Starlink is a game changer

[Jeff]

Since I'm in the U.P. about 9 months of the year now, for the sake of taking care of the forum I had to do something better for internet. We were paying $72 a month for att hotspot, and it had almost zero upload capabilities, and being celular, in a very spotty reception area, it was always trouble.  We broke down and got a starlink system, and I can say after the first week, Wow!!  Everthing about Elon's system has been amazing, including getting it set up. Now, if I could just get 1.2 additional premium subscribers a month over the next year, it would be paid for and I can continue to take care of the forum myself for now.  (we haven't had any new subscribers in the last 3 months, so please consider it.)

As an example, I made a youtube short last night from my experience of having a goose land near me in the pond.  With the hotspot, it would of taken 3-4 hoirs to upload. With starlink it took maybe 2 minutes. 

[Jeff]

Seconds to upload.  I'd about given up on photos from the cabin

[moosehunter]

Dats purty cool boss!
mh

[rusticretreater]

I struggled with crappy internet for a couple of years as Satellite and DSL were both about the same.  I had checked for Starlink in the past and it wasn't available.  Then one day it was and I immediately ordered it.  No more stuttering videos. YAY!

I hate that the sky is just getting super filled with satellites and nobody cleaning up the space junk.  At least new satellites have a time to live and planned reentry to take care of that.  Now we have unburned pieces just plunking down in the ocean.  I guess nature will eventually take care of them.

[Jeff]

Hopefully I outlive the inevitable carnage.

[beenthere]

Glad you were able to get Starlink. It has been a real blessing to me, as well. Considering checking into using for cellular service too, but think I need a new dish. The internet dish is $120 per month, and also paying $92 just for Verizon cell service. 

[NewYankeeSawmill]

'bout 2 years here... Great product.

[Ron Wenrich]

Verizon wants me to go to 5G instead of DSL.  I don't have a cell phone, so the 5G won't save any money.  The DSL service seems to be decent.

On several cruises, the ships were hooked up to Starlink and provided internet service for the entire ship.  They seemed to work pretty good.  Even in the middle of the Pacific.

[Jeff]

We will switch to t-mobile phones as soon as they have finalized with starlink. It only works for text currently, but once integrated, a tmobile user with a starlink account will have a satellite phone when not in celular coverage.

[Ianab]

Starlink to cell phones is available here in NZ too, txt only currently, but my phone isn't on the supported list, and Lil's not on a plan that supports it. Currently only a small number of the sats support 5G, but as the Sats get replaced with the new ones they will have more consistent cover and more bandwidth. At the moment they say there could be a delay with txt messages, if there isn't a sat in range when you hit send, it might take a few minutes until one gets into range and your message goes out. But it does work.

Locally at least the telcos are starting to decommission copper land lines in places where fibre has been deployed, and plan on turning of the whole copper network over the next few years. 

We don't have 5G cellular here in town yet, but I have checked it out when travelling. Small town about 1/2 hour away must have been scheduled for a tower upgrade, and now have 5G cover. Being a small town the tower won't be heavily used, so speedtest returned 500 Mbit connection. Which is dang fast. But I also tried the same thing at a Foo Fighters concert, and 50,000 or so phones on the same tower, connection wasn't very good at all. 5G cellular IS good, if you have a decent signal, otherwise it trains the speed down to where it can hopefully get a reliable connection. It's not really an option if you are way out in the sticks. 

DSL is old tech now and pretty much phased out here in NZ. Most places that could get DSL now have fibre, and the rest have cellular / WISP or Starlink as an option. Going from DSL to fibre (or even Starlink / 5G) is night and day. Like Jeff pointed out with his video upload, sending large files would cripple our old DSL connection for 1/2 an hour or so, as it only allowed about 1Mb upload speed, and a cellphone syncing to cloud storage used it all, making everyone else's connection patchy. With the Fibre, we have ~500Mb upload speed, so one device can't hog it all, and the upload still goes 100X faster. Starlink isn't quite as fast, but even 10X faster than DSL is really noticeable, and it has much better upload speed compared to DSL. 

[SawyerTed]

We did Starlink a couple of years ago after our other satellite internet provider raised prices again.  We weren't on contract and it wasn't real good anyway.

We also deleted our DirecTV.  Satellite internet plus satellite tv was costing $300+ per month.  

With Starlink and a couple of streaming subscriptions, we are at less than half that. The speeds are very nice for just the two of us.  Don't miss having two clunky dishes on the house at all. 

We got a Starlink system for our camper too.  Since there's no contract we can activate and deactivate it as needed.  

On a clear night it's pretty easy to see the satellites in a row.   That's a downside.