Starlink

[BigBlue1]

Gotcha. And it will be good to have competition if and when that happens, for sure.

You quoted my post in your earlier posting so I assumed it was directed at me. I think we're all on the same page here.

 

[Locoweed]

I trust Amazon as far as I could throw a battleship.

 

[grsthegreat]

Have you priced fiber in your area? I have fiber on my street. It is $8500 to connect (1/4 mile long driveway) and then it is $150/month for 200Mb/s max service. Most of my neighbors get half that.
Starlink is cheaper and faster for me.

A friend of mine has a 200 download package, $35/month. No limits. Paid $500 connection to existing copper at street.

 

[ultrarunner]

Sure, that type of stuff may happen. But that's a whole other type of scenario than an end-user signing up for a service and needing to agree to terms of service. Any single end user has ZERO sway over the company offering the service. You can certainly try to band together or work an angle like your brother did but that's not the topic of this situation.

I guess you would be correct… the personal use account of a single subscriber is insignificant unless you can bring in regulators or through legal action.

When agreements were documents on paper I have crossed out and initialed line items I did not agree with and in one instance it saved my bacon.

Online has pretty much made contracts a take it or leave it prospect.

Is there no possibility to exert leverage?

 

[BigBlue1]

When agreements were documents on paper I have crossed out and initialed line items I did not agree with and in one instance it saved my bacon.

I'm curious to hear about that situation where a manually marked-up ToS came into play in a legal challenge and was upheld. Sounds interesting. You're right that such a situation really isn't possible in these days' electronic engagements.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

Back in the days of signing paper forms, I would cross out items I objected to, and sign, and nothing got said. Can’t do that with electronic ones.

 

[BigBlue1]

Back in the days of signing paper forms, I would cross out items I objected to, and sign, and nothing got said. Can’t do that with electronic ones.

But ultimately that action was probably meaningless. Even if you crossed out something in the terms if you violate what that company said (say hosting a bittorrent site on a ISP whose terms banned it) the company is still going to boot you whether you crossed that term out or not. Or if the terms say "throughput subject to throttling after XX GB per month" and you crossed that out they are still going to throttle you when you reach that threshold. It made you feel good but did nothing, realistically. Which is why I'm curious to hear Ultrarunner's story, because that would certainly be unique.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

But ultimately that action was probably meaningless. Even if you crossed out something in the terms if you violate what that company said (say hosting a bittorrent site on a ISP whose terms banned it) the company is still going to boot you whether you crossed that term out or not. Or if the terms say "throughput subject to throttling after XX GB per month" and you crossed that out they are still going to throttle you when you reach that threshold. It made you feel good but did nothing, realistically. Which is why I'm curious to hear Ultrarunner's story, because that would certainly be unique.

wasn't ISP related. Just bringing up the fact that on paper forms you had the option, now you don't.

 

[ultrarunner]

I'm curious to hear about that situation where a manually marked-up ToS came into play in a legal challenge and was upheld. Sounds interesting. You're right that such a situation really isn't possible in these days' electronic engagements.

It was twice actually...

Once was on a company sponsored river rafting trip where I crossed out NOT as in will not hold liable.

There was a smashed car window in my vehicle in the secured operators staging yard.

They said not liable and I said show me where?

Owner pulled out the contract to show me and then saw I had struck out and initialed plus I had my copy.

He said I can't do that and I said explain?

Operator paid my deductible and said now he needs to be a lawyer too...

Another time was with a city project and site access which I limited and boy did that blow up... city attorney was livid saying she can't possibly go over every agreement looking for changes... but I had them.

Contract Law professor said on day one either don't sign a contract you find objectionable or strike through the objectionable and in the very least the required element of a meeting if the minds does not exist.

 

[RedNeckGeek]

Interesting comments on terms of service, but one thing I didn't see is worth mentioning. The ante for Starlink is about six hundred bux for the antenna and modem, an amount of money that's not easy to just throw away if SpaceX changes their terms of service to something I can't live with.

I'm already putting up with abysmal Starlink tech support, and it's hard to imagine how Starlink could get any worse. Quite the contrary, when I first started using Starlink, I rarely saw speeds over about 50 Mbps down. As more and more satellites went into orbit, speeds have almost tripled; just now I saw 183 Mbps. I just hope nothing breaks in the hardware before I get out of the old place so I don't have to deal with the tech support nightmare and shell out another ante for what I hope will be a short time I still need internet access at the old location.

On another related topic, I'm in the process of moving back to the 'burbs, and have settled on Xfinity cable for internet service at the new house. I ordered the 1 Gbps level, and have never seen that speed as all of my devices down there use the 802.11 ac or older WiFi protocols to communicate. I should probably save some money and downgrade a level or two.

I do notice the slight difference in latency when using the web compared to Starlink at the old place, but it's not enough to be troublesome, and I can do all the streaming I like without buffering or other issues, at either location. So not the huge difference or instantaneous response on web based services that I was hoping to see from the Xfinity connection.

That said, Starlink, for me at least, was a game changer compared to the older satellite services I tried, and through the years I tried 'em all. Based on my experience, HughesNet and the rest have gotta be the absolute worst way to access the internet. Well, maybe not the worst if the phone companies are still offering the old 9600 baud connections. Anyone here still using one?

 

[LouNY]

wasn't ISP related. Just bringing up the fact that on paper forms you had the option, now you don't.

I've done so also a few times. One time on a sales contract it ended up saving me several thousands of dollars from shoddy workmanship.

 

[JRH02]

I left city life in the mid-90s and had to fall back to a dialup modem. It was a 9600 but I couldn't get a connection over 2400. The house was new as was the land line wire but the wire to town, the switchgear and further were old. I got to know the service guy for the rural phone company and he wasn't shy about telling me the number of calls he has for the old infrastructure. When they finally began supporting DSL and got the new boxes set he made sure I was the first person to get DSL service outside the little town of 296 people. It was a major, major improvement.

Then I relocated to rural WA and once again had terrible cell and internet (Wildblue sat). I got regular dings from my manager because I couldn't host a WebEx and could barely attend as a participant. Then to extreme rural OR but at least cell reception was better with a booster for 3G over Verizon. The again back to rural WA where we are off grid as in zero utilities. Back to satellite with DishNet and then Hughes Nextgen. Again back to terrible bandwidth and nasty latency. Again cell service was two bars with a booster. It doesn't work to boost a signal that is barely there.

Enter Starlink. It's the first time since I left city life that I have both good internet AND voice but go figure as we are both retired now. Our voice calls over cell phones go via Starlink as a data connection. HD audio at the same time as two computers that run 24x7 connecting our solar and weather to their respective cloud services or streaming something with never buffering. Except for having to buy the hardware the service is literally a few bucks less than Hughes with no data caps even after the price increase. Starlink is a true God send. Musk may be a bit of a jerk but I sincerely appreciate the technology he has made available. And uptime is 100%. I'm a happy camper.

 

[tradosaurus]

I was looking at starlink last year but then Spectrum just laid down fiber in our rural area. thank goodness I waited.
I went from 8 Mbps to 320 Mbps for the same monthly fee.

 

[sodamo]

Friend and neighbor just had his malfunctioning Gen 2 replaced with a Gen 3. Had to do a tempory mount as it didn’t come with the proper mount adapter and is 12° out of alignment. We normally see speeds around 200 + or -. His initial test was over 300. Be interesting what is when properly aligned.

 

[ultrarunner]

I’m lucky to hit 10 with Verizon Cube and 2 with cellular data.

Wouldn’t think in a city of 450,000 in a metro of 10 million connectivity would be an issue.

Might come a time when Starlink for speed is my best option.

With a system like Starlink topography should cease to an issue.

 

[Oaktree]

Spectrum just laid down fiber in our rural area. thank goodness I waited.
I went from 8 Mbps to 320 Mbps for the same monthly fee.

Right now Spectrum is my only choice. Yeah, they keep upping the advertised speed...and the price along with it. Almost $90/mo. They claim I should be getting 600M, but I've never gotten better than 90 or so. Not that I really need anything anywhere near that fast for (mostly) web browsing and the Roku but they don't offer anything cheaper/lower speed.

The phone company's been stringing fiber in town and advertising much lower rates than Spectrum charges, IMHO they can't get it up & running soon enough for me!

 

[ernemats]

Does anyone know how big a hole is needed to run the Starlink cable through a wall. the cable from the dish to the router

 

[lincmercguy]

3/4" I think, which lets the connector through. The grommets that come with it will fit that size. The instructions might be online too.

 

[ning]

I was on the Starlink waiting list for a long time but saw that Verizon's cellular ISP was on the way when my name came up so passed on Starlink.
Given that I have ~decent~ cellular at home - I'd been using my phone's hotspot for years for internet - I hoped the vzw router would do well.
My experience is that it's just barely less reliable than my old T1 line was, I consistently get 250+Mbps with 30-40ms pings, at it costs me $35/mo - no install or startup costs.

 

[ponytug]

Does anyone know how big a hole is needed to run the Starlink cable through a wall. the cable from the dish to the router

It depends.

3/4" I think, which lets the connector through. The grommets that come with it will fit that size. The instructions might be online too.

I think the latest version of the antenna is now down to Ethernet size, e.g. about 1/2". The older ones were 3/4", as @lincmercguy notes, but to be honest, I treat Ethernet cable very, very gently, and I would use the 3/4"/19mm hole size, and make sure that you never, not once, bend any portion of the cable sharply nor kink it. Minimum bend diameter is at least 2", I.e. at least 8 times the diameter of the cable. Generally, folks quote that as the bend radius, but I have found that "radius" misleads many folks into bends that are too tight.

Yes, a single one time bend or kink can permanently impair the cable.

All the best,

Peter