Starlink

[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