Starlink

[Blue Mule]

My problem with Starlink ( why I won't buy it ) is the cost. $600 up front?? And then $120 each month? Are they kidding?

So, I will continue to use my T-Mobile ISP modem. They provided the equipment at no charge to me, the data is fast and totally unlimited (we use over 1 TB monthly ) and the monthly cost is a flat $40 with auto-pay. I love it.

If Elon wants to get serious about his internet option the price has to come way down. I can buy what I'm using for 3 households and then pay for a 4th household for over a year for the cost of one Starlink setup.

 

[LouNY]

None of the major carriers offer cellular ISP service in my area. Just checked T-Mobile and nope, no go.

 

[BigBlue1]

My problem with Starlink ( why I won't buy it ) is the cost. $600 up front?? And then $120 each month? Are they kidding?

So, I will continue to use my T-Mobile ISP modem. They provided the equipment at no charge to me, the data is fast and totally unlimited (we use over 1 TB monthly ) and the monthly cost is a flat $40 with auto-pay. I love it.

If Elon wants to get serious about his internet option the price has to come way down. I can buy what I'm using for 3 households and then pay for a 4th household for over a year for the cost of one Starlink setup.

If you have other ISP options that meet your needs for lower costs than you're not a target customer for Starlink. I'd go so far as to say you should NOT be considering using SL if you have ISP options such as T-Mobile you mention. For folks who have no other ISP options with the speed and bandwidth that SL provides it is a fantastic deal. Starlink has never been intended or marketed as a competitor for terrestrial ISPs.

 

[scootr]

Starlink is meant to provide a service for those with poor or no service alternatives.
In which case it is good.
Personally I've never had better service.

 

[yubh8tn]

Agree with Scootr and BB1. Only options here are DSL and Satellite. Cell signal is not available on most days. I had ViaSat- which cost over $200 a month for much slower internet and data limits. Starlink is awesome compared to all my other options and cost.

 

[sodamo]

I agree as well. Now I was recently offered opportunity to get fiber from local telephone company. Only $59,000 paid in full up front to run line to my property. Without any price changes about 100 years of Starlink to break even. At 77 yo, don’t think I quite have 100 years left.

 

[WoodChuckDad]

The last year that I was renting, befor moving into my house, I was able to get T-mobile 5G modem. For 50 bucks a month it was about 130 mg/ second it got faster as the year went on. If that was an option here, I’d consider it. But I’m far out in the sticks. Starlink is an absolute game changer. There were two outages today. And usually there are none. We had about 2 minutes this afternoon And tonight g we had about 8-10 minutes of outage around 9:45 pm. The service has been so reliable that I was puling up the app and wondering “what the heck is going on?”

 

[buckeyefarmer]

Yep, mine was showing up when it was still down. Down about 25 min.

 

[ponytug]

It seems to cover all of North America, and there are reports from the Caribbean, and Australia, so global. 18:27PDT (1:27UTC) onward for ten minutes, plus a few more glitches in the ensuing half hour.

The App reports

"Service outage​

Our team is investigating and will resolve as soon as possible."​

​

All the best,

Peter

 

[LouNY]

Yes, a 20 minute outage here last evening.

 

[scootr]

Same outage in Southern CA last night...first in a long time. So as long as it doesn't start happening frequently I'm still okay with Starlink

 

[plowhog]

It seems to cover all of North America,

It's always a surprise how one problem can cascade into another. Our SL was down last night, like the others, but aftermath continues.

Our main TV doesn't work this morning. We stream live TV using Hulu. It reports: "you are not at your home location!" Due to licensing rules, they only allow streaming if you are at home, not at other locations. Our TV worked yesterday, but not today, in the same location. Aahhhh.

Hulu's implementation is already a bit weird since their IP check always returns "Los Angeles" as our location. That is *usually* the ground station that SL uses for us. When we first got SL, I had to phone Hulu support repeatedly to get service re-activated and convince them we were still at home. Each of those calls takes upwards of an hour. The Hulu support team usually tries to validate our location using my cell phone. I don't know if this works or not since we have no cell service (here in CA) and the phone uses wifi calling-- through Starlink. So, back to the ground station.

Another oddity with Hulu is that their license restrictions only apply to your "living room TV." This actually provides a nice workaround. So, for now, I am instead streaming live TV on my tablet so my wife can watch it while I get out working today. No restrictions watching on a tablet or a phone. I'll have to deal with the Hulu issues later today or tonight. If I could figure out how to screencast from the tablet to the TV ... hmmm.

 

[plowhog]

Still more SL weirdness this am. It seems their DNS might be flaky. At times, I cannot connect to any "new" websites, but even so, I can still interact with a website that already has a connection. Like this one right now ....

 

[ponytug]

Still more SL weirdness this am. It seems their DNS might be flaky. At times, I cannot connect to any "new" websites, but even so, I can still interact with a website that already has a connection. Like this one right now ....

I would highly, highly, recommend that anyone using the internet reconfigure their routers to use either Google (8.8.8.8, or 8.8.4.4.) or Cloudflare (1.1.1.1) as both go to extreme efforts to protect their DNS databases and their service reliability.

Please do not use the default configuration from your router or ISP. There are just too many ways for DNS queries to go sideways, whether Starlink, AT&T, Comcast, or Verizon is supposedly providing the result.

Running a service like PiHole locally may provide additional benefits to some users.

All the best,

Peter

 

[ponytug]

It's always a surprise how one problem can cascade into another. Our SL was down last night, like the others, but aftermath continues.

Our main TV doesn't work this morning. We stream live TV using Hulu. It reports: "you are not at your home location!" Due to licensing rules, they only allow streaming if you are at home, not at other locations. Our TV worked yesterday, but not today, in the same location. Aahhhh.

Hulu's implementation is already a bit weird since their IP check always returns "Los Angeles" as our location. That is *usually* the ground station that SL uses for us. When we first got SL, I had to phone Hulu support repeatedly to get service re-activated and convince them we were still at home. Each of those calls takes upwards of an hour. The Hulu support team usually tries to validate our location using my cell phone. I don't know if this works or not since we have no cell service (here in CA) and the phone uses wifi calling-- through Starlink. So, back to the ground station.

Another oddity with Hulu is that their license restrictions only apply to your "living room TV." This actually provides a nice workaround. So, for now, I am instead streaming live TV on my tablet so my wife can watch it while I get out working today. No restrictions watching on a tablet or a phone. I'll have to deal with the Hulu issues later today or tonight. If I could figure out how to screencast from the tablet to the TV ... hmmm.

Hmmm... ours came back after the two outages the same as usual. Same PoP as usual, though I do notice that different companies geolocation us to different areas. One seems to like to believe that we are in Reston, VA, which is I guess close in the cosmic sense, it not so close if one were walking or riding...

All the best,

Peter

 

[3930dave]

One seems to like to believe that we are in Reston, VA, which is I guess close in the cosmic sense, it not so close if one were walking or riding...

All the best,

Peter

Interesting.

Any affiliation with 3 letter agencies, or any reason they should have an interest in you ?

Rgds, D.

 

[LouNY]

It's always a surprise how one problem can cascade into another. Our SL was down last night, like the others, but aftermath continues.

Our main TV doesn't work this morning. We stream live TV using Hulu. It reports: "you are not at your home location!" Due to licensing rules, they only allow streaming if you are at home, not at other locations. Our TV worked yesterday, but not today, in the same location. Aahhhh.

Hulu's implementation is already a bit weird since their IP check always returns "Los Angeles" as our location. That is *usually* the ground station that SL uses for us. When we first got SL, I had to phone Hulu support repeatedly to get service re-activated and convince them we were still at home. Each of those calls takes upwards of an hour. The Hulu support team usually tries to validate our location using my cell phone. I don't know if this works or not since we have no cell service (here in CA) and the phone uses wifi calling-- through Starlink. So, back to the ground station.

Another oddity with Hulu is that their license restrictions only apply to your "living room TV." This actually provides a nice workaround. So, for now, I am instead streaming live TV on my tablet so my wife can watch it while I get out working today. No restrictions watching on a tablet or a phone. I'll have to deal with the Hulu issues later today or tonight. If I could figure out how to screencast from the tablet to the TV ... hmmm.

My Starlink IP check results in New York City for my location so sites that I frequent that I have log in profiles seem to enjoy trying to force me to NYC location stores or branches and it totally PO's me to have to go and change the shopping/browsing location every time and then some of them seem to what to argue with me about the location. Or TV had a few hiccups this morning also.

 

[K5lwq]

My Starlink IP check results in New York City for my location so sites that I frequent that I have log in profiles seem to enjoy trying to force me to NYC location stores or branches and it totally PO's me to have to go and change the shopping/browsing location every time and then some of them seem to what to argue with me about the location. Or TV had a few hiccups this morning also.

Same issue here with Dallas. Have to change it every time. But still like having reliable internet service over what we had before. The down times are significantly less than the old system.

 

[ernemats]

I also had Starlink outage last evening for about 15 minutes

 

[buckeyefarmer]

My Starlink IP check results in New York City for my location so sites that I frequent that I have log in profiles seem to enjoy trying to force me to NYC location stores or branches and it totally PO's me to have to go and change the shopping/browsing location every time and then some of them seem to what to argue with me about the location. Or TV had a few hiccups this morning also.

Mines in NY also. I go to HD and it’s suggesting a store in Queens.