One week of Starlink

[Alexx1401]

Sounds like great news for those who live where there is no cable. This tech should just keep getting better.

 

[The Heretic]

Sounds like great news for those who live where there is no cable. This tech should just keep getting better.

Starlink/SpaceX launched some V2 satellites which should have much better throughput once they get to their orbit, but they are having issues with some of them.

They are also getting ready to launch their "Starship" which will be able to deploy more V2 satellites. The first launch will be a test launch, probably with no satellites.

Amazon says they will launch next year, but it will take them at least a year after that to get enough satellites in orbit to have a workable constellation. By that time Starlink will have thousands more satellites up in orbit - they are launching 50+ satellites once or twice a week now. They project having 100+ launches this year.

 

[Flopsweat]

Starlink/SpaceX launched some V2 satellites which should have much better throughput once they get to their orbit, but they are having issues with some of them.

They are also getting ready to launch their "Starship" which will be able to deploy more V2 satellites. The first launch will be a test launch, probably with no satellites.

Amazon says they will launch next year, but it will take them at least a year after that to get enough satellites in orbit to have a workable constellation. By that time Starlink will have thousands more satellites up in orbit - they are launching 50+ satellites once or twice a week now. They project having 100+ launches this year.

That's good news, as there is a data cap coming:

To cut down on the congestion, SpaceX plans on imposing a high-speed data cap potentially as soon as next month. So both new and existing subscribers will only be guaranteed 1TB of high-speed data access per month. To keep the high speeds, customers will need to pay an additional $0.25 per GB used, otherwise they might be relegated to slower broadband access.

 

[The Heretic]

That's good news, as there is a data cap coming:

Yup - that has been coming for months. SL pushed out a change to their billing system, along with a graph of usage. Doesn't affect me; the most I have ever used was about 750GB, and that included a bunch of downloads. I usually use less than 500-600GB. The data cap just sets your priority to be behind that of a Residential system - I had an RV system running for two months and it was deprioritized - all "Roaming" and "Best effort" systems are deprioritized. If you are in an area with few users, then you don't even notice it. I didn't.

I only watch TV/YT and surf the web - so anything much over 50-100mbps is wasted on me.

 

[Alexx1401]

Starlink/SpaceX launched some V2 satellites which should have much better throughput once they get to their orbit, but they are having issues with some of them.

They are also getting ready to launch their "Starship" which will be able to deploy more V2 satellites. The first launch will be a test launch, probably with no satellites.

Amazon says they will launch next year, but it will take them at least a year after that to get enough satellites in orbit to have a workable constellation. By that time Starlink will have thousands more satellites up in orbit - they are launching 50+ satellites once or twice a week now. They project having 100+ launches this year.

I had not heard Jeff is jumping into this game too. Have to wonder about the time it would take to actually start to make money off it with Elon so far ahead of him in this game. What the hell its great that its moving along. I have become so dependent on having high speed net that if we were to move to a place that did not have it? I would most likely not want to move. This tech is looking like soon it may not matter where you want to live, you can enjoy the things that come with HS Net which is fantastic.

 

[dplev4]

We have had some drops, brief, up here due to too many users. (There about 30 homes on my dead end road up a very steep hill. About 1500 elevation and most folks are on Starlink now with probably 60% working from home. Rest retired or work in town. Drops have been satellite related according to Starlink responses when I place a work ticket. We got the notice about users, too, but we dont use much bandwidth typically.

Another quick, but separate note of caution regarding cable failure rates for Starlink. I've had it a little less than a year but I and most of my neighbors have gone through one cable after cold snaps. Turns out that the cable can't handle the amperage required to heat or de-ice your dish in sub 20 degree temps. So the cables burn out. There's info on this on the Starlink Facebook Group site and also generally if you google search it. So I have turned off my setting for heating the dish (automatic). Haven't had a problem since, even after getting 14-16 inches is snow during last week off February and first week of March. Other neighbors have turned on the heat option for a few minutes and then turned it off. So far this seems to have worked for them. Just something to be aware of. I ordered an extra cable, just to be prepared if it happens again.

 

[The Heretic]

I had not heard Jeff is jumping into this game too. Have to wonder about the time it would take to actually start to make money off it with Elon so far ahead of him in this game. What the hell its great that its moving along. I have become so dependent on having high speed net that if we were to move to a place that did not have it? I would most likely not want to move. This tech is looking like soon it may not matter where you want to live, you can enjoy the things that come with HS Net which is fantastic.

Yes, last year I was out roaming around the area between Vernonia and St. Helens - looking at the area to buy land.

A lot of that had no cellular coverage and I would guess no cable/fiber/DSL either.

Starlink works pretty much anywhere, as long as you have some open sky. I am surrounded by trees, but I have 99.99% connectivity, which is a LOT better than the WISP I had, and 10-30X faster (although speeds vary a LOT).

Starlink is going to come out with a smaller antenna and I've read it will work with a battery (current systems use AC power, so you need an inverter to run them from a battery).

 

[Alexx1401]

Yes, last year I was out roaming around the area between Vernonia and St. Helens - looking at the area to buy land.

A lot of that had no cellular coverage and I would guess no cable/fiber/DSL either.

Starlink works pretty much anywhere, as long as you have some open sky. I am surrounded by trees, but I have 99.99% connectivity, which is a LOT better than the WISP I had, and 10-30X faster (although speeds vary a LOT).

Starlink is going to come out with a smaller antenna and I've read it will work with a battery (current systems use AC power, so you need an inverter to run them from a battery).

Love how tech is moving.

 

[The Heretic]

We have had some drops, brief, up here due to too many users. (There about 30 homes on my dead end road up a very steep hill. About 1500 elevation and most folks are on Starlink now with probably 60% working from home. Rest retired or work in town. Drops have been satellite related according to Starlink responses when I place a work ticket. We got the notice about users, too, but we dont use much bandwidth typically.

There have been some large area outages, including several that were as wide as Australia to Europe. They lasted about 30 minutes. IIRC the number was 2-4 outages - there may have been more that I did not notice because I was asleep or away from home or doing something besides web surfing or watching TV. Considering what I had before, no biggy for me.

Another quick, but separate note of caution regarding cable failure rates for Starlink. I've had it a little less than a year but I and most of my neighbors have gone through one cable after cold snaps. Turns out that the cable can't handle the amperage required to heat or de-ice your dish in sub 20 degree temps. So the cables burn out. There's info on this on the Starlink Facebook Group site and also generally if you google search it. So I have turned off my setting for heating the dish (automatic). Haven't had a problem since, even after getting 14-16 inches is snow during last week off February and first week of March. Other neighbors have turned on the heat option for a few minutes and then turned it off. So far this seems to have worked for them. Just something to be aware of. I ordered an extra cable, just to be prepared if it happens again.

I've seen those reports. I've had no issues and I've had snow. I usually turn the heating off, but for a while now I've had it on "Auto" because of the snow.

I also think some of the cable problems people had have been due to people disconnecting the satellite cable before they powered the system down. I am on the FB RV users group and RV users move their systems often, disconnecting the cables often. The connectors are not robust and the thin conductors are probably not adequate for the 100W of power used for heating.

 

[Bacchus]

It sure sounds like the damn guy came up with one hell of a great little idea.

No kidding. PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink … look up the phrase "thinks big" in a phrase book and you'll probably see Elon's picture.

I'm glad he is no longer associated with PayPal.

 

[dplev4]

Was not aware of "continental type" outages. Yikes. The cable failure per internet discussions though do seem to be due to too high amperage during very cold weather.

For what it's worth we had a wet sticky snow episode which messed with my Direct TV dish but did not appear to impact Starlink. And that was with "heating off." Makes me think that it's only worth heating it when dealing with ice buildup. I will say this, Starlink beats the heck out of Viasat which is what we had before.

 

[The Heretic]

My dish is about 20' high on a pole attached to the house. Its angle is such that the little bit of snow we had (never more than 8") would slide off it, especially if the heat was on. I had the heating come on several times and never had an issue.

 

[The Heretic]

SpaceX launches world's 1st 5G satellite to bring global connectivity to Internet of Things

The Sateliot "GroundBreaker" is the first of a constellation of over 250 spacecraft.

www.space.com

 

[The Heretic]

In the past couple of weeks my obstructed events have decreased to almost nothing. Usually less than one minute per 12 hours, several times zero minutes - despite the obstructions (trees) remaining the same in the "Visibility" map.

I believe this is due to the increased # of satellites (50+ per week) with more choices for connecting being overhead and maybe improvements in their connection algorithms (hard to guess on the latter as SL is very close mouthed about their tech).

Speed has been a little better, but best speeds are still about 200 mbps, and evening speeds still degrade severely (usually well below 50 mbps, often below 20 mbps on weekend evenings). Speed doesn't matter too much to me as long as it is 50+ mbps - I only use my internet for surfing and watching TV.

Speed is mostly dependent on user density in the general area (my cell and surrounding cells that are 15-30 miles near my home), so I don't expect much speed improvements - at least not until they get more of their V2 satellites in orbit, which won't kick into gear until they get Starship into orbit (they do have some V2 "minis" in orbit, but not enough to make a consistent difference in general).

SL recently opened up the area west of the Mississippi to new orders, so I expect a lot more users - but not a lot more in my area. They also increased the prices for many people, based on user density and satellite availability, to this gives them some tools to get more users in areas with few users, and discourage new users in others - if they so wish.

 

[Flopsweat]

Thanks for keeping up on this. This is useful data.

 

[The Heretic]

A few more bits of info I learned in the last few days:

You can now switch services plans from RV/Roam to Residential (but I suspect you can only get Residential if the address is in an non waitlisted area) and back to RV/Roam from Residential (which has been available for some time, but previously you could not go from RV/Roam to Residential).

You can also go from Roam Regional to Roam Global (and back I assume) or to/from Maritime IIRC.

The hardware is the same (there is special Maritime hardware you can get too?).
-------------
I have noticed the following recently:

People on Reddit/FB have posted about their dishy pointing more towards an ocean (Pacific or Atlantic) and I am no exception; I complained when mine pointed more (about 30 degrees) westward (I am ~100 miles inland from the Oregon coast) because it caused more obstructed events due to a solid line of trees closer to the west side of my house (I permanently mounted my dish on the west side of my house before this happened).

Eventually those obstructed events decreased over some months back to previous frequency (less than 5 minutes). In the last month or so, I have noticed even more decrease to less than one minute per 12 hours (often less than 30 seconds, with a noticeable number of 12 hr periods with zero events greater than 2 seconds).

I just yesterday took a look at the dish positioning and the debug data. It appears that it moved about 2* back towards north (it was "-27" * previously, now it is "-25"*) but also it appears to now be elevated from about 40-45* to about 30* upward - i.e., more "flat" upwards.

I am assuming the decrease in obstructed (and others; "searching") events is due to increased numbers of satellites being in working orbits since the first of the year, and the repositioning of the dish elevation also is due to the satellites overhead.
FWIW - my obstructions (trees), have not changed. If anything, spring has finally arrived and some of the trees are greening up with buds, if not leaves (that said, the main obstructions are taller conifers).

 

[Alexx1401]

A few more bits of info I learned in the last few days:

You can now switch services plans from RV/Roam to Residential (but I suspect you can only get Residential if the address is in an non waitlisted area) and back to RV/Roam from Residential (which has been available for some time, but previously you could not go from RV/Roam to Residential).

You can also go from Roam Regional to Roam Global (and back I assume) or to/from Maritime IIRC.

The hardware is the same (there is special Maritime hardware you can get too?).
-------------
I have noticed the following recently:

People on Reddit/FB have posted about their dishy pointing more towards an ocean (Pacific or Atlantic) and I am no exception; I complained when mine pointed more (about 30 degrees) westward (I am ~100 miles inland from the Oregon coast) because it caused more obstructed events due to a solid line of trees closer to the west side of my house (I permanently mounted my dish on the west side of my house before this happened).

Eventually those obstructed events decreased over some months back to previous frequency (less than 5 minutes). In the last month or so, I have noticed even more decrease to less than one minute per 12 hours (often less than 30 seconds, with a noticeable number of 12 hr periods with zero events greater than 2 seconds).

I just yesterday took a look at the dish positioning and the debug data. It appears that it moved about 2* back towards north (it was "-27" * previously, now it is "-25"*) but also it appears to now be elevated from about 40-45* to about 30* upward - i.e., more "flat" upwards.

I am assuming the decrease in obstructed (and others; "searching") events is due to increased numbers of satellites being in working orbits since the first of the year, and the repositioning of the dish elevation also is due to the satellites overhead.
FWIW - my obstructions (trees), have not changed. If anything, spring has finally arrived and some of the trees are greening up with buds, if not leaves (that said, the main obstructions are taller conifers).

Sure sounds like this is off to a great start. As it keeps getting better there should be a lot more people who had no net access happy to have it.

 

[The Heretic]

Sure sounds like this is off to a great start. As it keeps getting better there should be a lot more people who had no net access happy to have it.

Please note that this is MY results; YMMV - drastically. Speeds vary greatly by location I see reports from a few people who get single digit speeds in some locations. The system may not work at all for you if you have significant obstructions. People still have spotty connectivity in far northern locations (Alaska).

But yes, it should get better over time, and new users have about 30 days to decide whether it works well enough for them, or get their $ back.

 

[Alexx1401]

Please note that this is MY results; YMMV - drastically. Speeds vary greatly by location I see reports from a few people who get single digit speeds in some locations. The system may not work at all for you if you have significant obstructions. People still have spotty connectivity in far northern locations (Alaska).

But yes, it should get better over time, and new users have about 30 days to decide whether it works well enough for them, or get their $ back.

The tech is pretty new but if I lived where I had no choice other than the old style satellite? I would sure as hell give this a shot. Before this came along I had known some who had the old satellite service and it SUCKED. It was pricey and SLOW. About on par with the old dial up. The best part of this is the way you can just take it with you. For people who go RVing or boating this must be just too nice.

 

[The Heretic]

The tech is pretty new but if I lived where I had no choice other than the old style satellite? I would sure as hell give this a shot. Before this came along I had known some who had the old satellite service and it SUCKED. It was pricey and SLOW. About on par with the old dial up. The best part of this is the way you can just take it with you. For people who go RVing or boating this must be just too nice.

Yup - I had Starband back about 20 years ago and it sucked donkey penises. Most everybody who says they have one of the geo-stationary sat services says the same now. Those would not work for me because they are near the equator and I have no clear shot in that direction; I am on the north side of the mountain so it is an uphill view into 150' tall trees.