
Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps - trulyrandom
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/08/spacex-starlink-beta-tests-show-speeds-up-to-60mbps-latency-as-low-as-31ms/
======
hesdeadjim
Anyone complaining about this has never experienced the frustration of rural
living when it comes to internet. This is absolutely amazing, and it will just
get better.

Even a reliable 10mbps would be a godsend in many places.

~~~
tetha
Reliable 10mbps is a stable full hd stream and 5ish mbps to spare. Easily one
stable video call or two at lower quality.

It'll be annoying if you want to download the latest AAA shooter coming in at
dozens and dozens of gigabytes, sure. But you can do a lot at 10mbps as 1-2
people needing the uplink. That's really nice.

~~~
curiousllama
Totally agree.

Also - my frustrations over the last few days compel me to point out that the
latest AAA shooter is in fact 227 GB, plus >100GB of updates.

~~~
kickopotomus
Has anyone come out with a reason for the size? I mean they seem to reuse a
lot of the same textures throughout the game so I have a hard time
understanding how it managed to swell to that.

~~~
csharptwdec19
IDK if they do this for PC versions...

But a lot of these games not only Reuse textures but also duplicate them. They
do this to improve load times for levels/etc (less seeking).

Playstation DOOM is an early example of this pattern. The WAD files were
actually 'per-level' and contained all sprites/textures/etc used in said
level.

~~~
antris
Wouldn't duplicated textures get de-duplicated by any halfway-decent
compression algorithm though? I'd assume the game is sent over the wire
compressed

~~~
enkid
That's not how compression would work. Think about if they are adding a new
level. The algorithm would have nothing to compare the files against except
what is actually being sent. If the texture appears in each level, and each
level comes in a separate update, there's no way for the algorithm to
reference or incorporate the files that are already in your computer, so it
has to compress it like it's a brand new file. That is unless you have a
costume installer which duplicates the file once it runs, but that would
probably be a ton more work for the developers.

~~~
Dylan16807
You have this completely wrong. "there's no way"? It's extremely easy to make
a patch file that references existing data. This is a problem that has been
solved many times.

And that's not relevant to initial install anyway, which can/should be a
single download.

~~~
enkid
But thats not compression. That's downloading and running an executable that
duplicates files.

~~~
Dylan16807
Having a reference dictionary is a type of compression.

You need a program that decompresses no matter what, and the ability to
reference existing files barely changes it. It's not a post-processing stage
where files get copied around. It's the ability to reference arbitrary chunks
of data inter-file just like it can reference arbitrary chunks of data intra-
file.

At the most basic level it's like taking a compressed file and chopping it in
half. The user already has the first half, then they download the second half
and "resume" decompressing.

------
dougmwne
This is already quite an achievement! In just 10 launches, SpaceX is operating
the world's largest satellite constellation and can already provide broadband
of reasonable quality to some customers. In rural areas, I have struggled to
catch weak LTE signals with fixed antennas that often didn't hit these speed
and latency numbers. This absolutely seems on track to be an excellent
alternative to rural LTE or existing satellite internet providers. If it gets
better from here with more launches, it's all gravy as far as I'm concerned.

~~~
derekp7
I would like to see a kit from SpaceX which provides a solar powered Starlink
to LTE bridge. Such kits could be installed anywhere, and provide service to
places such as farm communities (install them on top of grain silos, for
example). That way Starlink could be available to more customers without them
having to have their own premise equipment (beyond an LTE hotspot).

~~~
grecy
I worked for the Telco that services all of Northern Canada (world's largest
operating area for a telco).

We installed one of the world's first 3G towers that uses only satellite as
backbone. Think fly-in only communities that are thousands of kilometers away
from anything in the Arctic. Many of our sites are served by radio backhaul
for that reason.

The sat backhaul tower is extremely expensive and temperamental. It does work,
but not very well. 3G (and LTE) are not very fault tolerant, and phones drop
calls when the quality of the call drops below thresholds that can't be set.
AFAIK they have not installed another one because of all the problems.

For data the cost is astronomical - many thousands of dollars per GB.
Hopefully starlink can at least fix that.

~~~
ianai
This is what turns me away from the astronomers complaining about the
constellations. They’re not interested at all in the community whose problems
satnet helps resolve. Society has had plenty of time to run data lines out to
the hardest to reach areas and clearly cannot and will not do it any other
way.

~~~
labster
And in 10 years, Starship should make it possible to put more space
observatories in orbit, so it should get better for the professional
astronomers eventually. It'll still suck for amateur astronomers and
photographers, though.

Although, with the way 2020 is going, we'll probably miss observing the
asteroid that kills us all because a Starlink got in the way of the
observation.

~~~
gamegod
The reason we don't use space observatories as much anymore is because we have
adaptive optics now and don't need them. The concerns of astronomers are real.
It's not for Starlink to ruin our ability to observe the sky for all of
humanity. Incredible entitlement.

~~~
mynameisvlad
You can easily turn that last part around.

It's not for astronomers to ruin our ability to provide essential (and yes,
internet is essential at this point) services for billions of people around
the world that otherwise can't get it. Incredible entitlement.

It just depends on what you value more, observing the sky, or providing
internet.

~~~
labster
What right do you have to turn that statement around? Incredible entitlement.
/s

But really adaptive optics is nice, and lets us compensate for atmospheric
distortions. But not light filtered by the atmosphere. Or clouds. Or daylight.
And we still have to compensate for quakes and vibrations, and temperature
change. It's simply just cheaper to do on land than in space.

Imagine if it wasn't an order of magnitude more expensive in space. Or imagine
a large telescope array on the Moon, where you get stability, ability to
repair, and no atmosphere to get in the way. With SLS and Starship, all of
that starts to look possible in the next 20 years.

------
bargl
Starlink internet is not meant to replace hard line internet. There is no
getting around the physics of cable being so much cheaper/easier. Even
terrestrial cell towers are more efficient and cheaper than satellites.

This is 100% meant to supplement existing infrastructure not to replace it.
You will almost always get cheaper and faster internet (for both you and the
company providing internet) over a cable to your house. If you can't get that,
then maybe a cell tower is better, if that doesn't work, then a land based
beaming internet may be better, after that I'd look to space based internet.

It can probably supplant land based beaming internet, but I don't see this
replacing ISPs/4g/5g anytime soon.

The target audience for much of this infrastructure is the places you can't
put a cell tower, but want to get signal. Ocean based travel being a big one.

EDIT: I will contend. 5g could beat out ISPs at cost (which I thought I'd made
more clear above). It's about the cost of infrastructure given the population
density. I don't have as much knowledge in that area as I do satellite costs.
But satellites won't beat out 5G at cost, not even with the reduced cost to
space that SpaceX provides. It could with another couple orders of magnitude
cost reduction in space. But there's a reason SpaceX is targeting only 5
million Americans and not 300 million.

~~~
busterarm
A lot of what you're saying isn't actually true here.

Light moves significantly (47%) slower through optical fiber than through
space. This drastically reduces the latency of long distance connections.
We're talking NY round trip to Japan in the same time it takes NY roundtrip to
the UK now.

The cost of backhaul and ongoing maintenance of cables is a lot more than
SpaceX launching their own satellites by an entire order of magnitude.

~~~
pmlnr
> Light moves significantly (47%) slower through optical fiber than through
> space

The what?

As far as I know c is a constant.

~~~
kibwen
The constant c is the speed of light in a vacuum. Different mediums have
different speeds of light within them; in fact, it's actually possible for
light to _not_ be the fastest thing in a given medium (for more precise
definitions of all those words):
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation)

------
jasonpeacock
Honestly, this is just awesome. It's a working demonstration of high-speed
satellite internet, showing this approach is a viable solution for "anywhere
on Earth" internet.

For all those people who don't have broadband available, this will be life-
changing.

It'll only get better from here, welcome to the future :)

(and remember that perfect is the enemy of good)

~~~
xenadu02
Having this kind of network is a good thing but the idea that any kind of
satellite or wireless can replace wires is just fantasy.

Delivering just 10Mbps to 100 million customers is over 900 Tbps. There is
absolutely no way a satellite network can clear that kind of downlink
bandwidth. And that's just a tiny fraction of the market.

Physical cables/fiber represent several orders of magnitude more capacity and
always will. So satellite is great for remote areas or unique situations but
absolutely not a substitute for running cables.

~~~
Alupis
And even in remote areas, building out VDSL2 networks with relatively decent
speeds (200Mbps down and 100Mbps up[1]) would be better, honestly.

Most homes already have a phone line and can support a DSL network... and in
some countries a phone line is mandated by law, so the infrastructure already
exists.

But, DSL is not nearly as "sexy" as thousands of satellites...

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDSL#:~:text=VDSL%20offers%20s...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDSL#:~:text=VDSL%20offers%20speeds%20of%20up,25%20kHz%20to%2012%20MHz).

~~~
jedberg
I think they serve different purposes. Satellites serve areas where they can't
run wires or it's insanely expensive for too few people. Think very rural
areas and war torn areas. Imagine being able to get unblocked internet in
China by using satellites? Or in Belarus. Or the middle of Amazon
(rainforest)?

~~~
gamblor956
People keep bringing that up as a common use case, but how do you propose that
people in China or wartorn countries will get their hands on the modems they
would need to _use_ Starlink?

~~~
jedberg
US government airdrops?

~~~
RandomBacon
There are a bunch or articles that talk about people using balloons to send
material to North Korea.

The Human Rights Foundation even collects flash drives to load them up with
content to smuggle into North Korea:
[https://flashdrivesforfreedom.org](https://flashdrivesforfreedom.org)

~~~
Alupis
For private groups, or individuals, sure you can get away with this.

For a government to do this? How could that not lead to an armed conflict?

~~~
freehunter
How do governments airdrop supplies into war-torn countries today? I’ll admit
I’m no expert but I see headlines all the time of neutral nations sending
supplies to other countries who are fighting a war and that neutral nation
isn’t getting dragged into the fight.

~~~
gamblor956
Governments don't airdrop supplies into war-torn countries today, excepting
designated UN or MSF refugee camps, and they do so with the knowledge of one
or both sides of the conflict so that the supply planes don't get shot down.

I would very much like to see a headline of a neutral nation airdropping
supplies into a country engaged in war without getting dragged into the
conflict. I'm not aware of that having occurred in the past 4 decades.

------
LinuxBender
More useful to me would be bufferbloat [1] tests. Any starlink beta testers on
HN? Also useful would be nuttcp or iperf3 tests just in case they optimized /
prioritized for sites like dslreports and other speed test sites.

[1] -
[http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest](http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest)

~~~
wtallis
Yep. It's pretty much a given that if you want to compare Starlink to a good
terrestrial ISP, you'll be disappointed. But compared to any other satellite
ISP, Starlink should be impressive, especially in terms of latency. So testing
and media coverage of Starlink should focus more on latency than throughput,
and testing latency _properly_ means testing latency under load.

~~~
danw1979
... and the network only has a handful of beta testers on it at the moment, so
any load tests are going to be meaningless.

------
DoingIsLearning
"...that said, we’ll make sure Starlink has no material effect on discoveries
in astronomy. We care a great deal about science." Elon Musk

A long exposure of Comet NEOWISE by Photographer Daniel Lopez:
[https://imgur.com/a/rDI1Onn](https://imgur.com/a/rDI1Onn)

N.B. The white streaks are Starlink constellation passthrough trajectories

Starlink currently has 597 orbiting satellites they plan for more than 12k to
be deployed. Amazon just got an approval for their own constellation of
another 3k low orbiting satellites. Facebook and Alibaba will probably join
this trend.

~~~
ColanR
Do the satellites in the photo have the new shades on them? I'd be interested
to know how much the situation has improved with the improved anti-reflection.

~~~
mrguyorama
A non-reflective coating on the satellites will not stop them from blocking
the light from astronomical objects.

~~~
bryanlarsen
The concern astronomers raised was blooming caused by oversaturating their
sensors, not blockage.

------
etaioinshrdlu
I just got back from an AirBnB where I worked remotely for a week and the
internet was DSL. It was about 1.5Mbps up and down. Work was still possible.
Even group video calls worked.

Uploading and downloading large files was out of the question however. I had
to do a lot of work SSH'd into a remote server.

So, 11 to 60 is not great, but still useful.

~~~
driverdan
How was the LTE signal with a good quality antenna? LTE is already faster than
this, assuming you can get at least a half signal.

~~~
Alupis
Ya, the 11Mbps side of it is very disappointing. That's pretty in-line with
slow DSL and existing satellite connections.

The latency will be interesting to see too, since that was the boldest claim
Musk made with this venture. The article seems to have cherry picked the best
speedtests to show in their graphic - I'm curious what real-world in-
application latencies are, ie. inside Call Of Duty Modern Warefare or
something similar.

~~~
ShakataGaNai
11mbps is amazing for what this is. Sure, it's "slow DSL" speed, but if you
can get slow DSL you don't care about satellite internet. This is for all the
places in the world that you can't get 4G cell service, let alone DSL.

11mbps plus a ping time of sub100 ms means that _most_ people could telework
anywhere in the world, even in the middle of an ocean. Unless your job
requires you to download/upload huge amounts of data, it's more than enough
for surfing, working, zoom, etc.

~~~
Alupis
OK maybe, but Elon promised 1Gbps speeds. 11Mbps is very, very far cry from
that.

~~~
loufe
Ok, but at the same time this is the BETA period. Attacks on his claim should
wait until the public availability of the service begins.

~~~
Alupis
Fair enough... except everyone here is in awe of 11Mbps satellite service, as-
if satellite internet is some brand new thing.

~~~
yencabulator
If Hughes had been serving 11-60 Mbps at 31-94 ms ping without caps, Starlink
wouldn't need to exist. Starlink is absolutely not the same as the previous
generation of satellite internet. This _is_ a brand new thing.

~~~
Alupis
OK, but they've touted each satellite in the cluster being capable of driving
20Gbps all by itself.

So why are people only getting 11Mbps? Beta or not, that's a very far cry from
the promised specs.

------
loktarogar
What i'm more interested in is longer term (well, longer than a speedtest)
consistency. 11mbps is fine if it's never less than 11mbps. Aiming for "20ms
latency for gaming" etc is useless if the thing drops out even once in a game.

~~~
aSockPuppeteer
It should be fine unless a helicopter hovers over your dish, wind makes your
dish unstable, the satellite reaches end of life, weather affects your
frequency(rain/fog/snow), or predicted sun spots occur.

The price may be concerning if we compare to the current offers of
competition. There are caps and bandwidth limitations. Satellite time is
expensive.

~~~
ShakataGaNai
If a helicopter is hovering over your dish, close enough to be noticeable
amounts of wind (more wind than you say get normally)... you have bigger
problems... Like a military group is fast-roping into your home.

------
Barrin92
just to do some napkin maths, the entire constellation is supposed to be 12k
satellites. Some googling gives 20Gbps throughput per satellite, so that'd be
about 240k Gbps per second.

Now of course the satellites keep exchanging information themselves and not
all satellites are everywhere all the time but ignoring that, and let's say
you can assume ten times as much bandwidth because not everyone is online at
the same time, that still doesn't serve a lot of people right?

If you go with their eventual Gigabit speed claims that'd work out to about 2
million customers if I didn't make an error. That's only a single digit
percentage of the American rural population let alone anywhere else in the
world.

~~~
gbear605
Gigabit speeds are great, but 80% of the value of Starlink is just getting the
11 Mbps to the people who can't get even that speed in any better way. There
are many (millions?) of Americans who don't have that. So let's calculate from
that number (or 10 Mbps, to make it easy).

240K Gbps * 1000Gb/Mb / 10Mbps/customer = 24M customers.

I've heard that in most residential cases, people on average use about a tenth
of their bandwidth. That gets us up to 240M customers. That's only about a
tenth of the world's rural populations [1], but that is still pretty great.

[1]:
[https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/2018-...](https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/2018-revision-
of-world-urbanization-prospects.html)

~~~
manmal
Also, rural endpoints can be shared among multiple households, AFAIK small
African villages often share one WiFi hotspot, and sometimes one
phone/tablet/computer.

------
alexwennerberg
Is anyone concerned about the effect this has on the night sky and
astronomical observation?

[https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/space-science/starlink-
sa...](https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/space-science/starlink-satellites-
change-view-of-night-sky/)

~~~
Bombthecat
Nope, we destroyed the earth already. Why should we worry about the sky?

------
bearjaws
My parents house has 2mbps DSL from ATT.

This would be a massive upgrade, and for petty much anyone in rural America
1.5mbps has been the dream for years now.

------
jpollock
The number of grey market installs of this where people will use _any_
available US address to get the equipment and then take it back to wherever
they are?

Wow. This isn't just rural USA, this is rural Canada, Europe, South America,
Africa. Anywhere and everywhere.

Think back to US sat-tv providers selling into Canada. Think back to the
original iPhone selling internationally.

Regulators be damned.

------
ekianjo
>The 35 best cities in the world for online gaming have ping rates of 8 to
28ms

That statement makes absolutely no sense. That would assume the server is
always in the same city as where you are at, which is about never the case
when you play different games.

------
bananaface
Won't these speeds dramatically reduce once there are a lot of users
saturating the connections?

~~~
topkai22
I suspect it will be really serving areas where that is unlikely to happen
(rural areas and over ocean transportation).

~~~
BitwiseFool
I'd switch to Starlink JUST to spite Comcast.

~~~
jsperson
While I totally agree with your sentiments, there is a large section of the
population that don’t even have the bad option of Comcast. I hope they put
some curbs on adoption by those who have alternatives. Source: farm owner in
the middle of nowhere KS. We have fixed wireless, but if it was hilly here
we’d be stuck with Hughes and their geosynchronous satellites. The latency is
huge - the speed of light isn’t fast enough.

~~~
BenjiWiebe
Fellow middle of Kansas guy here. Check for fixed wireless in the area. We
just got KwiKom which handily beats CenturyLink DSL on price, speed, and
latency. And our neighbors couldn't even get DSL.

------
11thEarlOfMar
I recall when Iridium was going up, there was discussion about the complexity
of the software that managed the pattern of transmitting packets among the
satellites. The description indicated it was a complex software problem and
they were struggling to get it right. (I went looking for articles from the
time period, but couldn't track one down, however, came across MIT/Motorola
FCC application for what would become Iridium.[1])

It's likely(?) that the orders of magnitude more Starlink satellites, their
LEO speed, and other factors that impact optimization (amount of data to
transmit, type of data, current load on intervening sats, positional changes
during transmission, handoffs, etc.) can make this pretty hard. Or... It could
be a learning system via neural net, etc.

The notion that the system could get faster and more efficient over time,
simply by operating and without the usual trudge of scheduled software
releases and upgrades, is an intriguing possibility. Tho somehow, that's not a
novel notion...

[1]
[https://web.mit.edu/deweck/www/research_files/comsats_2004_0...](https://web.mit.edu/deweck/www/research_files/comsats_2004_001_v10/Unit1%20Success%20and%20Failure/SAT-
AO-19901204-00068.pdf)

~~~
busterarm
IIRC, Starlink satellites operate at a much lower orbit, are much more
numerous and are a lot closer together which reduces the tracking complexity a
fair bit. Also the inter-satellite links on the Iridium network are radio
whereas the Starlinks have 4 motorized optical links (laser). They're highly
reflective objects against the background of space.

~~~
pacificmint
As far as I know, the current satellites don’t have any lasers for satellite
to satellite communication yet. That will come in later generations.

~~~
busterarm
Ahh, I had to look this up but you are correct.

------
Teknoman117
The latency here is the main takeaway for me. It's phenomenal for a space
based system.

I spent some time at my parents cabin during the quarantine and the only
option there is satellite internet. SSH with a ping of multiple seconds is
rather frustrating. That and all the systems which have bad bandwidth because
that much latency makes them think they've lost connection.

As my parents are both techies, they are desperately hoping they're accepted
into the beta.

~~~
cryptonector
Once they have inter-satellite links I'd expect long-haul latency over those
links to beat cable latency for equivalent hauls.

------
supernova87a
What is the pricing?

No one ever seems to answer this all-important question...

~~~
bryanlarsen
Shotwell has said that it will be competitive with existing Internet pricing
at $80. She didn't say it would be $80, but competitive with that pricing.
Read that as you will. I'm sure that's only the starting price, that you'll be
able to pay a lot more for more bandwidth.

~~~
awesomeideas
I wonder if it will have location-modulated pricing; $80 wouldn't be
competitive where I am.

~~~
duskwuff
If anything, I can imagine them ramping _up_ prices in higher-density areas
(where other more competitive broadband providers are available) to avoid
oversubscription.

------
jefft255
Pings and upload speeds seem impressive (although as someone else said we'll
see when under load). I come from a place (rural Canada) where a non-trival
amount of people who live far away from town centers do not have access to
decent internet. This will be a good alternative to existing satellite ISPs,
or 5mbps (on a good day) land ISPs.

Also potentially amazing for people living off-grid.

~~~
bargl
It will also put pressure on land based ISP to either give up customers, or
pay to increase infrastructure to get comparable internet to those areas.

------
hangonhn
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giQ8xEWjnBs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giQ8xEWjnBs)

According to this Engineering Explained video, it may be possible to achieve a
lower latency using Star Link than over fiber if the points are far enough.
People like high frequency traders might be willing to pay a ton for such a
thing.

------
vondur
This is awesome to hear. This will enable more people to move out to more
remote places and get some nice speeds. 60MB/s is good enough for most remote
work and TV streaming services. I can't wait to see what the major players
will respond to this if it's opened up to major cities.

------
iaw
Latency runs 31 mS to 70 mS in the speedtests shown. I don't buy their claims
that you can game with >100 mS latency, that is not a good experience.

This is a great step forward for internet accessibility but I really wish they
wouldn't oversell the capabilities before we're there.

~~~
semicolon_storm
As someone who lives in the middle of the ocean with ~70ms to the nearest
major data center, you get used to it.

You’re at a disadvantage to people with low ping, but it’s certainly not
unplayable.

~~~
smabie
It really depends on the game. I would say 70-100ms is the upper acceptable
limit for FPSs (though some like CS:GO or Valorant require even lower), but
even like 150-250ms is okay for casual MOBA play.

------
H8crilA
How low will it get once there's 100 (or more) people connecting from a single
neighborhood?

------
ecf
High-quality satellite internet that isn’t hamstrung by ridiculous download
caps is one of the things I’m waiting for before attempting a nomad lifestyle.

I can’t wait until it’s more available.

------
praveen9920
Some states in India ( Andhra Pradesh ) has started infrastructure projects
for laying down fiber optic cables across, connecting all villages( nearly
all), for both cable, telephone and internet services. This had tremendous
impact on internet speeds in rural areas.

I am writing this message from one of the remote areas with roughly 60Mbps
connection.

------
arrty88
Can anyone tell me why this was not previously possible? Both latency and
speed? What did Starlink do differently

~~~
neckardt
I believe the innovation is that the satellites sit in low earth orbit.

Traditional internet satellites operate in geostationary orbit, which is
around 35,000km above the surface of the earth. This was preferable because
with only a handful of satellites you could give the entire globe internet
connection. However you have much higher latency due to the distance. Not
exactly sure why the bandwidth is so slow, distance probably doesn't help here
either. Maybe those companies are also running outdated systems.

Starlink satellites operate in low earth orbit which is around 400km, which is
way closer, leading to far lower latency. However, at that distance you need
to basically cover the sky with satellites in order to always see one. That's
why they're planning to launch thousands of them.

~~~
voxic11
Another reason the lower orbit wasn't possible before is that atmospheric drag
actually causes the satellites orbit to decay much faster. So they must be
constantly replaced.

------
tw04
IMO, the throughput isn’t what’s impressive, you can get similar-ish speeds
from hughesnet. What’s impressive is the latency. The bandwidth should be
(relatively) easy to increase over time. If the latency had been 300+ms, that
would’ve been a disaster.

------
norswap
Does anyone know if these speeds will scale (well, remain constant) as the
number of customers increase? For instance, the 4G network can and does get
overloaded in crowded places, could the same thing occur to satellite
internet?

------
m3at
My understanding is that the FCC is very partial towards existing ISP. If I'm
correct, how likely are they to negatively impact starlink accessibility to
end user? Do they even have such power?

I would very much appreciate if someone more knowledgeable could give her
opinion.

~~~
shaklee3
The FCC prefers 5G. Starlink will likely never be able to use that spectrum in
certain areas.

------
easton_s
I super excited for the students at my small rural school district. This will
be a game changer!

------
chaostheory
This is better than my Verizon data plan. The only time I can get decent speed
without any timeouts in most of the Bay Area and even Tahoe is either when no
one is awake or during the lockdown. Otherwise, it's Verizon data is near
useless for me

------
dkdk8283
I want to be a beta star link user - I am not in a totally rural area but in
my area there are frequent natural disasters that take out power and comms.

Cell sites work until the generator runs out of fuel, typically 2 or 3 days.

------
dba7dba
Theoretically one family could even get 2 starlink services if they really
needed faster link. No physical line is used so I can totally see some people
doing that if they really want to and can afford it.

------
crorella
11 mbps in the middle of a rural location in the heart of Chile ? Count me in!

------
chiph
If someone knows - what kind of cable does the unit use out to the antenna? My
COVID project is wiring the house with Cat6 and it might be worthwhile putting
an enclosed drop out on the deck for the future.

~~~
awad
According to this Reddit thread, the dish only has one cable presumably with
POE

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/hqu7p6/data_minin...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/hqu7p6/data_mining_from_starlink_support_website/)

~~~
chiph
I followed a link from there to the FCC test reports. Pages 7 & 8 of this
application doc appears to make it out to be standard POE:

[https://apps.fcc.gov/eas/GetApplicationAttachment.html?id=48...](https://apps.fcc.gov/eas/GetApplicationAttachment.html?id=4805881)

> Power Supply Rating 56Vdc from PoE adapter 0.3A

802.3af won't do that at any sort of appreciable cable length, so it's most
likely 802.3bt.

Page 13 indicates it has a standard RJ45 connector, probably on the router to
the customer's network. It doesn't explicitly say it's RJ45 to the antenna.
But they're pretty ubiquitous and weatherproofing glands exist that will allow
a RJ45 to pass through them. So .. probably.

------
XorNot
I wonder how easy it would be to build the antennas into a laptop screen.
Though heck, adding a "sleeve" to my machine which meant it just "always" had
internet would be amazing.

------
driverdan
For reference these are LTE category 3 speeds with better than LTE pings. A
good start but nowhere near the Gb they've promised. I'm cautiously
optimistic.

~~~
rsynnott
> better than LTE pings

If you're getting latency worse than that on LTE, consider changing provider
(and checking that you're _actually_ on LTE). These would be reasonable for
the better class of 3G (HDSPA) but not great for LTE. Just did a speed test on
my phone with wifi switched off (to a server in the same city). 20ms.

------
riantogo
Just ran speedtest:

Wifi = 97 Mbps down 9 (xfinity) LTE = 57 Mbps down (att)

Location = SF Bay Area

11 to 60 Mbps global coverage is totally acceptable speeds and if it holds up,
would be a game changer.

------
627467
I can't wait to go live in the wilderness with this. seems like pretty good
speeds, let's see what price it will get. Not in USA tho...

------
0x38B
This would have been awesome in Alaska, where we had only one option for
ISP... we weren't in the boonies either. We just barely got DSL.

------
Animats
Plus you have it all to yourself. Anyone remember the early 3G "high speed"
demos, when 3G was just coming up?

------
amiga_500
This is more momentum towards decentralization. Fantastic.

Little bit discouraged to see one comment stating 2mb/s for Canada, I wonder
why it would be slower than the USA? Perhaps there is less overhead coverage
there density wise?

I also wonder how you can ascertain upload/download speeds before signing up.
I know traditional broadband over copper _doesn 't_ have this feature, but if
feels like this could, if you have the terminal on trial.

Very interesting.

------
mint2
cox has a monopoly in My area of California. The download speed of 50 mbs we
have is fine but expensive. The upload speed between 2.5 and 3mbs is what’s
painful.

I’d have to pay around $70 or more to get those starlink upload speeds with
cox. I’d much rather pay starlink.

------
J0_k3r
we've been able to do this for years using radio-based meshnets but the
government won't update the legislation to allow encryption and commercial
data on them making them pretty much useless. you wouldn't even need to pay
for it.

------
taf2
The latency numbers look really good- under 100ms is similar to ground based
connections

------
seanwilson
What's the limit for how many internet users can use Starlink at the same
time?

~~~
bryanlarsen
50Gbps aggregate per satellite (actually 25 since you have to go up and down).
12000 satellites in the constellation. Those satellites will be over the ocean
or unoccupied land most of the time, so estimate about 1% utilization ratios
to be conservative. Standard ISP oversubscription allocations allow about
1Mbps per customer.

That math gives me 300M customers.

------
netcyrax
What hardware is required to use the Starlink network? Would that be
expensive?

~~~
noodle
I've read somewhere else that its in the territory of $250. But that was
reporting from a while ago, and things might be different now.

------
SCAQTony
Will having Starlink prevent asteroid detections from ground based telescopes?

------
diimdeep
I hope they provide global coverage despite totalitarian regimes !

------
hello_tyler
That's great. The pings not even that bad..

------
jokoon
what about upload?

------
codecamper
aykm?? wasted the sky with this ugly crap for what we already have with 4g?
somebody please kick Elon in the nuts for me.

~~~
BenjiWiebe
There isn't a usable 4G signal everywhere. Not even everywhere in the US. On
my 2 mile commute in Kansas, there's about 1 mile where I cannot even place
calls or send texts, much less use data.

~~~
codecamper
Oh i see I have angered the cult. A rare negative submission points for me by
daring to criticize the holy one.

------
mintyc
Once all tesla vehicles use starlink for sending back data to Tesla HQ I'm not
sure much will be left for 'rural' broadband.

Nice to pick up the grants though.

------
gamblor956
For comparison, DSL is 1.5 Mbps. 4g is between 5Mbps and 12 Mbps (up to 50Mbps
in burst mode), while 5g generally _starts_ at 50Mbps. Cable internet is
usually 25 Mbps, and up to 1 Gbps if you're willing to pay, and fiber is up to
10 Gbps if you're lucky enough to live in an area with fiber built out to your
home.

So in other words, Starlink is useful if you live too far away from a major
residential center to have access to better and cheaper forms of internet
access.

There aren't enough people in the US or EU that live in rural areas far from
decent internet connections for Starlink to be more than a tiny fraction of
the ISP market.

On top of that, unlike existing forms of internet access, Starlink is
susceptible to weather conditions.

~~~
bserge
So, I'm on 4G right now, getting 45/25 Mbps, in what is considered a rural
area (20km from the city).

I lived in Birmingham, UK, a way more populated area, and got ~40/30 on 4G, as
well.

I noticed many people say they're lucky to get ~15 Mbps on 4G and I'm
confused, why? Is it just congestion or is there some difference in the
towers/implementation?

~~~
gamblor956
4G is slower in the US, largely due to congestion.

~~~
adventured
4G in the US often matches the parent's reference speeds, it depends on where
you're at. People often make poor comparisons with the US, they context drop,
comparing eg the speed across the entire US or a state versus their experience
in one large city in a smaller more densely populated country (and then cherry
picking based on a good outcome).

Cleveland, Minneapolis, Detroit, NYC, Boston, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati,
Baltimore are the best in the US, _averaging_ at or above 30mbps across the
cities in question. SF, Philly, Atlanta, Kansas City were also competitive
with what the parent referenced (eg the SF avg was 27mbps, meaning people are
routinely seeing the parent's ~40mbps in Birmingham).

[https://9to5mac.com/2019/05/31/state-mobile-network-
speeds/](https://9to5mac.com/2019/05/31/state-mobile-network-speeds/)

