Be a Starlink Beta Tester

[Ben]

I just saw that Starlink is going to start beta testing in North America later this year. If you send them your email and zip code, you can get on their mailing list and if your zip is in a testing area, you have the chance of beta testing.

I went ahead and did it. Even if it's a slim chance, it would be cool to test. They appear to be starting in Northern latitudes first, with possible initial testing in Seattle. I might not be far enough North, but figured what the heck. Also I'm hoping they mean "Seattle latitude" versus Seattle the city. Seems kinda dumb to beta test a technology you're developing for "fast internet anywhere, including for the under-served" in a city that already has mega-bandwidth conventional connections available.

https://www.starlink.com/

[Jim147]

Yeah I read the story today. I'll sign up to see if I can try it when it gets this far south.

[MillCreek]

I signed up.  We will see if being 40 miles north of Seattle counts for anything.

[Brad Johnson]

Any idea what the specs are?

Brad

[Ben]

Any idea what the specs are?

Brad

Gigabit with around a 30 millisecond latency. The latter is key and why I wouldn't touch current sat service now. The 30 millisecond latency is about what I ping now with my fixed wireless, but at only around 15mbps bandwidth. I'll be interested to see Starlink pricing, but if it's under $100/mo it would be worth it for me, as I'm paying $80/mo now. Given, of course, that it's robust. My fixed wireless has only gone out maybe four times in the 1.5 years I've had it, the longest time being maybe an hour.

[AJ Dual]

I'm really pulling for Starlink to make it work. But with gigabit fiber, I think I'll pass.

This is from WiFi from my work PC. My workshop desktop that's actually hard-wired over Ethernet gets 900Mbps pretty easily.

[AZRedhawk44]

Signed up a couple weeks ago, heard about it on the SpaceX reddit.

I have so much loathing for Cox, that if Starlink is half the speed at 50% more price, I'll still switch.  I can still track what junk mail I can attribute to Cox by the way the misspelled name on the mail matches my misspelled name on my Cox bill.

[AJ Dual]

Signed up a couple weeks ago, heard about it on the SpaceX reddit.

I have so much loathing for Cox, that if Starlink is half the speed at 50% more price, I'll still switch.  I can still track what junk mail I can attribute to Cox by the way the misspelled name on the mail matches my misspelled name on my Cox bill.

If I had to use Comcast, Spectrum, or Cox, I'd pay more for less bandwidth too. Ugh. I get junk mail from Spectrum and people walking up and down the street with clipboards and badges for Spectrum all the time.

And then there's the people that hang out at the intersection of aisles at Walmart in front of the electronics section trying to sign you up asking who you have for internet. Telling them I've got AT&T gigabit fiber usually shuts them up. The bad ones are the actual AT&T guys though, because they're trying to push AT&T DirectTV satellite even though I've got U-Verse through the fiber. They don't give up even when I tell them I'm already an AT&T customer. I suspect that their acquisition of DirectTV isn't working out for them and they're desperate for subscribers to pay for those big expensive satellites that won't be serviceable until SpaceX makes access to GEO as cheap as long distance air freight.

Yeah, I'm going to switch to a service that requires new wiring, a dish on my roof, and that goes out whenever there's a heavy rainfall or snow, or a bird sits on the LNB, and "On Demand" isn't really "On Demand"...

[Brad Johnson]

If we didn't have everything, including TV, on a Uverse bundle then I'd be on the bandwagon. TV service is fine but the internet service "hangs" all the time. It's not buffering like speed has dropped, it just stops. The connection is still active according to the modem's blinky light, but there is zero traffic. It's like the the hose is still screwed on but someone turned off the valve.  95% of the time it's okay but that other 5% is infuriating. I haven't had the time or patience to see if it's limited to wifi or also includes cabled connections.

I had AT&T fiber at my old place. The all-the-way-inside kind, not fiber to the alley node then copper to the house. Service was terrific. Rock solid and fast, especially for the price ($50/mo for 100Mb up/down). Only problem was having to occasionally reboot the modem. Her place (now Our Place) is served by legacy copper. It's 12 blocks from my old house and the subdivisions adjoin but AT&T doesn't appear to be bringing in fiber to that area, at least not in the near future. From what I can gather they had to install fiber to a minimum number of users for some type of contractual agreement. Once that minimum was met, they stopped. Compared to the fiber service I had, we're paying 50% more for 1/3 the speed. Like I said, if it weren't for the bundle savings, I'd be eyeballing Starlink pretty hard.

Brad

[MillCreek]

We have Xfinity copper to the house for cable TV and Internet.  On my home desktop that is connected via Ethernet, I generally get 325 MBps down and 12 MBps up.  Depending on the wireless device, similar speeds via WiFi.

[Jim147]

5-6 meg is a good day here. Running three tv's in the evening can get interesting.

[Ben]

5-6 meg is a good day here. Running three tv's in the evening can get interesting.

This is where Starlink pricing will be interesting. When I moved here, all the neighbors were using crappy Frontier DSL because it was like $40/mo. Frontier is gone here now, and most of them seem to have switched to crappy standard satellite for probably $40-$50/mo. The fixed Wireless I use has a 5mbps "basic" package for $55/mo, but I seem to be the only person in my area with fixed wireless. I see it on a couple of other homes as I drive into town, but they are big, fancy homes.

My only explanation is price. Your average rural resident seems happy to have crappy service as long as it's cheap. Or maybe they're not familiar with fixed wireless. Which makes me wonder if they would even know about Starlink when it's available to them. I'd be happy to pay $100/mo for gigabit service, for the same reason I'm paying $80 for my current service instead of $50 for basic standard sat, or even the basic option of my service. But I think I'm an outlier, at least for my rural area.

[Perd Hapley]

I heard Starlink can give you COVID.

[dogmush]

Right now I have Spectrum, because it's the best of bad choices.  I get 200(ish) MBps down over wifi. It's good enough for what we do in the house but it doesn't excel and man, the company.

I pay $100/month for that too.

If Starlink comes close I'll switch just to give the middle finger to Spectrum.

[WLJ]

Right now I have Spectrum, because it's the best of bad choices.  I get 200(ish) MBps down over wifi. It's good enough for what we do in the house but it doesn't excel and man, the company.

I pay $100/month for that too.

If Starlink comes close I'll switch just to give the middle finger to Spectrum.

Is that with or with out TV
I pay $60, get ~250mb. Internet only, no TV

[dogmush]

Is that with or with out TV
I pay $60, get ~250mb. Internet only, no TV

Internet only.

$90 is for the plan, 7 is for the modem and extra repeater thing.  I just logged on to our account and there's no way to tell what exact plan we have right now, although the ticket for when we installed it 4 years ago say 200 MBps plan, so I assume that's what I am supposed to be getting.

I clicked the button to see what deals there were in my area and it though about it and told me the website was down and I'd have to call customer service if I wanted to check on "upgrades".  I'd rather cut my own kidneys out with a spork then call them, so we'll never know.

Musk could legitimately be a Bond villain and supporting SpaceX may noticeably hasten his taking over of the world and subjugating us all into dystopia, but if I didn't have Spectrum, and he throws in a flamethrower I'm OK with it.

[WLJ]

Forgot to mention, Spectrum

[WLJ]

I heard Starlink can give you COVID.

Only if you watch Trump videos, vote for Biden and you will be cured.

[lee n. field]

Frontier's slowest.  The ISP that's the other half of the company I work for can't reach my house, and cable so far wants to bundle TeeVee, which we don't want.  So I signed up with Starlink.  We'll see.

[MillCreek]

Here in western Washington, Frontier has been bought out by Ziply Fiber, and they have been running ads about how they are going to pour millions of dollars into the crappy Frontier infrastructure and have rainbows and bunnies for all.

[Ben]

Here in western Washington, Frontier has been bought out by Ziply Fiber, and they have been running ads about how they are going to pour millions of dollars into the crappy Frontier infrastructure and have rainbows and bunnies for all.

That's who bought them out in Idaho too.  I went to their website for kicks, put in my address, and got, "no service in your area." At least Frontier provided rural residents service, even if it was slow as hell and only worked 50% of the time. In fact I think "rural internet" was Frontier's whole schtick, so it's interesting that Ziply bought them out and then apparently said, "screw rural America."

 If they're only offering Internet "in town" in rural areas, what's the point? You can get fast cable even in my rinky dink town, and probably cheaper than Ziply.

I'm only guessing, but I reckon Starlink's infrastructure and design will allow them to provide the same service at the same price to both city and rural locations. They'll probably still be more expensive than a lot of competing urban services, but I'm really hoping they'll be competitively priced out here in the sticks, where Internet costs 5X more than in the city.

[Brad Johnson]

My parents, who live just north of BFE, Nowhere, USA, are on a dinky little rural phone coop that has existed since crank phones were the up-and-coming thing. Around 2014-15 they got some kind of infrastructure revitalization grant and ran fiber to every home on the service. Since the total number of people on the entire system barely reaches triple digits, their internet service is a thing of envy. Speedtest routinely shows 2-3 ms pings and speeds of 30 Mb synchronous on what is supposed to be a 12 Mb subscription. Bandwidth is ridiculous overkill. Over Christmas we had a bunch of family in and ran an impromptu test by having everyone log on to their streaming service at the same time. IIRC, we had 16 devices running Netflix, Prime Video, or Youtube. Some were running all three contiguously. No problems at all. If the Speedtest stats were any indication, we were using the merest fraction of available capacity. SWMBO and and can only dream of having something like that here in "the city".

Brad

[Ben]

Since the total number of people on the entire system barely reaches triple digits, their internet service is a thing of envy. Speedtest routinely shows 2-3 ms pings and speeds of 30 Mb synchronous on what is supposed to be a 12 Mb subscription. Bandwidth is ridiculous overkill.

Kinda like my fixed wireless service. They bill themselves as a rural solution (though they actually get customers in cities like Boise and Nampa). They have to this point been underutilized. My $80/mo connection is supposed to top out at 10mbps, but up until 4-5 months ago,  I routinely got 18-20mbps, because the tower I point to, shared by Idaho and Oregon, was being used way below capacity.

In the last few months I've noticed I'm closer to 14-15mbps, so I'm guessing with Frontier going Tango Uniform and probably just word of mouth expansion of their business, my tower is getting hit more. If this keeps up, I'm almost going to be irritated when I start getting the top speed I actually pay for.  

My last connection in CA was fixed wireless, and I was paying around 25% more for half the bandwidth (5mbps and I averaged 3-4mbps). This is just me talking about what I want, but to me it would be fair to pay $50/mo for like 50mbps. Which is why I'd gladly pay $100/mo for 100mbps with Starlink (assuming they're going to do some kind of tiered pricing). Though I'd probably pay $100/mo for 50mbps as well. I remember what a joy it was to go from 5mbps to 10 (or 20)mbps. I'd be absolutely giddy with 50mbps. Which is kind of a sad state of affairs considering the speeds some of you guys get.  

[sumpnz]

I signed up.  We will see if being 40 miles north of Seattle counts for anything.

Me to.  And I'm another 30-40 miles north of you.  Actually used 2 emails to sign up.

[sumpnz]

This is where Starlink pricing will be interesting. When I moved here, all the neighbors were using crappy Frontier DSL because it was like $40/mo. Frontier is gone here now, and most of them seem to have switched to crappy standard satellite for probably $40-$50/mo. The fixed Wireless I use has a 5mbps "basic" package for $55/mo, but I seem to be the only person in my area with fixed wireless. I see it on a couple of other homes as I drive into town, but they are big, fancy homes.

My only explanation is price. Your average rural resident seems happy to have crappy service as long as it's cheap. Or maybe they're not familiar with fixed wireless. Which makes me wonder if they would even know about Starlink when it's available to them. I'd be happy to pay $100/mo for gigabit service, for the same reason I'm paying $80 for my current service instead of $50 for basic standard sat, or even the basic option of my service. But I think I'm an outlier, at least for my rural area.

Frontier (or whoever they became) is currently the best we can get.  When I do a speedtest (granted over WiFi) I usually get something in the 300 KB range with latencies over 500ms.  If I hardwired into the router I might get 1MB and 100ms.