
Starlink WiFi Router FCC Approved - caiobegotti
https://fcc.report/FCC-ID/2AWHPR201
======
VivaCascadia
It looks like starting out they're going to prioritize rural Washington State.
From the FAQ which is buried for some reason at
[https://www.starlink.com/main.16ae0a3588c339b10118.js](https://www.starlink.com/main.16ae0a3588c339b10118.js).

q:Who can participate in Starlink Beta?

a:Starlink Beta will begin in the Northern United States and lower Canada,
with those living in rural and/or remote communities in the Washington state
area. Access to the Starlink Beta program will be driven by the user's
location as well as the number of users in nearby areas. All beta testers must
have a clear view of the northern sky to participate.

~~~
zamalek
> prioritize rural

It's worth pointing out that this will _probably_ be something only people in
rural areas will be interested in. "High speed" is in reference to the utter
garbage available to these people. The throughput won't be close to what you
can get from copper/fiber in an urban/suburban setting.

If you want to stick it to Comcast+co, this is unlikely to help you cut your
cable [internet]. We'll still need to vote and apply pressure to end this
oligopoly.

~~~
x3haloed
Nope.

“As confirmed by the company, Starlink will be able to provide speeds of up to
a gigabit per second with latencies ranging from 25 milliseconds to 35
milliseconds. Elon Musk has previously stated that it has been designed to run
real-time, competitive video games.”

It will be plenty good to replace anything else available out there for home
internet.

~~~
martinald
As has been pointed out on every Starlink thread, problem isn't latency or
speed, it's contention. Each satellite only has 20gbit/sec per beam of
capacity. It's likely even in small cities that will not be enough (it's only
1-3k users streaming Netflix for example). There is no way you can connect a
city of even 100k people with 20gig/sec of capacity these days, never mind
major metro areas many times that size.

Elon Musk has admitted this himself, and the problem gets worse over time
(bandwidth requirements grow every year, but satellites capacity is fixed), so
the 20gbps they have now will seem even more limited in 3-5 years when the
satellites are becoming EoL.

This is not to say that Starlink is fundamentally flawed, it has great
potential for rural access.

~~~
lumberingjack
I have friends on the Indiana Ohio border that are only offered ISP from a
monopoly, ISP offers one plan $45 mo 60/40mbps. They have the first fiber
optic Network ever laid in the country from adelphia cable but Time Warner
Cable bought it and turned it off 20 years ago.

~~~
sigmaprimus
I just gave Starlink my address as per the email request they sent out today.

I'm currently on an 5Mb down 1Mb up LTE connection with a total data limit of
250Gb/Month for the low price of 100 bucks a month. I do have very low latency
< 20ms, but last month my friends kid was over and managed to burn through 95
gigs playing and updating some game called PubG that ended up putting me over
my limit and I got to pay an extra 50 bucks for the next tier of usage.

If I get the opportunity to try out Starlink I will be more than happy to do
so as it's very frustrating being forced to use an ISP monopoly provider,
especially when there is fiber available to properties less than 5 miles away
from mine.

~~~
34679
You should really check out Visible. Unlimited 4G data, even on the hotspot.

$25 per month if you join a party, which takes about 5 minutes after searching
for "Visible Party".

------
causality0
I really hope Starlink works out. I have relatives whose only option is
satellite internet and with the ultra-low data caps streaming video is just
not an option at home. Imagine living without Netflix or Youtube.

~~~
reaperducer
_Imagine living without Netflix or Youtube._

You mean, the way I and several billion other people do right now?

~~~
paulmd
if you're implying that people in the developing world live without internet
access, you'd be dead wrong. Cell service is ubiquitous and data is cheap.
Those people are probably better-connected than rural Americans (not suburban,
but truly rural, the people living out in the sticks).

American data connectivity is just that bad. It's worse than eastern europe.
Worse than Asia. Worse than Africa.

~~~
reaperducer
_if you 're implying that people in the developing world live without internet
access, you'd be dead wrong_

I imply no such thing. You're projecting your own biases.

I'm merely stating a fact: That not everyone uses Netflix and YouTube, and to
consider those life essentials is absurd.

~~~
Dylan16807
Did you forget the part where you said "several billion other people"?

If you're not talking about the developing world, and just look at the rural
and those who don't want a connection, that's not _nearly_ enough people. So
it's not wrong at all for people to assume you meant the developing world.

And nobody said they were 'life essentials'.

~~~
culturestate
To be fair to the other person, China alone (in which neither Netflix nor
YouTube are widely available) is almost 1.4 billion people. That could easily
be part of their calculus, though I guess you could argue over the meaning of
“several” in this context.

~~~
Dylan16807
I see that as pedantry. We're talking about internet speeds, and the
_equivalent_ of youtube.

~~~
culturestate
_> We're talking about...the equivalent of youtube._

Well, _you_ certainly are, but I don't think the person who originally brought
it up was.

------
topspin
Today I received an email message from SpaceX/Starlink to obtain my "service
address." Previously I had provided my email (more than once, actually) on the
Starlink "beta" sign-up page. This is the first communication I've seen from
them.

~~~
jonplackett
Got one in London too. Seems like just a standard thing though, not getting
too excited... yet

~~~
MartinodF
Yep, same in Milan, Italy! I think they just realized zip codes are not so
useful once you're dealing with the whole world ;)

------
staycoolboy
TBH, I'd really like to work for the FCC doing this stuff. I know it's grunt
work, but it would be such a great end-of-career job to scrutinize hardware to
the nth degree, and just have to worry about doing a precise job, not a fast
one.

~~~
walrus01
It's a third party commercial test lab that does this stuff, the FCC just
receives the filings. There's a high degree of trust put on the test lab to
meet certain engineering standards.

~~~
mindfulhack
Not sure if that's a good thing. I know that structure exists all over the
world though, in countless regulation contexts. So in practice, maybe it's OK.

~~~
schwartzworld
how else could you do it? you expect bureaucrats to inspect the hardware
themselves?

------
teraflop
Interestingly, this device seems to _only_ be a WiFi router. The test results
don't mention any protocols other than 802.11, or any frequency bands other
than the 2.4GHz/5GHz bands used for WiFi. So the actual satellite
communications must be handled by something else.

~~~
acheron9383
The actual modem that talks to the sats is in the antennas you mount on the
roof. They are calling that the "terminal"

------
garaetjjte
What's significant about this? Seems to be plain 802.11ac router.

~~~
Johnny555
The significance is that it's related to the much anticipated (by people with
poor internet access) Starlink satellite internet service.

[https://www.starlink.com/](https://www.starlink.com/)

People would be just as interested if it were just a plastic mounting bracket
with the "Starlink" branding.

~~~
syshum
I have fiber to the home that is super reliable... I am still anticipating
this and will be signing up to supplement my fiber

so it is not just for people with poor internet

~~~
Johnny555
Well... wait until you see pricing. Even if it comes in at the speculated
$80/month price point, many people will find it cheaper and faster to stick
with their terrestrial internet. There aren't many people willing to pay
$80/month for a backup connection they'll only use once every month or two.
(I'm one of them, I usually have at least one Comcast outage a month, from a
few hours to a few days). I'm in a bit of a celluar dead zone, I get one bar
of signal from AT&T or Verizon, and only if I walk up to the second floor)

~~~
asdfk-12
In Alaska, specifically, gigabit internet costs ~$200/mo through Liberty
Media's subsidiary GCI in the three major cities. In rural areas, GCI offers
plans through local co-ops averaging $150/mo for 6mbit down, 100gb data cap
over terrestrial microwave relay. Starlink will normalize this market.

~~~
shaklee3
Starlink will not cost $80 for the gigabit plan. I'd wager there won't be a
gigabit plan. They need _thousands_ of customers per 20Gbps satellite for this
to even start to make sense. You cannot fit even a couple hundred 1Gbps
customers on a single satellite.

~~~
zaarn
You can certainly fit a couple hundred 1Gbps customers on a 20GBps satellite
provided you make sure that those people don't completely saturate the entire
line at the same time.

~~~
shaklee3
Yes, I know how the modeling works. For a 100Gbps subscriber they will need to
guarantee that they can achieve 100G peak speeds when nobody is using it. That
means the beam the user is in always has to be illuminated with as much power
as they need for 100G. Remember, this power is shared between all the other
beams on that satellite.

------
stochtastic
If anyone from Starlink is reading this thread: Add a Lat/Lon option for
addresses in the service address entry form.

Many rural homes have mailing addresses that don't resolve correctly. For
example, the input form forced me to use "Anacortes, WA" for my house in the
San Juans. The islands are a perfect Starlink test market, whereas Anacortes
has plenty of broadband options.

------
artpi
I am buying an RV this week. Both me and my wife work fully remotely for 5
years now. Having a satellite internet terminal on the roof would make it...
way more interesting.

------
ehonda
Starlink will be great in rural Canada where the ISP oligopoly has no
incentive to provide fast internet. I am curious how it will perform in stormy
weather. Does it cut out like satellite TV?

~~~
mint2
Heck just living in the wrong neighborhood in freaking Orange County
California can mean the only options are att with 5mb dsl or cox charging
ridiculous amounts for cable.

Im not even talking about the outskirts of the OC. If you happen to live in
the wrong part of town or even the wrong building; your current internet
choices could be drastically worse than the house 100 yards away.

A couple blocks down my neighbors get att fiber and google fiber. I get tons
of ads for those fiber services just so they can rub in my limited choices of
paying att ridiculous amounts for bad dsl or Coxs even higher prices for the
lowest tiered cable.

~~~
hedora
I used to live in walking distance of downtown Mountain View (a short bike
ride to Google HQ). It was similar to what you describe.

I think we ended up with less than 6MBit theoretical download. Later, we moved
a few blocks and got 10x that.

------
takeda
I really like that competition is coming, but hate that it is in area that
again no one else can compete.

To bring competition all what's really needed is a legislation mandating that
the last mile can be leased to any company (for a reasonable fee of course)
and we would get back once again to times when we needed sites like
dslreports.com to decide which ISP of so many in your area to use.

~~~
Robotbeat
OneWeb went bankrupt, but is being apparently bought by a consortium that
includes the UK government. It may well compete on some level.

Amazon is also considering a LEO megaconstellation called Project Kuiper.

~~~
takeda
It doesn't bring confidence to me that the other competitor is company run by
the richest man in the world.

I meant a real competition.

Most likely the way it will happen is that it will be really nice for
customers with Amazon offering lower prices until SpaceX is driven out of
business and only Amazon is left.

------
ed25519FUUU

        Frequency Range
        2412.0-2462.0
        5180.0-5240.0
        5745.0-5825.0
    

Looks like your standard wireless AC router (2.4ghz and 5ghz).

Whatever this is, it doesn't "talk" to starlink, per its FCC application:

> _In this application, SpaceX proposes to operate in the 10.7-12.7 GHz,
> 13.85-14.5 GHz, 17.8-18.6 GHz, 18.8-19.3 GHz, 27.5-29.1 GHz, and 29.5-30 GHz
> bands._

[https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-authorizes-spacex-
provide-b...](https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-authorizes-spacex-provide-
broadband-satellite-services)

~~~
acheron9383
I'd bet this is the box you place inside your house to serve Wifi, and run
ethernet up to the roof to connect to the modem/antenna on the roof, hence
this being essentially a bog standard AC Wifi Router.

------
dfabulich
For those unclear on the concept: Starlink is SpaceX's satellite network. The
Starlink Wifi router will connect to that satellite network to provide
wireless home internet.

~~~
jcun4128
Would this be that UFO-looking thing you stick in the ground outside. Or this
is literally a router(box in home) that connects to what before connecting to
the satellite(s)?

~~~
lgats
box in home router. Though it could have special equipment to further process
the satellite signal, that's likely to be primarily on the 'dish' itself.

------
NDizzle
I can’t wait for it to reach me in rural Arkansas. I’m on a 4g lte connection.
Best option at my house.

------
bosswipe
So they're probably going to use the same scammy techniques as other ISPs
where they require you to rent a $100 standard router for $200 per year.

~~~
acheron9383
Unclear until the pricing comes out, they may just include it for free when
you buy internet service. But ISPs generally need to package at least
something to serve Wifi for customers that don't already have their own Access
Point, looks like SpaceX just put together their own, rather than provide
something off the shelf.

------
bdefore
Presumably the NSA wouldn't let something like Starlink get off the ground
unless they had a way of listening. How are they addressing this?

~~~
caiobegotti
AFAIK "end-to-end encryption encoded at firmware level" is the current
official answer:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/8049u6/starlink_t...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/8049u6/starlink_to_be_endtoend_encryption_encoded_at/)

~~~
pfundstein
I find the second part of that statement more interesting:

> If it is (and we learn about it), a crypto fix will go out immediately via
> network-wide firmware update.

This implies that the SpaceX holds private keys for signing firmware updates,
and a mechanism for pushing them.

I hope those keys are kept very far from anything Internet-connected.

~~~
mlindner
I mean even if you own your own private modem, Comcast (and others) can and do
push new firmware directly into your modem. I don't see how this would be any
different.

~~~
pfundstein
I'm not sure how you think those ISPs supposedly push firmware to private
'modems' of all shapes and sizes, but I would like to know because I had a
hell of a time reflashing my router with OpenWRT.

~~~
jpollock
It's because cable modems are standardized with a set of upstream management
protocols. They have a looong history of fleet management [1].

If you have cable internet, try going to 192.168.100.1. [2]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOCSIS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOCSIS)

[2] [https://www.computerworld.com/article/2880475/talk-to-
your-m...](https://www.computerworld.com/article/2880475/talk-to-your-
modem.html#:~:text=Most%20modems%20in%20their%20list,10.1%20or%20192.168).

~~~
pfundstein
You're referring to the CPE which is owned and managed by the ISP just as they
own and manage other routers in their network.

The other person said that they can push firmware to private modems though,
which is not possible without that modem being configured to accept such
pushes.

Perhaps you're thinking of CWMP (TR-069) which is a protocol that ISPs often
use to push _configs_ to modems configured to receive them, but again, it
cannot be used to arbitrarily flash the firmware of private modems.

~~~
jpollock
Motorola's documentation says that firmware updates to _my_ modem are pushed
by the ISP, with the rollout managed by the ISP. It may be CPE, but I
purchased it retail and it is not linked to any particular ISP.

[https://motorolamentor.zendesk.com/hc/en-
us/articles/2160917...](https://motorolamentor.zendesk.com/hc/en-
us/articles/216091737-How-do-I-update-the-modem-
firmware-#:~:text=All%20firmware%20updates%20are%20handled,update%20cable%20modem%20firmware%20manually).

------
Roritharr
The one thing I find iffy is that the current generation of Starlink Sats
aren't supposed to do Sattelite to Satfelite communication, so the actual
latency benefits around the globe aren't going to materialize the first couple
of years. I'm really interested when they plan to have their service to be
actually competitive latency-wise.

~~~
walrus01
The latency will be about 20ms higher than a terrestrial pure fiber based
internet customer in the same location as the earth stations. For example
whatever the latency is from the north bend WA site to downtown Seattle (a few
milliseconds) plus 20ms. This is a considerable improvement over the absolute
bare minimum rtt ping time on a Geostationary based VSAT which is 492ms.

There are a lot of terrestrial wireline last mile access technologies that
already introduce 15-25ms latency on the last mile segment. Such as ADSL2+ on
old POTS copper wiring or a heavily loaded docsis3 cable network. That is just
from the home modem to the neighborhood's closest network node.

~~~
jcims
Yep just tested this morning, 33ms to my next hop on the network. ~15M/800k
ADSL2 in Ohio.

I think folks in regions of Ohio will provide an interesting test bed as we’re
in fringe coverage of 4-5 of the total set of planned ground stations.

(Speaking of ground station, would be interesting if we could talk to starlink
over AWS’s ground relay service.)

------
AngryData
Good, the best live on a paved road and I can't even get DSL. I got a garbage
mobile connection with a 80ms ping time to google and im paying out the ass
for it and it is unreliable as fuck.

------
yread
So, will they look like little rockets?

[https://fcc.report/FCC-ID/2AWHPR201/4805891](https://fcc.report/FCC-
ID/2AWHPR201/4805891)

~~~
reaperducer
Or Star Fleet comm badges?

------
6d6b73
Indoor operation only. This is just a router that will probably have an
external device connected to another antenna.

------
rusabd
Military should be interested in this, they also pay more than sparse
civilians in the middle of nowhere.

------
dandare
Can someone ELI5 what is going on? Is it that I am non-US resident or did I
miss something important?

~~~
johnlbevan2
See
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23841492](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23841492)
for FAQs. Summary: SpaceX are bringing out broadband for folk in remote areas
/ some progress has been made.

------
andrew_
I'd give my left arm for a 12v or 24v DC announcement. IPx67 would be
incredible.

~~~
hedora
Seriously. I don’t want to run a new trench for this when PoE would do.

~~~
mlindner
The dish is powered by PoE apparently, single cable for the dish itself.

------
beams_of_light
My mom lives on Fox Island, and has no access to the Internet aside from LTE,
which is very expensive and unreliable. Hoping she'll get a look from the
Starlink team!

------
ChuckMcM
Nice. But I want the application for the satellite transceiver. I can see
their signal but I'd like to be able to demodulate them too.

------
ProAm
Does anyone know if all the Starlink satellites are operational? Did they send
up any duds so far? Or have any failures post launch?

~~~
jccooper
They've deorbited 5 of the 540 launched so far, and a few more of the first
launch seem to be derelict.

------
seebetter
A Starry employee told me they're going to start offering Starlink Internet
next year in rural areas. In my city they're offering a $50/month 200-300 mb/s
service using Air Fiber from Ubiquity.

~~~
walrus01
that's not the same thing at all

~~~
seebetter
I asked him about 30 questions on how the system worked and what he was doing.
He said Starry Internet was going to MARKET a service with Starlink / SpaceX.
He wasn't talking about using Air Fibers in rural areas -- he said satellites.
Maybe he was mistaken but I was not.

~~~
walrus01
starlink very definitely has not committed to working with any third parties
for anything - either install services or value added services.

~~~
seebetter
Yes I was skeptical too. Just saying what he told me.

------
deepdmistry
Awesome news !!

------
Trias11
In 5 yrs Bezos will be polishing Musk shoes

------
ahnick
Who else is hoping to run a bonded internet connection with their existing ISP
and Starlink? :)

------
pieceofcakedude
No, I do not consent to yet another source of EMF blasting me at all times. I
also do not consent to my view of the cosmos being permanently altered. Hope
this idea, Starlink and all future competitors (it won't be just Starlink of
course) go belly up.

~~~
RL_Quine
Do you not consent to space existing? You have far more exposure to all sorts
of interesting radio frequencies from space every day than you'll ever see
from a small radio.

