Linus checks out Starlink

[SwampDonkey]

I read the government is going to subsidize the internet, again. You pay $20 a month. No idea what that gets you or what the qualifications are. But I don't think that improves coverage area. So probably not a solution we're looking for. :D

Up here on dialup we had a lot of line noise. Having the forest overgrow the lines and rubbing wires bare can't be the issue. :D

[Ianab]

Up here on dialup we had a lot of line noise. Having the forest overgrow the lines and rubbing wires bare can't be the issue

The struggle is real :D

At my old place, at one point one of the poles carrying the wire to the house rotted off and fell over.  Phone company said that was impossible as they didn't have phone poles any more.

Yes you do, there are about 5 of them stringing a wire over the hill to our house.

Anyway, they send out a tech, and he soon realises there IS a pole missing. Problem is, they don't have poles, or a crew to put new ones in. Not to be defeated, he splices in some wires, run then down the last good pole, along the neighbours roadside fence, then stapled them to a large pine tree, and across to the next remaining post. Hey at least the phone worked, but you can imagine the dial-up speed.

I had left by then, but the Ex was first name basis with with phone tech. Neighbours bulls chewed the cable. Council roadside trimming chopped it, etc.

Eventually she got a Sat internet connection dish, which isn't great, but mostly worked.

It was a great place to live, but out of range of cell connections or the local radio ISP in a sheltered valley. Not sure if the current owner is on Starlink yet, but it's the ideal use case.

Edit: Govt here is also financing better internet. So this mostly funded our fibre install. A crew spent about 12 months under-boring fibres and putting drops into every house that wanted a connection. The ISP pays a "line rental", so the $ are probably going to be clawed back over time. But we now have ~950mbit here in small town NZ.  Other $ went to the cell companies to put up more towers in remote areas, and smaller radio providers got some too.  But it's covering that last few % that's the problem.  Hence Starlink. 

[SwampDonkey]

All the cell towers are behind hills where I live, if you don't count US Cellular on Mars Hill in Maine. I know the neighbor always had an account with them. But likely on a US plan you will pay roaming charges once you are out of range of a US tower, but if just in the house and the US tower is 5 miles away, your not roaming. And anyone who calls you is charged long distance. It wasn't legal for dishes to use US providers once those fixed dishes came online. Before that it was legal on C-band, but that was banned at the same time later.  :D

I have direct line of site to the internet tower from my provider though. :D Personally, I don't have a dish of any kind and never will.

[stavebuyer]

The Starlink box finally showed up yesterday. I was surprised how small the whole package is. Half the size of the TV dish and it finds its satellites in the North/NE vs the SW for the TV. 

Even an old analog guy like me had no trouble setting the thing up without reading the directions (you know those things you finally read once you fail).

Speed on the holiday weekend probably triple the cellphone connection.

Worth the wait and the price.

[Ianab]

Even an old analog guy like me had no trouble setting the thing up without reading the directions (you know those things you finally read once you fail).

If you want some light reading, look up phased array antennas. 

Although the Starlink dish doesn't physically move once set up, it's actively tracking the satellites as they travel overhead, by electronically steering the radio beam that's sent / received.  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phased_array

The satellites are whizzing past at about 17,000 mph, but they follow set tracks and there are now enough to always have at least one in "view if you are in a coverage area.

 

it finds its satellites in the North/NE vs the SW for the TV. 

TV and the older style satellite internet uses geostationary orbits. That means they have to orbit over the Equator, but they stay in the same relative position in the sky. The dish for that system is "dumb", and just has to be pointed the right way and bolted down. But that means for Nth America, they will always be somewhere South. In NZ the dishes have to point North The Starlink dish will align to where ever it gets the best view of a satellite train passing.  The current main constellation has 72 "tracks", with 22 satellites on each track. , taking a bit over an hour to orbit.  So the dish is swapping satellites every few minutes.  

Big downside of geostationary is that it's a bit over 22,000 miles up. Means it takes a measurable time for radio to get there and back. About 1/4 of a second, which doesn't sound like much, but it's a lot in internet time. Starlink being in a lower orbit has less time delay (about 45 ms), which isn't too bad. A 1/4 second lag doesn't matter for TV as you are only receiving, and don't know it's 1/4 second late. 1/4 second delay in an online game means you get "shot" or "crash". :D 

[beenthere]

Am seriously looking at Starlink and just today learned my son near MN has one hooked up. But heard that his "dish" does move to search for a better satelite. Now maybe that is because it is a new installation and is "learning" and still in a training mode.
Hope to find out more soon.

[Ianab]

The dish is motorised, but I believe that's mostly about it's initial setup.  Because the exact direction and inclination will depend on exactly where it's installed  they decided to automate the process. Once the system finds a satellite it can work out where on the globe it is, and figure it's best orientation.  If you had to do that manually, you would most certainly need the instruction manual.  :D  By automating that they cut down the installation costs hugely, you don't need a tame Rocket Stigg to set it up.  "Point it at the sky and turn it on"....  

If the dish had to physically move to acquire a new Sat, that would take "x" seconds, and your video call or game would glitch. Because the dish "direction" is adjusted electronically, and the system knows where the next satellite is going to be before it switches, the change is seamless, like driving between cell towers without loosing a call. 

Just the towers are moving, and you are staying in place ???

We have gone out just after sunset to watch the "train" of newly deployed sats go overhead. They are basically dumped out of the launch stage of the rocket in a bunch, so you see them all orbiting in a close line. Just before sunrise or after sunset they are visible  as they are still in sunshine, while the sky below is dark.  Then each individual sat fires up it's little thruster and gradually moves into the orbit and spacing they want. So you see the train gradually get spaced out over consecutive nights. At any time you might be able to see one at that time of night, but because it's just one faint dot moving, it's hard to pick out. When there are 40 of them in a line moving across the sky, it's noticeable. 

They are also below the "space junk" range. If they didn't have thrusters they would soon get dragged down by the traces of atmosphere where they orbit. If one fails they can either de-orbit it, or if it's totally dead it will de-orbit in a couple of years anyway. Each sat has finite fuel anyway, so eventually they will de-orbit and need to be replaced. 

I just find the whole technology of the system fascinating. I have no need of it as we have fibre and it's never going to beat that on price or performance. But "x"%  in most countries don't have that luxury (or even decent cellular cover) 

[firefighter ontheside]

Still happy with our starlink.  We got in early on the beta test.  We were informed that our price would be going up, so I don't think that getting in before the price increase is going to keep anyone locked in at the old price.  I don't think it should be moving once it finds the satellites, except for maybe small adjustments based on minor changes in the track of the train.  One thing that became a small issue this winter was that snow and ice built up on the dish in a snow storm.  Then the antenna slowly melted the ice off as its designed to do.  Some long icicles formed on the bottom of it and were precariously hanging above the front porch.  I reached up with a long stick to knock them off before they fell on us.

[Ljohnsaw]

About 6 months ago I switched from my phone company (DSL 2-3 meg down, .5 meg up) to a cable provider (45 meg down, 5 meg up) while waiting for Starlink.  My cable has been doing really well for $29/month+ taxes.  I got an email yesterday that I can get my Starlink dish and have 7 days to pay.  I looked at the speeds people in my area have been getting and it has been slowing down as the network is getting saturated.  I'd be paying over 3 times the amount (now $110/mo) for about double the speed.  So I canceled my order.

[Ianab]

Fair enough. You aren't the target market, because you have decent land based broadband. 

If you can get decent broadband with copper / cable / fibre, great. It should be better / cheaper. 

Starlink is for the 5-10%  that don't have that option, and as the Sat cover the whole Earth, that's probably millions of customers. 

No use to me either as we have 900 / 500 fibre for ~US $65, including Netflix. Speedtest tells me it's 775 / 540, close enough.  I can get a cheaper 100 mbit, but I write off 1/2  as a business expense, and who wan't to wait for big downloads. 

But out on the end of the mail run where I used to live, it would be the best option. 

[Sixacresand]

I could drive 1.9 miles and throw a rock to hit the high speed cable.  But it is not "cost effective" to come down our street!  Present satellite  is slow and is expensive especially when it goes over the data cap.  Successul Youtube video's and streaming is not an option.  

Starlink is advertised to cover the southeast USA in 2023.  $600 for equipment is high, but if it works for $110 month it will pay for itself in a few months compared to the present system. 

Starlink has still not stated to my satisfaction if there will be a monthly data cap. 

[firefighter ontheside]

Same here about data cable down the street.  A major fiberoptic line went right down our rural highway about 10 years ago.  We are about a quarter of a mile from the highway.  There is no plan and probably never will be a plan to make use of it locally.  It was paid for by a government grant to take data to another part of the state.  Our only option before Starlink was a wifi system that was not good enough to watch a video.  We got in on the beta test in our area as a result of this thread.  We paid $500 for the equipment.  We have no data cap.  We had thought we were locked in on the original price permanently, but that wasn't true.  Our price went up recently.  Still, with Starlink we were able to cancel our Dish network TV and only use streaming services such as Hulu and Disneyplus.  We are saving a bunch of money over what we were paying for dish and crappy internet service.

[rusticretreater]

Oh, I do miss the comcast internet.

[bitternut]

Someone made the decision to run fiber optic to rural area's of Western NY so I now have it in my barn in the hills of Allegany County NY. My barn is on a narrow dirt road that is sparsely populated. Mostly seasonal deer camps. Phone and internet, no TV. Works great. Cell phone service is lousy in the hills though unless you are on top of the hill.

[Jeff]

We switched to att for cell service, as there are 1-2 bars here. We added a $159 booster and now have full bars. We lowered our cell phone bill by switching, and were able to cancel the centurylink dsl that was worthless as we were at the down stream end.  We added an att home unlimited hotspot that increased the new phone plan by $15, but ended up with a net savings of over 50 a month. Upload is slow, but tolerable a pic to the forum now takes only about 30 seconds to upload versus 20 minutes. We can stream anything now here at the cabin.

The hotspot is portable, so depending on how it works in Harrison, we may be able to cancel spectrum there.

[SwampDonkey]

I think my brother recently got Starlink. He said it's a lot better than the dish from Xplorenet. I'm on Xplorenet, but on tower and I stream anything here. Serves my needs.

[firefighter ontheside]

Is anyone here using a VOIP service with their starlink.  Our home phone is over $90/mo. these days.  We are thinking of switching to voip to save some of that money, but don't want to give up the phone number.  Our cell signal is still iffy, but better than it used to be.

[beenthere]

Do you have the starlink? 

I put money down, but not getting a system due to no satellites available to me yet. 

[firefighter ontheside]

We've had Starlink for about a year and a half.  During the beta testing there were frequent outages for a few minutes.  That would not have been good for voip, but now that it rarely goes out I think it will be fine.  We do sometimes get an outage due to snow.

[SwampDonkey]

I never cared for it here, even on a FibreOp network, it went down in most every storm, and not even a severe one. I only pay about $40 for a land line and any long distance I use YAK, but there is never more than 3 calls long distance. Last bill I had 3 calls and wasn't $5. I could see if you was calling all the time where a plan is beneficial, but that doesn't happen here. My aunt got roped into a plan, she paid more for that than if she had just used YAK to call out long distance. She only called her sister in Montreal on long distance. And she was the one that told us about YAK. : :D At least if the power goes out, 90% of the time the land line is still live. Cell here is maybe 1 bar strength, in and out.

[firefighter ontheside]

I live in a weird part of my county that we are in a different area code than the 99.9% of the county.  The only person that I ever call that would not be long distance is my parents.  Every other call I make would be long distance.  It's cheaper to have unlimited long distance plan.  We went ahead and ordered the stuff we need to switch to voip.  I'll know pretty soon how well it works.  

[btulloh]

It should be fine.  Which company did you go with?

[Southside]

At my old place I had purchased an adjoining farm that had a house on it.  It was maybe 1500' between the two houses, but they were serviced by two different phone companies and it was a long distance call between them.  

I used to tell folks that my farm was so big it was long distance to call from one part to the other and I wasn't lying.   :D

[SwampDonkey]

Btulloh, I think most ISP's offer a phone VOIP package, they all do here. It will depend on whether Starlink has enough satellite coverage I guess.

[SwampDonkey]

Our long distance here has changed over the years. We can call further away with no long distance charges than we could 30 years ago. It seems to follow the municipality boundaries. Never had those way back, we were on districts or parishes. I don't think we even had mayors in these small villages and hamlets back then either. And now they have changed all that yet again. :D