Posted on 07/03/2020 6:19:58 AM PDT by srmanuel
A couple of weeks ago we had a good discussion on Starlink the new space based internet service being developed by SpaceX, one of Elon Musk's companies.
A place you could sign up for possibly becoming a public beta tester was talked about.
I would really love to see this service come close to living up to the promises it's making.
Another launch of 60 satellites is set for July 10 I think.....
Here is a link to a you tube video that is quite informative, the end of the video is marketing BS, but the first 2/3's is pretty good.
Plus here is a link to the Starlink Reddit that has a ton of useful information about Starlink....Pictures of ground stations being constructed and what the ground based dish will look like when mounted on a roof......
https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/
In many neighborhoods the Satellite TV dishes have become so common no one notices them anymore...depending on where you are and how the dish is placed on the house it does not affect resale value...
Now I own a vacation condo and every unit getting a dish would be ugly, I’ve argued for a fewer ground mounted dishes that people connect to but to no avail..
You are correct wrt vast Internet services. In the past, I’ve installed both commercial and residential vsat rigs and have first hand experience with the issues, namely:
1. Godawful latency. The best commercial rigs managed 250-300 msec, while residential rigs were typically 1200-1800 msec.
2. Gross asymmetry wrt tx/rx speeds. Sure, you might get 25 mbps down from HughesNet, but never better than ISDN speeds up (128 kbps) on a good day. This plays hell with any website or application designed for conventionally shaped traffic. Some sites will just time out owing to the asymmetry.
3. Extreme sensitivity to weather. The transmitters for residential rigs are pretty weak, relatively speaking. A typical commercial transmitter will be 5 watts or better. Resodential, usually less than a watt, so their ability to punch through weather is pretty weak.
4. Vsat companies. They all suck. Horrible customer service from turd world call centers who are little better than script readers with virtually no understanding of the product they support.
5. Service contract fine print. Service sucks? Too bad. They never guarantee anything.
On the reddit link I posted, there is a picture of what is reported to be the Starlink dish/antenna
I signed up over a month ago. So far all I have received is the “Thank you for signing up” email. The speeds they are advertising are about 10x what I get now.
Supposedly they are going to roll it out in the northern latitudes first.
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