
SpaceX Starlink average speedtest is 42.3Mbps down / 9.7 Mbps up - punnerud
https://testmy.net/hoststats/spacex_starlink
======
apexalpha
So I guess companies will now fill the entire global sky with thousands of
sats just to make up for the fact that the US government ignores rural houses
when it comes to digital infrastructure?

I'm sorry but how is 42Mbps worth spamming the entire nightsky with to the
point that it prevent astronomers from obtaining useful data? Not even 10Mbps
upload?

My inlaws live in a village in France that has 70 people total. It's 25min
drive to a bakery, 45min drive to anything resembling a supermarket. I'd say
it's rural.

They now have 16Mbps *DSL and are scheduled to get Fiber in 2021. Next village
already has it.

But because the American government refuses to invest in infrastructure the
rest of the planet just has to accept some American company is going to put
14,000 sats in low orbit?

Besides the progress this resembles I still think it's pretty strange the US
government can greenlight this plan even though it has global implications.

~~~
reportingsjr
On the flip side, why should the majority of us in denser areas in the US
subsidize people who want to live in exurbs/rural areas? If you want to live
in a place like that, be prepared to pay the cost for the infrastructure.

We already pay enough subsidies for roads, water, power, etc in rural/exurban
areas.

~~~
apexalpha
I'm healthy but I pay for those who are not.

I grew up fine but I pay for those with special needs.

I have a job during Covid but I pay for those who don't.

I guess in Europe we call this 'society'.

~~~
thehappypm
Europeans really barely understand the US. Yes, of course, we understand how
investing in communities makes a society work. What Europeans don’t understand
is just how fucking huge the US is and how low-density huge swaths of the
country are. Farmers might live 500 miles from a metro of 100,000 people. It’s
a huge challenge to give everyone fiber without the 1% of hyper rural America
doubling costs for everyone else.

~~~
ohgodplsno
Yes, yes, all of Europe fits into Texas, and even Texas fits into Texas, and
that's just one state. We get how mind-bogglingly huge the US is. It's been
said over and over again by every single american whenever the subject of your
subpar infrastructure comes up.

Europe is just as big. Not as dense, maybe. But your telcos were given
hundreds of billions to do something (that should have been the job of the
government), and simply pocketed them, with your government doing nothing
about it.

So, if that money was properly invested, instead of polluting low orbit,
that'd be nice.

~~~
syshum
I have zero intrest in having the government control my access to information,
no thank you

That the biggest thing Europeans do not understand about the US, many of us
hate our government, distrust our government, and the only thing we desire
from government is for them to leave us alone..

The US is a individualist nation, not a collectivist nation, though many are
trying very hard to change that.

~~~
pedrocr
You have it backwards. Almost none of the telecom infrastructure in Europe is
state owned. As the comment you are replying to explained it's in the US where
huge government incentives were paid out to telecom companies for broadband
deployment who then proceeded to pocket that money and sit on their hands.

------
mbrevda1
Speed is variable, capacity can be improved. The bigger question re Starlink
is latency, which this test doesn't show.

~~~
dstick
I saw these Starlink speed test results 2 weeks ago:
[https://tweakers.net/i/xDBb34kfMAju3YPPMsC3iOc2gXc=/656x/fil...](https://tweakers.net/i/xDBb34kfMAju3YPPMsC3iOc2gXc=/656x/filters:strip_icc\(\):strip_exif\(\)/i/2003786186.jpeg?f=imagenormal)

Seems like pretty solid latency :)

~~~
gertrunde
30-100ms is better than I feared, and should be generally reasonable for most
uses.

~~~
jfindley
Consistent 30ms would be pretty excellent, and make it useful for _many_
things. Consistent 50ms, similarly. It starts to get a bit more of an issue at
80ms or 100ms, but my worry is more that jitter may be huge, and 30-100ms is a
huge jitter window that could limit usefuless not just for games, but also
many other things such as voice calls.

~~~
krageon
A 100ms ping is perfectly playable in everything except twitch-based shooters.
In voice calls you will notice it, but it won't get in the way like say a 1-2s
delay would (like you get if you phone from one end of the world to the
other). It's really a very good result bearing in mind that this can work
absolutely anywhere.

~~~
phinnaeus
Fighting games, too. Most gamers know to avoid wifi, much less a wireless ISP.

~~~
gameswithgo
wifi doesn't add any latency, inhernetly. nor in practice with actual
equipment

~~~
andruby
The shared medium (frequency spectrum) is what can add latency. If a device
wants to talk over Wifi but another device is transmitting it has to wait.
This introduces (variable) latency, aka jitter.

Here's an anecdotal example for you, in practice with actual equipment:

1) Mac pro via ethernet to router:

    
    
        # ping -c 5 -S 192.168.1.88 192.168.1.1
        PING 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) from 192.168.1.88: 56 data bytes
        64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.413 ms
        64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.396 ms
        64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.417 ms
        64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.553 ms
        64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=0.514 ms
    
        5 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
        round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 0.396/0.459/0.553/0.063 ms
    

2) Same machine via wifi over Unify AP to router:

    
    
        # ping -c 5 -S 192.168.1.72 192.168.1.1
        PING 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) from 192.168.1.72: 56 data bytes
        64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=2.992 ms
        64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=4.136 ms
        64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=1.873 ms
        64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=2.293 ms
        64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=2.552 ms
    
        5 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
        round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 1.873/2.769/4.136/0.774 ms
    

That's an average of 2.3ms extra latency, or 6x higher.

------
y04nn
This is easy to have a lot of bandwidth when you only have 10s of users, but
when the bandwidth will be shared between 10000 users will it plummet?

I remember when 4G was new and only few user where using it, it was very fast,
but when more users arrived on the spectrum, the bandwidth per user decreased
and the latency incised.

~~~
alias_neo
I have been on EE 4G in central London (Westminster) for several years now
while at work. A speed test back when it was new would get me 85/85 Mb, these
days, with a much more capable device, I am lucky if I get 15/30 Mb (download
is being taxed more). It's not horrific, but it's a far cry from what I was
advertised when I started. I guess I'll just upgrade to their 5G plan and
start the cycle again _sigh_

~~~
epanchin
I’m on three. I’ve noticed the speed drop in town over the years. What’s
really surprised me has been the lack of an increase since lockdown, even
though the City is empty.

Which makes me suspect there’s something else going on rather than just
undercapacity.

Chronic underinvestment across networks?

~~~
londons_explore
More and more users use 4G at home rather that WiFi. In general, home WiFi
seems flaky, stops working in some rooms, cuts out if you go outside, etc.

It's often easier to just use 4G always.

------
kumarvvr
This is amazing. I know there will be latency issues, but for majority of web
browsing, videos, etc, it shouldn't matter.

We are entering the era of spacenet and the future looks bright.

Imagine having devices as small as phones or set-top boxes that can directly
access internet using satellites. It would lead to a revolution in many
industries.

~~~
moritonal
Could you expand on which industries will be improved? My normal life is
covered entirely by 4G, with 5G now appearing.

I guess you mean things like internet on planes, shipping internet, off-shore
rigs? But what things can't they do at the moment because of prohibitorily
slow/costly satellite internet?

~~~
kumarvvr
Logistics - Tracking cargo, without interruption, in real-time, across the
world.

Shipping - Same as logistics, but across oceans.

Real-Time weather data, from solar powered sensors, spread across the world.

Real-Time video for tracking endangered wild-life.

I think different people can come up with more ideas.

The difference between satellite and cellular networks is coverage.

Imagine if a nature loving adventurer fell into a ravine and can just video
call authorities about his location and condition.

~~~
jasonwatkinspdx
Logistics: already done via gps receivers and low bandwidth spot style satcom.
SpaceX hasn't designed for mobile/vehicle mounted ground stations either.

Shipping: already done via AIS

Real Time Weather: already done by satellites with the required features.
SpaceX is not building this.

Real Time Video: again, there's no way you're getting animal scale images out
of a starlink scale sat.

I swear people have taken the usual Elon hype with this and gone to absolutely
absurd lengths. This is not your iphone suddenly works globally. This is not a
star trek communicator. This is an alternative to sat internet like Dish
network et all. Is your hiker really gonna be hauling around a giant freakin'
dish?

It's going to be a premium priced broadband service for rural customers and
institutions that can afford it. If you know anything about the market you
know DoD is gonna be the customer they focus on.

~~~
kumarvvr
>Logistics: already done via gps receivers and low bandwidth spot style satcom

Imagine being able to see live video, or AI enhanced video (movement
detection, etc). A lot more bandwidth will open up many areas for innovation.

Imagine being able to get real-time data of patients being transported in
planes or ground vehicles.

>Real Time Weather: already done by satellites with the required features.

But there is not much data about wind patterns, directions, barometric
pressure, etc. Satellites can observe on a macro level. If you can combine
that with micro level ground data, perhaps predictions for weather would be
more accurate.

>Real Time Video: again, there's no way you're getting animal scale images out
of a starlink scale sat.

Perhaps, but periodic photos, would be possible, and that would be enough for
many innovations.

>I swear people have taken the usual Elon hype

Even I have the after taste of Hyperloop. However, this is different because
there are billions being spent to send actual satellites to space. That is not
hype. I would not cast aside Elon's vision so easily, especially if he has
committed and spent so much on the idea and is actually building out the
infrastructure.

>This is not a star trek communicator.

But Imagine if you could have one.

>Is your hiker really gonna be hauling around a giant freakin' dish?

Would it be too far fetched to think that those can be shrunk down, perhaps to
the size of a suitcase or a backpack?

>It's going to be a premium priced broadband service for rural customers and
institutions that can afford it. If you know anything about the market you
know DoD is gonna be the customer they focus on.

Sure, that would be one revenue source. But many innovations in the world are
made possible due to what is available. Would an app store be possible without
the iPhone? But, when the iPhone was made, the app store, as a concept was at
best, a theoretical idea in Jobs' mind.

~~~
jasonwatkinspdx
> Imagine being able to see live video, or AI enhanced video (movement
> detection, etc). A lot more bandwidth will open up many areas for
> innovation.

For what benefit?

> Imagine being able to get real-time data of patients being transported in
> planes or ground vehicles.

This is a very niche use case.

> But there is not much data about wind patterns, directions, barometric
> pressure, etc. Satellites can observe on a macro level. If you can combine
> that with micro level ground data, perhaps predictions for weather would be
> more accurate.

I'm sorry but this is incredibly ignorant. There's a _huge_ volume of data
that's fed into several global weather modeling supercomputers continuously.
That's literally where the weather forecasts on your tv come from.

> Perhaps, but periodic photos, would be possible, and that would be enough
> for many innovations.

You still aren't getting it. There are fundamental physical limits to image
resolution based on the size of the optics. You'd have trouble resolving
individual creatures even with a telescope the scale of Hubble/KeyHole.
Starlink changes nothing about this.

> However, this is different because there are billions being spent to send
> actual satellites to space.

The hype is people speculating on applications like the above that are
entirely implausible and unrealistic. It's on the same scale as thinking the
next Tesla is going to be a flying delorian with fusion power.

> But Imagine if you could have one.

But you just aren't fantasizing, you're claiming these fantasies will become
real in the short term without understanding the limitations that preclude
them.

> Would it be too far fetched to think that those can be shrunk down, perhaps
> to the size of a suitcase or a backpack?

Yes, it is too far fetched. You _cannot_ shrink a wavelength. In addition,
starlink's design requires the transmission/received lobes have a certain
maximum beam width. The global capacity of the system depends on this
parameter. That means they need phased arrays of a certain minimum size in
terms of array area and number of array elements to meet their specs.

> But, when the iPhone was made, the app store, as a concept was at best, a
> theoretical idea in Jobs' mind.

There were examples of app stores before iPhone. That wasn't a unique new
concept.

------
zhte415
Fantastic. I'm keenly curious on how this will work with national regulations.
Having a single global ISP is very attractive on the surface and that's with
the huge caveat on monopoly, but as an additional option. I'm just not sure
how this will interact with some nations' policy/restrictions. Looking at this
aspect very much.

~~~
AdmiralGinge
It's going to be very interesting for me. I plan to live on a sailing yacht
and travel the world permanently, StarLink will make my working options a
_lot_ more flexible. Presently people are forced to see out their contracts
over potentially dodgy marina WiFi.

The regulatory situation might get quite complicated I think, for example if
you're in international waters, connected to the internet by a global ISP
whose infrastructure is also outside of territorial limits then whose
regulations do you have to comply with (besides your clients)? What's stopping
the likes of Google poaching the concept of Radio Caroline, planting a
datacentre somewhere in the North Sea and raising a two-fingered salute to any
sort of data protection laws?

~~~
Havoc
>The regulatory situation might get quite complicated I think

I think it'll be OK. Cellphone roaming works just fine for example

~~~
AdmiralGinge
True, but cellular infrastructure is definitively in _someone 's_ territory.
If I stick a phone mast up I'm still subject to things like planning
permission even if the signal crosses a border. As far as I'm aware, space is
pretty similar to international waters in that nobody is sovereign there.

It could lead to a bit of a "wild west" situation with governments giving
themselves extraterritorial powers. In the late 1980s the British government
gave itself very draconian powers to conduct armed raids on radio ships in
international waters for example, they take a _really_ dim view of information
outside of state control even if they're not the state controlling it.

~~~
Thlom
Space X will need a license in each country/regulation to provide their
service there. They will probably employ some geofencing or similar to comply.

------
mollusca
The true question is: may I be able to play an online video game in the deep
Sahara before the modern human civilization collapses?

~~~
baq
50ms ping should be reasonable for most games.

whippersnappers who complain about 20ms ping should watch some quakeworld or
quake 3 cpma where this dude rat used to destroy everyone on 300ms.

~~~
chucky
That's an unfair comparison though. _Everyone_ used to play with high latency.
There's a clear advantage to you if your ping is 20 ms and mine is 300 ms.

Whether there's a clear advantage to having 50 vs 20 ms ping I can't answer.
I'm quite certain that's an advantage I personally can't make any use of, but
a Quake pro might be able to.

Also, today's pro gamers are likely at a higher skill ceiling than the best
players were 10 years ago.

~~~
adventured
> That's an unfair comparison though. Everyone used to play with high latency.

I played a lot of Quake and that was not remotely close to being the case.
There were the high ping and low ping players, with not much of a % inbetween.
In 1996-1997 the vast majority of people were playing Quake online via dial-up
modems. The best players had low pings and were playing over ISDNs or better
(a lot of players were on fast university or corporate networks).

> today's pro gamers are likely at a higher skill ceiling than the best
> players were 10 years ago.

The pro-level players in the later half of the 1990s were as elite as anything
that exists today in the FPS space. They were playing like it was a job even
when it wasn't, and they had been doing it for a while (Doom LAN competitions
were common before that). Quake clans were prolific. They also had
professional caliber competitions / tournaments back then, see: the 1997 Red
Annihilation Quake tournament in Atlanta, where Dennis Fong won Carmack's
Ferrari.

------
autosharp
And this time it is literally down / up !

~~~
capableweb
We're already doing literally down/up as your traffic goes from your computer
on a above-ocean-level altitude, into the ground, eventually probably into the
ocean floor and then up into some other building (at least considering
transocean traffic)

------
kinleyd
Has pricing been indicated anywhere?

Edit: See [https://www.inverse.com/innovation/spacex-starlink-heres-
how...](https://www.inverse.com/innovation/spacex-starlink-heres-how-much-it-
will-cost-to-subscribe) and [https://www.zdnet.com/article/spacex-starlink-
internet-prepa...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/spacex-starlink-internet-
prepares-for-beta-users/)

So about $80 pm. That's pretty good imo.

------
porker
This is only a few Mbps slower than my Fibre-to-the-Cabinet broadband in the
UK provides. And I'm living in a town; plenty of rural areas are much slower.

~~~
reallydontask
I'm in a VM cabled area, so the I get ~ 100/10 Mbps and ~ 12 ms ping. This is
the second lowest tier that VM offer btw

~~~
porker
They put in VM 2 years ago - and missed off the suburb in which I and 2k
others live.

I'm not holding my breath... but I had VM before I moved here, and prefer the
BT-network service to it.

------
brentos99
I assume that this is the only internet connection where gravity plays a part
in the up/down speeds!!! :)

------
danw1979
I'm eagerly awaiting reports from beta users about the length of downtime
during antenna repositioning and handover to another satellite.

Hopefully it's sub-second. I can't think of anything apart from a competitive
gamer playing a shooter that might be intolerant of this.

~~~
upofadown
After installation the antenna does not move. That antenna has the capability
to connect to two satellites at the same time.

What would change would be the latency which would have a bit of a jump on a
handover.

------
fsiefken
Is there a way to use this on the go, battery powered? I wonder if it would be
a good alternative to using 4g or 5g networks. How does it work indoors? Does
the antenna/receiver need line of sight?

~~~
qayxc
It requires line of sight and doesn't work indoors.

It also can't be an alternative to cell networks since the antenna is huge and
heavy compared to phones, requires LOS and needs to follow the satellites [1].

[1]
[https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0173/8204/7844/articles/GM...](https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0173/8204/7844/articles/GMnpPBg_1600x.jpg?v=1592627003)

------
anthony_r
The bigger question is what's the total capacity that is shared by a single
neighborhood/city. For example - does this mean that a small city can only use
42Mbps down across all receivers?

------
apatheticonion
This is already better than most of Australia's internet

------
ezoe
People talk about latency but what about packet loss?

~~~
joshxyz
I think as long as the sats don't leave blind spots as they move around this
won't be an issue? Or are there other factors? Anyone confirm pls..

~~~
qayxc
Weather could be an issue. Would be interesting to see how Starlink internet
fares when there's thunderstorms or heavy rain.

------
praveen9920
Can someone explain the physical layer aspects of starlink? Is the spectrum
same as mobile data spectrum or does it work with different part of spectrum.
If it is different part, do we need specific hardware to receive and transmit?

Are there any interference/loses issues that might popup when scaled?

What is stopping spaceX to provide internet outside US?

~~~
lmm
> Can someone explain the physical layer aspects of starlink? Is the spectrum
> same as mobile data spectrum or does it work with different part of
> spectrum. If it is different part, do we need specific hardware to receive
> and transmit?

Almost certainly has its own slice of spectrum. You need a pizza-box sized
antenna set up, so it's not quite person-portable yet, but not too bad for
installing on a vehicle.

> Are there any interference/loses issues that might popup when scaled?

Each satellite only has so much bandwidth. So the more people using it in the
same area, the worse it's going to get. In theory they'll add more satellites
as needed, but it's never going to be much good for towns/cities.

> What is stopping spaceX to provide internet outside US?

Ground stations and regulations. Once they have satellite-satellite
communications running the ground stations become less of an issue (though
there's a latency penalty if your signal has to go a long way round the
satellites before getting to the ground).

~~~
MayeulC
Well, I would add that both satellite and ground receiver have phased arrays
antennae. These allow emitting multiple focused beams simultaneously.

Since the angular resolution of these beams is limited, they each cover a
fixed ground area (let's say 20km across). If more than one customer sits in
that area, they will have to share airtime with the others.

Now, it's probably easier for the satellite to perform (time-division or
other) multiplexing, since it knows how much data each node is going to
receive.

I guess it's a lot more involved when it comes to sharing upload bandwidth
with another client you can't see.

Anyway, this makes it easy to scale in rural areas, and pretty much a no-go
for cities.

Now, a question of my own: do SpaceX satellites already have HW for sat-to-sat
communication?

------
tumetab1
FYI On this site if you press "I do not accept" on the privacy pop-up it it
redirects you to another page.

~~~
junga
And hitting the back button sends you to the linked page.

------
wopwops
This is already better than anything I can get (rural NZ). Any info on service
tiers and pricing?

------
LinuxBender
Has anyone tested bufferbloat yet? [1] If so, please link your results for
Starlink.

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

------
turowicz
My mom can't get broadband even though she has a house in Wrocław, a quite
large city in Poland. She is using 4G internet sticks.

------
m-p-3
As good as my residential ISP, though I'm using a 30/10Mbps because it suits
my current needs. Why pay more?

------
sunstone
That sounds pretty good for version 0.1. More sats would make it better, as
would better sats. A promising start.

------
bencollier49
If this provides unfiltered internet to regimes which dislike it, will we see
them blowing satellites out of orbit?

~~~
jasonwatkinspdx
No, they'll simply deny licensing of spectrum over their land area, and SpaceX
will comply.

This will _never_ be some tool to counteract totalitarian governments.

~~~
Slikey
I am interested in that. Are there any international treaties that force
SpaceX to comply? If SpaceX has no business in totalitarian country X, do they
have any way to sue SpaceX for offering service? I imagine a black market will
establish to get access to starlink even if SpaceX doesn't officially sell
access. Can you expand on this topic?

~~~
jasonwatkinspdx
[https://www.itu.int/en/history/Pages/ConstitutionAndConventi...](https://www.itu.int/en/history/Pages/ConstitutionAndConvention.aspx)

If SpaceX violates ITU policy they risk their licenses _globally_.

A black market for this service is not possible. The equipment necessary to
confirm SpaceX is transmitting into an area, or to radiolocate the ground
stations themselves costs a few grand. Even low income nations can afford to
monitor and enforce spectrum requirements if they desire to.

But more fundamentally, this is not a goal of SpaceX or Elon. The projection
of "hero" onto him and this project is out of control. Elon is doing this to
make money, plain and simple.

------
new_realist
How many rural locations share the sky which a major metropolitan area which
will clog up the satellites?

------
eric4smith
People always complain about Latency. But Latency to where?

And is latency in Asia or the Caribbean or anywhere else outside of North
America that bad? Nah.

In 2020, latency from almost every continent is good enough for 99.99% of use
cases.

Good enough that I can sit here in Bangkok and use Vim all day remotely into
servers in Texas without any difficulty.

Starlink will be awesome for the majority of the world. Even "gamers" (if the
pricing is good).

~~~
jfindley
I don't think putting quotes around the word gamers helps you get your point
across particularly effectively - it sounds like you don't really think it's
important enough of a usecase to be worthy of much consideration.

Many years ago, before life got so busy, I used to play FPS games online over
various forms of dialup and then (somewhat) faster links. Bandwidth was fine,
if you were patient about downloads, but latency caused real problems, even on
"good" days when you could get close to 100ms on some of the better links. In
short, 100ms latency (taken from another thread) is definitely enough to cause
problems for many games, and would also make things like stadia/geforce
now/playstation now not viable. This doesn't mean it's not useful tech - I can
think of many useful applications, but I don't think we can just handwave away
all the cases where 100ms of latency might, actually, cause an issue.

~~~
nopcode
Starlink aims to achieve sub 20ms latency. This is OK for gaming, especially
with modern shooters.

~~~
capableweb
While latency is more important than bandwidth for most games, jitter is even
more important. Lower latency is obviously better, but under what duration? If
it fluctuates between 10ms and 50ms, while only being 20ms for short periods,
many games will have problems with this, rather than a 50ms constant latency
where the game servers can start accounting for it without issues.

------
nraynaud
what's the current status of the constellation? are there moments where the
network is down because there are no satellites overhead or is the thing
already big enough that some part of the world are covered all the time?

------
davewasthere
So much better than the best wired connection I can currently get here in
Aus...

Awesome!

------
sidcool
May be silly question, but why is the up so low compared to down?

~~~
perryizgr8
They must have provisioned less spectrum to uplink. Usually people want more
downlink, less uplink. Symmetric services exist, but are usually offered as a
"pro" or enterprise solution.

------
fock
anyone know, what happens if some of these satellites fail and are
uncontrollable (which is bound to happen at some point)

------
realchucknorris
wondering how many down-link stations they have. this will be v. interesting
when it comes to latency vs current solutions.

------
Voliokis
Have they said anything about pricing yet? This would seem like a decent
solution for roaming data during travel too.

~~~
Acinyx
Nothing specific, I think they are still figuring that out, but Gwynne
Shotwell, the president of Spacex, is hinting a bit I think with:

> Shotwell said millions of people in the U.S. pay $80 per month to get
> “crappy service.” She didn’t say whether Starlink will cost more or less
> than $80 per month but suggested that would be a segment of the public the
> company would target as well as rural areas that currently have no
> connectivity.

~~~
drusepth
Yeah, the last mile is huge. My parents have paid between $100 and $200 per
month for the last decade to get metered Internet that's worse than this.

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kome
I prefer a clean sky and earth telescopes to work instead of 42.3Mbps down /
9.7 Mbps up.

see:
[https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02480-5](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02480-5)

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de_watcher
I prefer an orbital ring already across the entire sky.

~~~
benbristow
I'm sure you do, Chief.

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blickentwapft
Last time I mentioned latency all the fanboys squealed about how latency isn’t
a problem any more with low orbit satellites.

Whatever.

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capableweb
Just as a heads up, you'll be downvoted, not because you're mentioning
latency, but because your comment is low effort and basically complaining
about discussions in a place where discussions are kind of the point.

Is there any new information about latency since before that you want to
expand on?

~~~
blickentwapft
Cause with satellite is ALL about latency. It’s THE topic. Most comments here
will reference it. It’s a critical issue. It doesn’t go away.

~~~
capableweb
If you check out the comment I made earlier, I'm very aware of that
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24291548](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24291548))

But it's more interesting if we discuss the latency itself, rather than
complaining about previous discussions around the latency.

As it seems right now, the latency is more than alright, at least for people
who are used to really shitty latency. Sure, it's not gonna replace your home
connection if you live in-or-near a city, but for the rest of us, it's much
better than what was offered before.

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TheSpiceIsLife
Starlink blah blah blah.

Wait till the service is massively over subscribed and get back to me.

With any luck Starlink operators (Elon Musk?) won't let that happen, but it
does tend to be the way of things.

Additions, the unintended consequences haven't revealed themselves fully yet.

One thing I personally dislike about electricity, cable internet, and fibre
optic, is what they do to the visual appeal of the built environs. Could be
underground, but only areas missed that boat.

Not saying the trade-offs, if any, won't be worth it though.

