Starlink

[newbury]

I have yet to find anything I cant do on my 4G LTE with AT&T so 5G doesn't much matter to us. T Mobile touts their 5G Home Internet but in actuality rural folks will only be connecting at 4G. Most people don't need 100 MBS even though they think they do. I can stream anything without buffering over a Firestick and typically see download speeds of 25 meg and up so that is more than capable of streaming.

I'm trying to run security cams. Even the 2MP resolution sucks up 4Mb bandwidth. It even brings my "city" network to it's knees when I'm trying to display multiple cams from the outside.

 

[newbury]

My household of 5 with 3 kids seems to disagree. Get 3 kids all streaming or gaming at the same time and try to watch a netflix movie with the wife and 100+ MBS is appreciated. No more issues now with fiber.

Seems like we all want MORE BANDWIDTH.

Just ran across this (it's the county adjacent east of me) for Franklin County, Alabama (pop 32,113):
source

Kiel said it takes a lot of money, time and work to bring about this reality as a viable option for Franklin County residents.

“That’s why I am working to get our share of the $243 million in new funding through the American Rescue Plan Act to expand rural broadband access in our state,”

“I believe that, together, we can make this possible for our citizens,” Kiel added. “The Franklin County Commission has more than $5 million that can go toward making sure every citizen in the county has world-class internet speeds for work, education, healthcare and entertainment.”

Mugno and Schultz asked the commission to publicly commit, in a manner appropriate and binding, all the remaining COVID relief funds awarded to Franklin County for the purpose of building reliable, affordable, last-mile fiber optic broadband in the areas discussed and shown on the map presented during the meeting, explaining reasons for doing so.

“Freedom Fiber has committed to make Franklin County the first county in the state to have 10 gigabyte service available to our users,” explained Schultz, “and this would be a huge technological jump from one gigabyte – currently the highest speed generally offered by most providers.”

So the entire county may get 10GB service to their house or business simply because they can throw the Covid relief money at it.

How can Starlink compete with that?

 

[LouNY]

They can't compete against that. But, many places aren't even putting up 1 gigabyte service.
I can see the Cell towers from my kitchen windows on the mountain and I get decent 4G service.
If I hotspot my phone I'll be between 4 and 20 Megabyte, my now previous provider was a two way radio link
up to one of those towers which was supposed to be 25 megabyte service and was 50% of the time and less
the rest of the time.
So now my Starlink is sitting at between my worst was 79 megabytes to a best of 230 megabytes, usually well over 100.
The other day to give it a workout we had 3 phones, two TV's, and a kindle streaming video in HD at the same time
along with my Arlo camera system and nothing even blinked no pauses no buffering just smooth playing.

 

[Wakey]

Georgia is doing the same thing but I'm not optimistic that they're going to provide something that's going to compete with what starlink offers but we will find out

 

[jk96]

Seems like we all want MORE BANDWIDTH.

Just ran across this (it's the county adjacent east of me) for Franklin County, Alabama (pop 32,113):
source

So the entire county may get 10GB service to their house or business simply because they can throw the Covid relief money at it.

How can Starlink compete with that?

You have to remember they are also scaling up service globally, not just in the US.

 

[rekees4300]

Starlink launches a premium Internet plan with superior features. That's the good news. The bad news is it will cost $500/month!

https://www.cnet.com/home/internet/spacex-launches-starlink-premium-internet-plan-and-its-not-cheap/

 

[ponytug]

@rekees4300 Thanks for sharing, but,...Ouch! $2700 upfront and $500/month.

Private fiber is looking better and better...

 

[WM75Guy]

Going to be tough to compete with 5G home internet plans as they roll out. Here is an example of Verizon.

 

[kcflhrc]

5G is and will continue to be a big issue in Rural America for some time. Those plans are great if you live very close to a 5G Tower but the reach of the 5G Band is very limited. They tout those plans as 5G but more than likely as my neighbor found out with T-Mobile 5G the modem only connects to LTE because there is no 5G where we live. You would need to be in the range of 1000' to 1500' of a 5G Tower and in the rural areas that is just not practical. Yet. I'm connected to a 5G tower right now according to my phone with Verizon and the speed is roughly 30 up and down. Not really impressive

 

[John_Mc]

@rekees4300 Thanks for sharing, but,...Ouch! $2700 upfront and $500/month.

Private fiber is looking better and better...

Fiber has always looked better... to those who actually have that option.

Going to be tough to compete with 5G home internet plans as they roll out. Here is an example of Verizon.

View attachment 731996

It won't be tought to compete when you live in an area where cell phone coverage stinks. I can sometimes get a single bar signal strength for 4G/LTE in our home, but only if I stand in just the right place. On a really good day, it might occasionally creep up to 2 bars. We used to do better: we had reliable 3 bar coverage for 4G/LTE for years. Unfortunately, every 5 years or so, something breaks or gets knocked out of line on the tower that serves our area, taking us down to 1 bar or even intermittent no service. It usually takes organizing the whole neighborhood (which is only 7 homes here in the boondocks) to make repeated weekly calls over a period of several months to get Verizon to even admit there might be a problem and send someone out to check. It's been a year now that we've been down to one bar here, and I gave up calling a while ago.

We have Starlink. We are happy with it. Our only other options are a DSL line or geosynchronus satellite such as Hughs or Wildblue. The DSL is rated for 7mbps down / 1 up, but rarely actually achieves that and and goes out entirely at least a couple times per month. (We were on a fist-name basis with the repair guy for our area, and knew the names of all of his family members). We tried the geosynchronus satellite internet and hated it - it simply does not work for something like online classes or Zoom conferences.

If fiber ever does come to our area, or even reliable cellphone-based internet, we will probably switch and see if someone else wants our Starlink dish. Until then, we are happy that we can at least fullfil our work obligations, the kids can do remote schooling when needed, and we can occasionally stream programs we are intersted in.