Starlink

[dmccarty]

...

I do get a chuckle re Customer Service comments.

My initial ‘broadband’ here (2-3mbps) was a local hook up via Ubiquiti pico/nano to the local telecom/cable. While the service provider was responsive that was only for his equipment, not the source.
...

Exactly.

I wonder where this mythical great Internet Customer service exists? Never see it myself.

1. Spectrum/Cable Internet sucked. Don't get me started on how those idiots wired a connection in my house. Guy at work has constant outages with Spectrum.
2. CenturyStink. We have 1.5 mbps yet the company has taken hundreds of millions of dollars in tax money to provide faster access. They did install new boxes for faster speed that would improve our service. Nothing there but a future planned subdivision but they won't spend the money to improve our speeds. The cattle herd is happy I guess. We had lots of calls for service which is NOT good. The employees tried their best but are over worked. They eventually solved the problems but it took years.
3. UbiFi worked great until it did not work at all. There was no support. They raised their prices. Then the service just stopped working. At least they did not hassle us with turning of the service and returning the money they owed us.
4. Verizon cell. It worked. Then it too did not work. Had to buy more equipment, like we had to to with UbiFi and Starlink, and it now is working.
5. Starlink. Knock on wood. Not had a problem and no need for service. But Starlink is not for everyone. Nor can it be. Our neighbors can't use it because of trees so they are SOL with using a cell service with all the costs and problems there in.

Later,
Dan

 

[sodamo]

I found this quite interesting

 

[plowhog]

Just completed a trip to see a new house our friends bought.

Saw something very unusual-- a Starlink "RV" system -- operating INSIDE AN RV PARK !!!!!

 

[plowhog]

Driving home from my RV trip, my phone chimed. A warning that all wifi-based HVAC thermostats in my residence had lost wifi connection. This is odd.

Pulled over, logged into my burglar alarm system. Looked normal. The security "dashboard" displayed the wifi name and didn't report anything abnormal. But it shares this wifi with the thermostats. Huh?

Tried connecting to my surveillance cameras. Nope. Tried remote desktop to my home PC. Nope. Huh?

I was stumped about what was going on. And how my home wifi could connect to my burglar alarm, but nothing else seemed to work. I remotely "forced" the burglar alarm to do a remote check of itself-- and it reported success. Huh?

So, I cut my trip short, and came home a day early. And found the culprit was Starlink. [I later learned my burglar alarm did lose wifi, but automatically switched to cellular backup.]

At the RV park, I was using my SL "RV" system-- with connections to my phone, tablet, and TV. Prior to leaving, I used my phone to "stow" the SL antenna. The stow function didn't work-- which has happened before. So I used the "manual stow" process to turn the antenna upside down on the ground and wait a few minutes until it stows itself. That worked fine.

What I didn't know at the time is that the #$!%@#$^ SL app instead "stowed" the antenna at my home residence. At the time it did that, I was 500 miles from home.

When I had first arrived at the RV park, I power cycled my SL RV system to force it to reset. Gave it a new SSID and password using my phone. When I issued the stow command, my phone had an active wifi connection to the SL system, and it was only about 10 feet away. So I never dreamed it would stow my home system antenna instead.

It has been probably 6 months since I used my phone to set up my home SL system. And since then I have deleted the SL app entirely, which caused the warning to pop up that "ALL DATA WILL BE DELETED!!" Aaahh, if only I were so lucky ....

 

[plowhog]

btw download speeds in two different RV parks varied between 20-60mbps and was most often 20mbps. (SL RV system)

 

[sodamo]

Interestingly, Sl says I am experiencing degraded service. I’m RV, not Residential yet.

But looks pretty good

 

[BigBlue1]

That "degraded service" warning message was experienced by many Starlink users yesterday in many geographies. During that time my service was indeed impacted. I was on a Teams call at the time and was getting disrupted frequently. Fortunately it was near the end of my work day so it wasn't a major problem.

 

[plowhog]

My concern over "minimalist" support is as much with marketing communications as customer service. There is a growing (unanswered) buzz that SpaceX has oversold capacity. I wish there was a better (any?) response.

Years ago, my software product sales way outstripped my company's capacity for proper service. I learned customers will be loyal, and patient, ... if ... you keep them informed. SL isn't doing that.

Do they intend to slow or pause new sales while the bottlenecks are advancing? I don't know. Are they on track with launch schedules for added satellites, and if so, when would more sats maybe help? I don't know.

Maybe such answers are out there but I am not seeing them. In the meantime, articles like the one below seem to get wide distribution with little to no response.

Quotes from the story linked below:

"those who looked to Starlink to solve their rural broadband woes are now experiencing slow speeds and latency issues ... slow speeds are causing some affected customers to wonder if Starlink is facing a congestion problem due to its popularity. In other words, has SpaceX oversold its capacity ... SpaceX didn’t respond to a request for comment."

Starlink's Massive Growth Results in Congestion, Slow Speeds for Some Users

As SpaceX's satellite internet service takes on more customers, those who looked to Starlink to solve their rural broadband woes are now experiencing slow speeds and latency issues.

www.pcmag.com

 

[ponytug]

Musk companies are well known for not having much customer service (it is not a profit center in his view), and infamous for never responding to journalists. Par for the course here, which of course leads to rampant speculation about what the ground truth really is.

It works ok when you are the only game in town...

All the best,

Peter

 

[Fixastuff]

Starlink is so far ahead in speed and reliability(and no data cap) compared to any of the other options available to me it's unbelievable. I just put conduit in the ground for spectrum fiber on my street but it will be a year minimum before it's active. Then we'll see.