For help, advice and discussion about stuff not related to aviation. Play nice: no religion, no politics and no axe grinding please.
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By GrahamB
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1834105
No chance at that price.

Our lanes have been swamped with Openreach vans over the last few weeks. Fingers crossed we’ll be getting FTTP to our rural location in the next month or so.
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By stevelup
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1834125
I'm paying that now for two bonded DSL lines. So the price is fine.

Our village has been trying to sort out fibre for years. We're at the stage now where DCMS are sending out the vouchers for the community fibre partnership to everyone, but even once everyone's accepted the vouchers (assuming they all do), it'll still be a year from now. We've also only hit 93% of the target but apparently that is 'enough'.

So it's a stop-gap measure for me. It'll probably go out of beta and start becoming stable just as FTTP becomes available ;)
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By Morten
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1834160
Be interested to hear of anyone's actual experience, so keep posting :)

Package upfront cost is steep-ish and monthly ongoing cost is high but the problem I have (and maybe I've not looked enough for it) is that it appears to not give any guaranteed service. It is part of a beta-testing and there will be gaps in the coverage as the constellation is rolled out - even if the speed when coverage is available is good, but no details are provided. I have also not seen what sort of data privacy you are left with as part of the beta-service probably collects information about usage which - again - are not described anywhere. Maybe full details are available once you sign up and pay your deposit, but paying a deposit today to maybe get the hardware at some point in the future is a bit rich. (But exactly what Tesla does. Amazing that he has managed to create such a demand for his products). Imagine if Vodafone or EE asked you to pay upfront with no actual guarantee of what you'd get when and what it would do?

Another bit of a nail in the coffin in my mind ATM is that the FAQs do clearly explain that it is not mobile. Eg when you install your 'UFO on a stick' it will lock itself to a virtual cell and cannot be used outside that cell. So you cannot take it on your yacht, caravan or to your winter/summer house if those are outside your cell. (Thereby also making a second-hand market difficult or at least controlled by Starlink...)
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By stevelup
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1834181
Absolutely understand it's a beta - have no expectations. They did, after all, market this trial as 'better than nothing'.

Agree they've got some front charging all this up front! But it tempts nerds regardless...

I believe some of the portability related restrictions may be eased once it's in production rather than beta.
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By Flyingfemme
#1834228
Actually doesn't sound bad if there is no mainstream option. We have a microwave link at Staverton; it gives around 50Mbps up and down. Started off (2012, ISTR) at £80 pcm and is now down to £56. The install was quite expensive. Our only other option, at the time, was a pathetic 1 Mbps over wet string from BT - who told us they "might get round to an improved option in 2015". Happily we, and a lot of other businesses here, were able to tell them where to go and I have stayed with this provider because the service has been good, reliable and not badly priced for a business.
We have ruled out buying a couple of houses for bad connectivity reasons - this will be very interesting. Please keep us updated. And portability is even more interesting.......
By Fellsteruk
#1834233
Was gonna but only because I’m a massive Elon and tech geek but I already have two fttc lines which are FOC at 70mb each as I work for an isp.

The speed is 150mb going up to 300mb in the year I think from a Privacy pov they will have no more or less data than any other isp which is every page, image and video you look at unless you use a vpn etc.

What I find interesting is that the monthly cost as others have said is t that bad the £500 setup is a couple hours flying for me and I’m trying to save every penny to get my ppl.

As the UK push on with fttp rollout costs will naturally increase, on the other hand Elon will drive costs down to the point that I doubt we’ll see much difference between a top spec virgin or sky package and starlink.

Likely put me out of a job but that’s progress...

A while back he joked about charging a dollar a day for access just imagine it would cause a meltdown in the telco space.
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By Fellsteruk
#1834241
Should be no more than 30ms 40 tops which is on par with a fixed line obvs will be less as the network gets bigger more ground stations etc etc
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By rikur_
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1834265
I suspect we'll have a play with one at work - we've got plenty of locations that are completely off the beaten track and will never get FTTC or FTTP.
That said, most have pretty good 4G nowadays.
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By Rob L
#1834269
I must confess I'm now confused about Starlink, although I do love the launches & landings!

I thought it was all about providing Internet access where it wasn't otherwise available (for example: remote areas of the world in Africa; South America; Antartica etc)

I know Starlink and SpaceX are in it for the profit (and I don't disagree) but those initial and then monthly costs suggested, your average iPhone or Android or other internet consumers in poorer countries have little chance of paying those fees.

$499 set-up cost and $99 per month. How many people in the areas it's intended for will be able to pay those fees? Or is it not intended for remote areas?

Am I missing something?
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By Morten
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1834275
Rob L wrote:I thought it was all about providing Internet access where it wasn't otherwise available (for example: remote areas of the world in Africa; South America; Antartica etc)

Indeed, just like O3B (the 'Other 3 Billion' name was chosen to reflect their market) and, to a lesser extent, OneWeb. Or look at Kacific for a similar project with more traditional technology.
Rob L wrote:$499 set-up cost and $99 per month. How many people in the areas it's intended for will be able to pay those fees? Or is it not intended for remote areas?

The price is just that - a price driven by the market, not linked to the cost to them of providing the service. So the price may (and will have to) vary across countries. It's one of the reasons they will need to think about if they want to make it truly mobile. Apart from managing 'landing rights' (licensed use of the spectrum in the markets they transmit over) they will certainly want to charge 'developing country clients' less - until they take their kit with them to the UK. The potential for a grey import market will give some solder-happy hackers a lot of fun, I'm sure. ;)

On bandwidth, a slightly interesting concept will be that over less densely populated areas, they can afford to provide higher bandwidth to the few customers they have. Over almost any kind of conurbation, the contention ratio will mean that they need to throttle their customers once they get a few... Hence, they are likely to be better value in rural areas than in cities from a bit/s per pound perspective - and certainly are unlikely to even try to compete with FTTC solutions in urban areas. So whether their price will actually come down as the service rolls out is not at all obvious as their USP will remain.

Price point is not that bad, but the lack of any sort of indication of availability and the 'beta' factor means that it is difficult to switch to them for any kind of serious 'working from home'. Latency, BTW, should be close to fibre and may even be better depending on how clever their inter-satellite links end up being and the size of those inter-satellite pipes. If they can minimise the number of gateways and route as much as possible point-to-point that can be quite efficient.
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By Morten
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1834279
Fellsteruk wrote:I think from a Privacy pov they will have no more or less data than any other isp which is every page, image and video you look at unless you use a vpn etc.

For sure, which is why everyone uses a VPN, no? But there are some key differences: (i) as a beta rollout I think they might want to look at other data on your machine than what they are pushing through their pipes in order to finetune and improve their service, and that could be much broader than what the normal isps do, and (ii) other other isps are UK companies and subject to privacy laws here, which isn't necessarily worth much but it's something. I've not clicked through so I've not seen what actual contract Starlink offers. I'd assume that they will offer services through a UK based company as well and therefore that they will, to all intents and purposes be the same. But until I have seen that contract I am just cynical/careful. Maybe @stevelup can post an anonymised PDF version of his contract? I would expect to be able to see this before I click the 'Pay now' button but didn't see that anywhere - please correct me if I'm wrong.

Fellsteruk wrote:I’m a massive Elon and tech geek

:) You and a few million others out there :)
I find it amazing that Elon has managed to create this environment where people really are putting a lot of faith into him and his team whilst providing very little actual info on what/when they are doing, whether it is trips to Mars, electric cars, stockmarket tips, hydroponic improvements... or broadband from a dish. More grease to his elbow, sure... And, to be fair, so far he has delivered what has promised. Never on time, for sure, but he has got there eventually.
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