Soldato
Disagree all you like. you know nothing about the UK infrastructure or the difficulties in getting high speed broadband to remote areas.
Starlink - anyone using it?
- Thread starter Dirk Diggler
- Start date
Disagree all you like. you know nothing about the UK infrastructure or the difficulties in getting high speed broadband to remote areas.
For $89/mo I am getting 1 Gbps from many suppliers
With ping ~1-4-5ms.
Fair play to you then. Whereabouts in the USA are you if you don’t mind me asking? I’ve got staff in a dozen different states and outside of those in big metropolitan areas in California and New York they have nothing like that choice.
Starlink will be on top of not instead of anything we have or would be looking at.
Nothing really makes much difference here unfortunately - even a cheap mobile phone in the right position isn't that far behind dedicated hardware
We've got a MikroTik LHG in the loft (professional install) and they've tried a range of kit directional and omni - aside from a little bit faster upload nothing seems to outperform my TP-Link MR6400 (I've slightly modified the "diversity" antenna) here really (which is scratching a few heads).
It is a bit of a weird setup as we are far from ideal geography wise between us and the mast for 4G yet at the same time get better baseline performance than should be possible while high end kit doesn't seem to gain much (you only have to go a few metres either side of our property and speeds plummet to 1/4 of what we get as well).
Starlink will be on top of not instead of anything we have or would be looking at.
Nothing really makes much difference here unfortunately - even a cheap mobile phone in the right position isn't that far behind dedicated hardware
We've got a MikroTik LHG in the loft (professional install) and they've tried a range of kit directional and omni - aside from a little bit faster upload nothing seems to outperform my TP-Link MR6400 (I've slightly modified the "diversity" antenna) here really (which is scratching a few heads).
It is a bit of a weird setup as we are far from ideal geography wise between us and the mast for 4G yet at the same time get better baseline performance than should be possible while high end kit doesn't seem to gain much (you only have to go a few metres either side of our property and speeds plummet to 1/4 of what we get as well).
Signal propagation can just be weird. It can be affected by weather, atmospherics, ground features (clutter), and other signals. You're probably just in a strange sweet spot, but to figure it out you'd have to build a prediction model of the areas around you, between you and the base stations, get all the clutter and atmospherics effects correct, and then you'd be able to make a pretty good guess as to why you have one little place where it works better than it should. You'd even have to take into account the building your equipment is in and how signals might propagate inside it before it gets to your receiving equipment.
Can't be sure but there is a big barn roof 50 yards away that I think is coincidentally perfectly aligned to benefit my TP-Link setup in a 1st floor window which is why it performs almost as well as higher end kit mounted at roof level.
The setup around here would be complex at the best of times for signal propagation - there is a whacking great hill with trees in direct line between us and the mast and a scattering of other building and terrain features all around.
Bodies of water (for instance) are known to increase signal range, and buildings can bounce signals into different directions. A big barn roof (especially if it's made of metal) is definitely going to affect any signals that hit it (including the signals that penetrate it), so it's quite possible it's acting as a reflector and bouncing extra signal into your TP-Link that is giving you signal strength (or a signal at all) that you otherwise wouldn't get.
Yes, when it's rainy or snowy, or when the Sun is directly behind the satellite, forget about the signal. I guess there will be no signal quite often.
Between 12 and 18 GHz; 26.5 and 40 GHz; 60 and 90 GHz.
These are very high frequencies.
So far reports seem to suggest only 10-15% decrease in performance with heavy rain, up to 75% if snow accumulates on the dish but in the UK that is sadly a rare event (and supposedly the equipment can be heated to melt snow).
Soldato
I hazard a guess that Starlinks ability to bring broadband to small rural UK villages isn't it's primary focus, the ability to bring ubiquitous high speed broadband connectivity without the need for massive on-the-ground expense of 5G probably is:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/why-5g-is-a-crucial-technology-for-autonomous-vehicles/
Even now 4G is patchy is large swathes of the UK, the investment require to bring 5G to the whole of the UK would be eyewatering, that's when satellite Internet starts to make sense (certainly on a Global scale).42,000 Starlink satellites vs how many 5G base stations!
Once Elon can provide 1Gbps to basically everybody on the planet without the antiquated notion of wires to the house it's going to be a game changer, similar to the revolution we've seen of landlines vs mobile. The only saviour of the copper pair was that you still needed it to bring broadband!
Starlink really is a game changing technology! 44,000 satellites bringing ubiquitous broadband to 7.5 billion people and who knows how many autonomous vehicles and other use cases, oh my
HEADRAT
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I hazard a guess that Starlinks ability to bring broadband to small rural UK villages isn't it's primary focus, the ability to bring ubiquitous high speed broadband connectivity without the need for massive on-the-ground expense of 5G probably is:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/why-5g-is-a-crucial-technology-for-autonomous-vehicles/
Even now 4G is patchy is large swathes of the UK, the investment require to bring 5G to the whole of the UK would be eyewatering, that's when satellite Internet starts to make sense (certainly on a Global scale).42,000 Starlink satellites vs how many 5G base stations!
Once Elon can provide 1Gbps to basically everybody on the planet without the antiquated notion of wires to the house it's going to be a game changer, similar to the revolution we've seen of landlines vs mobile. The only saviour of the copper pair was that you still needed it to bring broadband!
Starlink really is a game changing technology! 44,000 satellites bringing ubiquitous broadband to 7.5 billion people and who knows how many autonomous vehicles and other use cases, oh my
The most expensive part of any network is building and maintaining the physical infrastructure. It's a massive investment that takes years, if not decades to recoup. There's a reason that so many developing countries have mostly wireless infrastructure - it's too expensive to build traditional hard lines. It's telling that launching hundreds of satellites is a financially viable alternative to traditional monolithic telecoms networks, but it is when you're working on a planetary scale.
Starlink isn't just meant to cater to people in first world countries outside of cities who can't get decent internet, it has the potential to address the massive untapped market of hundreds of millions of people all over the world in less developed nations who have a mobile phone and not much else in the way of high speed comms technology.
Now it might not be successful (wireless nanocells and picocells never seemed to gain traction), but it's certainly ambitious, and it actually has a purpose and reasoning behind it, despite some in this thread obviously not understanding what it's trying to achieve and how it's doing so.
Soldato
How long until we see an announcement from Musk re: Space-based solar power (SBSP)
Starlink is meant to be costing around $10bn to build (someone from SpaceX said) but not sure how many satellites thats for. Anyone familiar with building telecom networks will know this is extremely cheap for the coverage/capacity available. Just Orange, just in the UK, spent more than that just building out the 3G network.
This is truly a disruptive technology.
This is truly a disruptive technology.
Extreme back of the envelope, Falcon 9 launches cost around $15 million, and getting cheaper as booster reuse rates increase. At 60 satalites per launch (60*$250k another $15m), 10,000 requires 167 launches or $5bn. However, within a year or two we could see Starship used to lift ~400 in one go reducing costs further.
It's a completely different financial model, spend billions on satalites, but ~zero on vans and workers pulling fibre etc.
It's a completely different financial model, spend billions on satalites, but ~zero on vans and workers pulling fibre etc.
Now available in more areas of the UK - https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.p...o-satellite-broadband-coverage-in-the-uk.html
Soldato
I have signed up for it, due to move soon and at best will get around 30Mb FTTC and think I pay about £30/month with line rental yes I know StarLink is £89 a month but for that I will get a lot faster speed, the latency I only really play WoW so not fussed on that or streaming or work.
I can get about 90Mb with a 4G router up in the loft but the latency on that is horrible anyway
I can get about 90Mb with a 4G router up in the loft but the latency on that is horrible anyway
It's a low latency connection, what kind of issues?
Soldato
Don't forget it'll cost around £10 a month in power to run it.
On a rainy day in UK or California clear blue sky?
Best wait until later in the year for more UK based experiences to know what to truly expect from it.
Remember when everyone used to play fast paced FPS games like counter strike on dial up connections?
150-180ms pings were normal, a few wealthy people who has ISDN could get that down to 100-120. The first broadband ASDL connections were still in the 40-60 range.
20-40ms shouldn’t be an issue for anything other than pro level gaming. A lot of TVs and monitors have input lag in that range.
150-180ms pings were normal, a few wealthy people who has ISDN could get that down to 100-120. The first broadband ASDL connections were still in the 40-60 range.
20-40ms shouldn’t be an issue for anything other than pro level gaming. A lot of TVs and monitors have input lag in that range.