabit per second or less. In the middle of the night, it will sometimes hit a full megabit per second. This is near downtown Seattle. I'd kill to pay only $30 a month for 100 Mbps with Starlink. I just don't have a good enough view of the sky to make it work. My neighbor two floors above me has it working great, but he is head of the condo board so he was allowed to put the dish on a ten foot pole sticking out of his balcony so the dish can se
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Offer to pay his monthly bill for him.
He gets free Internet, you drop a 20' ethernet cable.
Worth a starless sky? (Score:1)
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LOL. When Russia invaded Ukraine they effortlessly hacked and disabled the other Satellite Internet providers (hard bricking the hardware) in the hours before. They also jammed the cellular links and cut the external cables. The only network left standing in the conflict zone was Starlink, and without it we wouldn't know about the Russian atrocities that took place under the cover of that communication blockade. Which led the relevant Ukrainian secretary to reach out to Elon on Twitter and request assistanc
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Sounds useful for particular niche situations (Score:2)
Especially given the price, though ($50/mo for 50GB data, $165/mo for unlimited data) - I'm not seeing the "change the world" aspect of this.
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>I'm not seeing the "change the world" aspect of this.
It is not changing the world, but it is changing many situations.
I know of 2 such personally.
My friends cabin: It used to have a large external mobile phone antenna and it allowed him to get 3g, that was basically good enough to read emails and do light browsing, but now that 3g is shut down his options are 20 miles of cable, so microwave link option, 2g Edge , traditional satellite or starlink. He went with starlink.
Some of my wife's family lives in
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Neither of those seems to be completely relevant to this particular discussion. Standard fixed Starlink is already a good solution in both situations (and, as you say, is already being used) - that has been available for several years now.
Musk used the hyperbolic comment "world changing" to describe this new, portable product.
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I'm paying more than that for something about 1% of its estimated 100 Mbps speed. If I was allowed to use it in my condo building, it would change my life for the better. Also, it's smaller so it is easier for people to hide it on their property so a city or association isn't as likely to catch you using it. Being small enough to hide in a pot for a plant. That's important when you live in an urban area.
Define low latency. (Score:2)
title
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Define "easily carried". And does that 15 pounds include the power supply? (Even so, I remember the 21 pound original Macintosh, which was also called "easily portable". It was portable enough to carry home on a bus, but I wouldn't call that "easily".)
Well, this is lighter, but...
Re:Define low latency. (Score:4, Insightful)
Define "easily carried". And does that 15 pounds include the power supply? (Even so, I remember the 21 pound original Macintosh, which was also called "easily portable". It was portable enough to carry home on a bus, but I wouldn't call that "easily".)
Well, this is lighter, but...
The numbnuts who wrote the article confused the package dimensions and weight with the product dimensions and weight.
https://www.starlink.com/speci... [starlink.com]
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That link give the weight as just short of 15 lbs., just like the summary.
Re: Define low latency. (Score:2)
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That link give the weight as just short of 15 lbs., just like the summary.
Again, that's the weight of the package, not the product. Read the specs:
Package Weight 6.73 kg (14.83 lbs)
Package Dimensions 430 x 334 x 79 mm (16.92 x 13.14 x 3.11 in)
Product specs are:
Weight
1.10 kg (2.43 lb)
1.16 kg (2.56 lb) with Kickstand
1.53 kg (3.37 lb) with Kickstand & 15 m Cable
The power supply is
Weight 0.2 kg (0.44 lbs)
And the antenna dimensions are 11.75" x 10.2" x 1.45"
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The mini has other advantages, like using half the power, and running off DC. I have an actuated dish, and the power savings of the mini have me thinking about buying one instead of more solar panels for my mobile vehicle setup.
A LOT less than 15 pounds (Score:4, Informative)
Post says "weighs less than 15 pounds". Specs according to Starlink: https://www.starlink.com/speci... [starlink.com]
Weight
1.10 kg (2.43 lb)
1.16 kg (2.56 lb) with Kickstand
1.53 kg (3.37 lb) with Kickstand & 15 m Cable
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When we terminated our Comcast cable internet service we took our mandatory leased equipment to their office and like everyone else took a selfie of us turning it in to the clerk because that's how trustworthy they are. When we terminated CenturyLink it was more fun. You're fired. Why? We got Starlink so you're fired. Hahahahaha.
Ignoring Starlink until it's peer to peer. (Score:2)
Ground to ground mesh is what we need, with satellite edge support if land based routing fails (rarely eventually, I'd hope).
Or it's the only choice, or basically free.
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Given the deployment costs it is hard to see how that would work unless Starlink started charging by the gigabyte or someone on the mesh network paid something more like six hundred dollars a month to connect. Internet service providers have to pay upstream ISPs considerably higher monthly fees to connect for the same reason.
For variable values of "change the world".... (Score:2)
In actual reality, the impact will be pretty minor.
OMG, SOTA here I come! (Score:2)
So I can backpack this up to Picacho peak, for instance.
Avoid hauling my FT-897 (and tuner) and ATAS-120A, and a 6Ah LiFEPO4 pack.
And can I activate over Echolink? Will it count?
Asking for a friend.