131 points

a musk company over promising and under delivering. Surprise surprise

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26 points

At least he’s consistently underwhelming across the board though.

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7 points

I guess that’s the only thing consistent of his behavior… kinda sucks that companies like SpaceX are all related to him. I’d love to root for Starship to achieve it’s set goals but also I’d hate to see him get even more rich… if that makes sense

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102 points

No surprise there. It’s overpriced, the quality is poor, the connection is frequently unstable, and the owner of a company is a bigot, who’s also intervening in a war. To absolutely no one’s surprise, this never would have reached the numbers he promised

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55 points

Talk for yourself. Some of us need starlink. Quality is great. Price is high but it’s space internet. Again connection is pretty fucking stable. Playing GeForce now on my TV thanks to starlink.

He’s a cunt but product is not

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42 points

I agree. It’s the only option for internet in many places. I’m very happy with my Starlink service. I’d drop it in a heartbeat if there was a better option but for now it fits my needs.

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0 points

Unless you need low latency and have nothing better around, yeah I can see how Starlink is best for you.

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0 points

Obviously the second fibre is available. Half the price and better stability. Fuck musk. But currently it’s leaps and bounds above competition.

It’s basically the Tesla of the ev industry.

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19 points

I’ve heard mixed reviews, the big problem seems to be stability, at least around my area. I’ve heard it goes down frequently in heavy rain and snow (I’m in Canada), and people have had problems with satellites being blocked by trees (lots of trees in Canada).

For people with no access to Internet as is that’s still a huge upgrade, but for people who were hoping it would open up the possibility of moving to and working remotely in more rural areas without good wired internet coverage it’s a total letdown.

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9 points

Hasn’t gone down since March. Went down yesterday. Worldwide outage. My previous sat system went down frequently. Like once a week. Was 30mb down at full. Usually managed 15 most days. Sundays were pretty much unusable. Other options were dal at top 15.

So starlink is a fucking god send.

I think it is exactly that. Yes trees impact but you don’t put the dish there. We had a good damn cyclone. It was fine. We were the only people in the area who had internet. The road washed out along with fibre. Can’t get a better recommendation than that.

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6 points

The product is objectively the worst possible option in any place that has options, which is most places. It may be useful for some people in some remote parts of the world. Doesn’t make it a good product though. It just makes it the only product on offer.

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13 points

Sooo… some people need starlink?

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11 points

We have options, just not good ones. After Starlink, the next best option where I live is 4G internet, which is way slower. Another satellite service or dialup are other options, both much worse than Starlink. We do not live in a remote location, just barely rural, and only a few kms from a town with gigabit fibre. Starlink is a fantastic service that has only gone down twice for us in the 7 months we’ve had it, and even then only briefly. I don’t think I can fully impress upon you just how much better it has made things.

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11 points

Its not competing against cable or fiber, its competing against satellite internet and DSL. My family has a place in rural Maine and we used to have Hughesnet satellite internet and starlink is half the price and like 50x the speed.

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8 points

It’s better than than the rest. It works really well. What are you basing your reasoning on

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55 points

I just checked the price and its $599 for the hardware + $99 deposit + $50 shipping. After that the service costs $120/month. I pay $65/month for fiber at the moment.

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26 points

If you have fiber, it’s unlikely you will benefit from something like Starling. Transfer data wirelessly through a constellation of satellites will have running costs much higher than just having a fibre. That is unless you have to dog a trench or run a fibre on mast for km for just one customer, which is where Starling starts making more sense.

Starling is for rural customers, mobile customers, and possibly an option to counter monopoly abuse by some Telco companies. But if you are in a city with fibre, then do use the fibre, that’s your better option.

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6 points

Is starling like an interstellar zergling or something?

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3 points

It’s a type of bird.

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2 points

I actually would not be surprised if SpaceX starts using Starling for one of their thrusters in the future. I’ll keep the typo.

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11 points

I paid the deposit over 3 years ago and they still haven’t done shit.

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-83 points
Removed by mod
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32 points

You know, you can make your perfectly valid argument without the insult. No need to add more toxicity to Lemmy and fediverse at large.

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-21 points

It is dumb though. Like c’mon. There’s being a toxic dick and there’s calling out a dumb statement.

I think the two can coexist. But fuck it.

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32 points

Rude tone apart, this is absolutely true. Nobody thinks satellite Internet is meant to compete with fiber to the door.

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-34 points

Potentially rude. They are indeed dumb.

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5 points

I was in a similar spot. No fiber but I could get dsl.

The reason I wanted it is I have two houses in Oregon and I could take it with me.

It’s too expensive for that.

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1 point

Yeah that’s a shame. Would be great if you could move it around

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47 points

Given how stable Elon is with his other companies, why would anyone be skeptical of letting him supply them with a utility service?

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25 points

No way in hell I’d entrust my internet service to someone who unblocks Nazis and blocks the people who complain about Nazis.

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14 points

As long as you post a Nazi tweet a day, your connection should be fine, though. It’s called Tweet Heil.

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6 points

XHeil.

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37 points

I was waitlisted a while back but because of all the Elon bullshit when I got my email saying it was available I opted to just stick with Viasat.

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33 points

Thats the thing.

Outside of the Ukrainian war, I’m not seeing much good use of this Starlink constellation.

  1. Urban areas are already built to 5G, meaning high-speed wireless internet at far cheaper prices than satellite could ever hope to deliver.

  2. Suburban areas have high 5G coverage, though it isn’t perfect yet. As well as aging 4G (okay), but also a plentitude of fiber options from Verizon and Comcast. No, it isn’t perfect, but the crappiest Comcast connection is still better than the best Starlink could ever offer in terms of price and reliability.

  3. Rural areas are already covered by Viasat. Which is going to be more efficient due to the simple nature of only needing like 5 to 10 satellites in the 100-year orbit height… rather than 60,000+ Starlink satellites in the 5-year orbit height.


Ukraine gets a benefit because Russians are actively trying to jam the communications, so ~5 to 10 satellites could get disrupted, but its a lot harder to jam 60,000 satellites floating around. So yes, Starlink did manage to find a niche… only to have the lord of the communications openly claim that Crimea belongs to Russia and shutdown a Ukrainian operation.

So suddenly, Ukraine can’t trust Starlink anymore. So who the hell wants to use this constellation?

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19 points

I find your comment to be a bit North America focused. Surely there are many places in the world where that stuff is handy.

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7 points
*

You realize that the Ukrainians are spending $2500 / month per terminal, right?

This isn’t a cheap system. Yeah, focusing on America where we have subsidies for rural internet (Government to pay part of those costs) is for a damn good reason. I’m not sure who can afford this in practice.

It is said that the terminal costs $1,300. And I’d expect that the communications will be hundreds+ / month. There’s not actually a lot of people around the world who can afford that, but shoot. You can tell me which countries you think this is a good business idea for.

As I said earlier: Ukraine has crazy requirements where the Russians are conducting electronic warfare (and other… warfare…) where the costs are worth it. Anyone else? Because Viasat is right there at like $100/month. Unless you NEED a way to escape the Russian jamming of traditional satellites, why would you pay Starlink’s crazy high costs?

https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/05/10/1051973/russia-hack-viasat-satellite-ukraine-invasion/

“Rural” includes oceans. So airplanes who are flying across oceans use Viasat right now, and its likely cheaper and more available than Starlink in practice thanks to the far fewer satellites that Viasat needs to launch and maintain. Yeah, 10 satellites are way, way cheaper than 40,000+ satellites. Who’d a thunk it?

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4 points

I support a few business that have locations in Texas that can’t get fiber or cable internet. We use Viasat for them. I wanted starlink since we were seeing people with the service that had way better speeds and latency compared to Viasat.

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2 points

Rural areas are already covered by Viasat. Which is going to be more efficient due to the simple nature of only needing like 5 to 10 satellites in the 100-year orbit height… rather than 60,000+ Starlink satellites in the 5-year orbit height.

Latency sucks with Viasat. You won’t play multiplayer games on it, and even web browsing will be sluggish with how many round trips displaying just a single page requires nowadays.

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1 point

No wireless communication will beat physical connection ever. Period. There’s not argument in it to be had.

All of wireless bandwidth can be crammed in a single fiber optic cable. All of it, with room to spare. And then you realize you can run as many as you like in parallel while in wireless communication only one device can talk at the time.

Cables are here to stay.

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