One week of Starlink

Bolt_308 · Jun 18, 2024

Can confirm that over the last several months the window to have open sky has reduced greatly,, which is a good thing- more satellites in the air, so more coverage= less of a need for open view of the sky. When we first got starlink, our property was about as bad as it could be set up- we face south, and all the trees around us block to the north, which is where the dish needs to be auto aimed for our area. Spent several hours walking around, trying different areas of the property. ended up getting creative and buying a Weboost telescoping pole for RVS, and mounting it out in a field with just barely enough sky visibility. That was several years ago. Now that window of sky is much better, there is zero blockage and zero drops. It will depend upon what your customer uses the data for- if the need constant up with zero drops, like for Teams/ZOOM business meetings, then it could be a problem. However if it is for data for documents/email/web surfing, then it should be fine. I am surprised they would need the business starlink- make sure they really need that much level of service, it may not bee needed unless they are running huge amounts of data. And as the new versions of satellites are continually being launched, it should just get better and better. Again all this was coming from a very slow site to site internet, which was all that would work for us at the time (OnlineNW). Such a huge improvement- went from 8-9mg up/down, to now averaging sometimes upwards of 200mg depending upon the time of day, and the speeds just get better and better, and more stable . . .

AshWilliams · Jun 18, 2024

I work from home so this will be my ticket to move to a rural area where I can transition to semi-off-grid.

Alexx1401 · Jun 18, 2024

AshWilliams said:
I work from home so this will be my ticket to move to a rural area where I can transition to semi-off-grid.

That is where this tech is really starting to shine. A LOT of people lived where they either had no net access or VERY limited. This thing is getting to where you can almost have the full broadband experience almost anywhere you go.

lucusloc · Jun 18, 2024

AshWilliams said:
I work from home so this will be my ticket to move to a rural area where I can transition to semi-off-grid.

I did this. Full time remote work on Starlink. I had decent internet before but the one hitch was my first junction box had no backup power. This meant if the power was out the internet was down even if I could keep all my stuff running. If power was out for a week I was out of work for a week.

With Starlink not only do I get better internet I am also in control the power situation. As long as I can power the dish I can keep my internet up and running. This means I can continue to work through power outages. The last one bad one we had here was almost two weeks after the icepocalypes. Starlink did not even care about the ice.

If you have a profession that can go full remote this is a great way to do that. I know a guy who works remote from his RV and tours the country. He can have a new view from his "office" whenever he wants, and Starlink lets him do that from anywhere, not just where there is good cell coverage. Highly recommended.

The Heretic · Jun 18, 2024

lucusloc said:
I did this. Full time remote work on Starlink. I had decent internet before but the one hitch was my first junction box had no backup power. This meant if the power was out the internet was down even if I could keep all my stuff running. If power was out for a week I was out of work for a week.

With Starlink not only do I get better internet I am also in control the power situation. As long as I can power the dish I can keep my internet up and running. This means I can continue to work through power outages. The last one bad one we had here was almost two weeks after the icepocalypes. Starlink did not even care about the ice.

If you have a profession that can go full remote this is a great way to do that. I know a guy who works remote from his RV and tours the country. He can have a new view from his "office" whenever he wants, and Starlink lets him do that from anywhere, not just where there is good cell coverage. Highly recommended.

Yes - in the past, I have noticed that if the power goes down in a wide enough area, for long enough, the cell towers start degrading their speed. After a day or two, they really cut back. Usually the power isn't out that long, but it has happened. At some point I will probably want to get the small battery powered system. If SL would drop their service fees, I would switch back to them.

lucusloc · Jun 18, 2024

The Heretic said:
Yes - in the past, I have noticed that if the power goes down in a wide enough area, for long enough, the cell towers start degrading their speed. After a day or two, they really cut back. Usually the power isn't out that long, but it has happened. At some point I will probably want to get the small battery powered system. If SL would drop their service fees, I would switch back to them.

Yeah, SL is still one of the most expensive options. If you do not need to get it I typically advise people not to. Any other broadband option that fits your needs will typically be cheaper. But when SL is the only option it is a real lifesaver. It can allow connectivity where their are no options, or where the only other feasible options are full commercial grade setups. Compared to that SL is a bargain.

The Heretic · Thursday at 7:52 AM

Starlink Mini Dish launches at a premium price but affordability remains a main target

Starlink mini dish sales officially launched to a few loyal customers at a price higher than initially expected.

www.teslarati.com

Burt Gummer · Thursday at 8:36 AM

The invite-only thing is pretentious and silly. Elon believes he is selling a Ferrari?

Pretty sure the VanLife crowd and RV-ers would welcome a small, in-motion capable dish thougn.

lucusloc · Thursday at 8:46 AM

Burt Gummer said:
The invite-only thing is pretentious and silly. Elon believes he is selling a Ferrari?

Pretty sure the VanLife crowd and RV-ers would welcome a small, in-motion capable dish thougn.

It's all marketing. The "pre-launch" exclusivity drives buzz, and when a ton of those "loyal customers" are tech reporters and influencers this all just boils down to wanting to get the first models out to reviewers and commentators before it goes out to people who will just use the damn things without even bothering to leave a review. The initial launch of SL worked the same way, with tons of people hopping in the wait list but -shockingly- all the "first" people on that wait list having a pretty decent media presence.

This will get out to everyone else as soon as they validate it works more or less as expected in the real world and production ramps up. Honestly if you just want a product that works it is best to skip the early adoption anyway. Let the reviewers and the tech enthusiast sort wear their rose tinted glasses and work out all the bugs, then get the gen 2 model and have a nice day.

AshWilliams · Thursday at 8:46 AM

Burt Gummer said:
The invite-only thing is pretentious and silly. Elon believes he is selling a Ferrari?

Pretty sure the VanLife crowd and RV-ers would welcome a small, in-motion capable dish thougn.

I think its because they don't have the capacity or infrastructure maturity yet to open it to everyone. It's similar to a restaurant having a "soft opening" where they can work on their processes before it becomes generally available.

Just guessing though.

AshWilliams · Thursday at 8:58 AM

AshWilliams said:
I think its because they don't have the capacity or infrastructure maturity yet to open it to everyone. It's similar to a restaurant having a "soft opening" where they can work on their processes before it becomes generally available.

Just guessing though.

I remember when Google's GMail was invite-only.

lucusloc · Thursday at 9:23 AM

AshWilliams said:
I remember when Google's GMail was invite-only.

Yep. I got both of my accounts that way. Had them ever since. Was super nice since I got nice clean names, no numbers, no misspellings. Only issue I have with it is people with similar names sometime use my email to sign up for things. Not spam, but actual important things like bank and streaming service logins or warranty service for their car. I even got loan documents for them once. I am not sure if they just forget to add the extra bits or if they just do not understand how email accounts work and think they can use the unadulterated name "because it's theirs," but I try to send a message to the service provider whenever I can to get them to flag that info as incorrect.

AshWilliams · Thursday at 9:39 AM

lucusloc said:
Yep. I got both of my accounts that way. Had them ever since. Was super nice since I got nice clean names, no numbers, no misspellings. Only issue I have with it is people with similar names sometime use my email to sign up for things. Not spam, but actual important things like bank and streaming service logins or warranty service for their car. I even got loan documents for them once. I am not sure if they just forget to add the extra bits or if they just do not understand how email accounts work and think they can use the unadulterated name "because it's theirs," but I try to send a message to the service provider whenever I can to get them to flag that info as incorrect.

A little thread drift, but I'm in the process of divesting my Gmail account having moved to Protonmail and services for strict privacy. You'd better believe that Google is harvesting all of your mail contents and dumping it into a data lake to analyze with AI. This is the world we live in now, unfortunately.

lucusloc · Thursday at 9:54 AM

AshWilliams said:
A little thread drift, but I'm in the process of divesting my Gmail account having moved to Protonmail and services for strict privacy. You'd better believe that Google is harvesting all of your mail contents and dumping it into a data lake to analyze with AI. This is the world we live in now, unfortunately.

Oh yeah do I know how that works, I have other accounts with better privacy for work/private related needs. The gmail accounts are almost exclusively a garbage carousel of google advertising chaff that is now self sustaining. It is pretty amusing to think that everything they are harvesting about me through those accounts is stuff they put there themselves. I think the only stuff in there that isn't directly from them is the account signup/recovery emails, which is basically the only job I use gmail for now. Considering that basically every site has google/facebook/whatever tracking built in trying to hide your account from them is pretty futile, so I just use it as a dumping ground for all the ancillary advertising that comes with such things and keep the professional accounts clean.

I highly recommend people keep separate email accounts for the various spheres of their life. A gmail account is a wonderful place to dump all the trash.

Bolt_308 · Thursday at 11:48 AM

Ooof- new information out about the Starlink Mini- and it is disappointing. Data caps. Higher price than first announced. Service plan add on- meaning you have to have residential service plan, cant cancel residential or not have residential. Also cant cancel during invite period.

This could all be just for the invite only early adopters, but would be a pass for me for now. Make it the same price with no data cap and 12v/DC/USPC powered, and i would sign up in a heartbeat . . .

View: https://youtu.be/atVIA_nI14o?si=XP3nDSdXNTCzjkxI

View: https://youtu.be/8R6AOm2IaBo?si=ECxes5olG819BoLQ

The Heretic · Thursday at 1:57 PM

Typical of Starlink. They try these kinds of things, and change the terms of their service/etc. - remember when they were going to do a data cap of 1TB and then dropped it before implementing it?

Unless you really need it, wait for others to try it (mini dish) out and see what the performance is.

At this point in time I have no reason to resume my service, much less buy the mini dish. Sometime in the future maybe.

The Heretic · Thursday at 3:31 PM

AshWilliams said:
I think its because they don't have the capacity or infrastructure maturity yet to open it to everyone. It's similar to a restaurant having a "soft opening" where they can work on their processes before it becomes generally available.

Just guessing though.

I don't think it is a capacity issue - they have a LOT more satellites up & the larger dishes have more bandwidth but no data caps/etc. for those, and they all share the same network.

I think it is several things; they want to more or less beta test the mini dish without having too many people/mini dishes out there to begin with. And they want to get some extra cash.

When not very many people jump on the mini dish, we will most likely see them start dropping the price and relaxing the requirements. They probably also do not want the mini dish to cannibalize the full sized dish market.

Finally, I am guessing they need to ramp up the manufacturing of the mini dish, but want to put some minis out there to test them first before they get into too deep - they would not want to have to do too many revisions/fixes on the early adopters.