Oh, now it’s worse than every satellite internet company I know. Shame I recommended it to someone because I thought it would be reliable and remain cheap.
Starlink was never a viable business prospect. It never will be. Anybody who signed up to Starlink was just waiting for this to happen without knowing it.
I just generally doubt anything Musk does because of his track record. However, is there a particular reason why Starlink is inherently not viable? Could a competent person do it or it is fundamentally flawed? To put it another way is it cybertruck bad (yes people want electric cars but not a barely driveable dumpster held together with glue) or hyperloop bad (physics said no)?
It is closer to a hyper loop system. For the internet to have low enough latency it has to be put in quite a low earth orbit. That means we need more satlights to make coverage, ballooning costs. However that is not the part that kills it, it is that it is in such low orbit we can expect air resistance to significantly degrade orbits. There are too many satilights to reasonably boost them all, and when they start to degrade it will be too fast to reasonably replace them all.
That, and as they burn up upon re-entry, they’re fucking up the environment:
https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-reentry-pollution-damage-earth-atmosphere
The former $240/mo was not outrageous to begin with?…
These Elon fanboys just love getting scammed by him. I can almost hear the little pay piggies squealing now.
I looked into Starlink years ago when I was RVing. It came out to over $600 up front in equipment costs, THEN $240 a month or w/e. And it’s not like Elon wasn’t a piece of shit back then, either. $50 a month for T-Mobile “5G at home” with no upfront or hidden costs did the trick nicely and bridged the gap until I found a place with cheap fiber. Now I have 2.5Gbps up and down and it’s still less than half the price of Starlink before this price hike.
Starlink makes sense for the scenario it was designed fill the gap for. A lack of any other terrestrial options.
Legacy satellite has always been terrible, but the only option in many rural areas, and obviously the middle of nowhere. Starlink is an insanely reliable and decent deal in most of those circumstances. That’s it’s bread and butter.
But if you have literally any other option, it’s usually not the best choice, it’s not meant to be the best choice, it’s intended for use where it’s likely the only choice.
One of my brothers is in Alaska right now. It’s wild to me that he even gets internet where he’s at. Where he’s at they don’t even have mailboxes just PO Boxes.
He is sharing 1TB a month among ~60 people tho
It’s worth it.
If you’re in the middle of the Pacific often.
I know one guy where he’s just on a damn mountain. Not many other options.
Not saying it’s the option I’d take, just saying. If you’re in the sticks in a red state…
Yeah there are always exceptions of course. I’ve seen some in that position able to get away with direct line-of-sight connections for a reasonable rate, but it depends heavily on the layout of the surrounding mountains and location of the service provider plus you have to shell out for an antennae or dish. For any wondering, that’s almost always cheaper than the Starlink sign up costs.
Then again, if internet is important to someone, gotta consider if mountain-side living is the right choice to begin with. I’m sure your acquaintance has his reasons though!
I only have this to say: Fuck the sky pollution. Starlink has been ruining stargazing and star photography and Elon lied about its impact. He claimed they would be invisible with his amazing paint but they’re still visible and fuck it up for people who enjoy watching the stars.
I see them all the time without a camera. They are bright as the stars when they pass over.
pros and cons…
pros:
- internet in remote places
cons:
- at the cost of literallt everything else
Damn, maybe you should move to a radical leftist city where fiber internet is $50 a month.
Try 10€.
Where?
Romania probably.
They went hard on fiber investments a decade or two ago and now they have some of the world’s best internet.
Last I checked you could get 10 Gbit for around 12€
Last I checked you could get 10 Gbit for around 12€
then it would be €1200 for a TB (assuming the price goes up linearly), so not cheaper than starlink
Best place in the world to acquire porn: it’s made there (farm to table), and you can download it nigh instantly
Do they have porn markets like farmer markets?
We pay 4.58€ for 1gbit/1gbit fiber in our condo association in Sweden…
how is this better? the twitter guy is ordering a TB not a GB
If only I could immigrate. Know any single swedes looking for a spouse?
Whatcha got to offer? Gotta sweeten that pot, or you’ll lose to other bidders.
Radical leftist city.
Also, I’d just like to say that even 240 is expensive as hell.
For mobile satellite internet, it’s an absolute steal. If that’s what they had.
I pay €18 for 250/100, of course unlimited data, and the company has no tracking and fully supports privacy etc. their main servers are based in the old cave where the pirate bay used to have theirs. It also comes with a great VPN, ID security and antivirus from f-secure (not that I use it since I’m on linux). And they just opened a datacenter inside an old war bunker in my city, with this description: “Freedom of communication and the virtual world need to withstand both Russian bombs and Donald Trump’s Cloud Act. This industrial bunker is built for just that.” In Sweden, if you hadn’t guessed.
Strange, I’ve downloaded almost 6TiB over the last month so far and my bill is still $120/mo.
EDIT: This appears to be for global priority customers (movable dish between addresses, on boats, etc) and seems to be because he’s increasing his data cap by choice, not because rates are actually getting hiked. Us normal residential customers are the same as always. Fuck Musk anyway, but this one seems to be a non-issue.
global priority customers (movable dish between addresses, on boats, etc)
Because of-fucking-course anybody who wants to buy and live aboard a cheap (easily $50k or less) old sailboat instead of paying rent forever or grinding for a $500K house is a “rich yacht owner” who can obviously afford $1000/month Internet. And have their home sunk by orcas while we’re at it, because why not?
Just when I thought I had a viable plan to escape this shithole consumer trap of a country, the Internet service I would need to do it not only ends up being run by a goddamn Nazi, but they also jack up the price on that use-case.
Look into Eutelsat. I’ve heard mention recently that they’re expanding as a viable starlink competitor. I have no direct knowledge, but maybe they’d cover your needs cheaper.
First, screw Musk. Second, you would only need this level of satellite internet service for your boat if you want to be able to use full broadband speed with over 1TB of transfer in the middle of the ocean far away from terrestrial cellular networks. If you really need full broadband speeds in the middle of the ocean and you only need 50GB of it a month its only $250/month.
If you’re at a boat dock you likely have wifi available or even just anchored close to land you can likely just tether your mobile phone.
Second, you would only need this level of satellite internet service for your boat if you want to be able to use full broadband speed with over 1TB of transfer in the middle of the ocean far away from terrestrial cellular networks.
Well, the ideal goal would be to be able to do things like work remotely and keep my kids entertained while circumnavigating, so yeah.
I’m not a boat person but it feels like you’ve got conflicting ideas about whats possible. You said:
Because of-fucking-course anybody who wants to buy and live aboard a cheap (easily $50k or less) old sailboat instead of paying rent forever
…and…
the ideal goal would be to be able to do things like work remotely and keep my kids entertained while circumnavigating
I don’t think you’re going to find a $50k boat you can buy (and maintain!) that can house four people comfortably for transoceanic cruises while also affording you the ability to work a full time job from the boat. I would think you’re looking at a MUCH larger boat, possibly with some full time crew to accomplish that, and at that point $1k a month for global high speed low latency internet is probably a a small fraction of your monthly expenses.
I’m just going with an Iridium for calls and short texts. I save up all the bigger missives for when I hit wifi. That doesn’t work for most work situations I think.
Just in time for https://lemmy.world/post/29463383
Any future where these fuckers don’t end up in jail is going to become hell.
Grifter gonna grift…
WOMP ∞/GB PRICELESS x2
good ol’ bait and switch
