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?