Starlink Public Beta About to Happen?!?!

What do you guys think the best course of action is for someone who won't need service till 2024-2025? We won't be moving to our cabin until the kid graduates a couple years from now.

I'm hoping supply won't be an issue then, but would hate to get stuck living in the city for another year just because I'm stuck on a waitlist. Does anyone know if you can pay the equipment fee and cancel service \ easily re-activate service when you actually need it?
 
Hmm... That's a tough one.

How remote is your cabin? If the population is low in the area, you might be OK waiting. But there is a risk. Geographical areas are pretty big and the number of people they allow to get service in an area is low.

The problem with canceling service and then restarting is they have to have an open slot in the cell to re-establish service. Equipment is only half of the picture.
 
What do you guys think the best course of action is for someone who won't need service till 2024-2025? We won't be moving to our cabin until the kid graduates a couple years from now.

I'm hoping supply won't be an issue then, but would hate to get stuck living in the city for another year just because I'm stuck on a waitlist. Does anyone know if you can pay the equipment fee and cancel service \ easily re-activate service when you actually need it?

As the previous post touched on a bit, basically there are cells. There is a max number of subscribers per cell, and you can't just pick up your antenna and move from one cell to another. I don't know if you can even order service for an area where you don't live yet.
 
As the previous post touched on a bit, basically there are cells. There is a max number of subscribers per cell, and you can't just pick up your antenna and move from one cell to another. I don't know if you can even order service for an area where you don't live yet.
Thanks I didn't know about the cells. I assume if I canceled the service they would bring someone else in to take my spot then. Ordering service shouldn't be an issue since we already own the place and have plenty of services there we could show to prove we "live" there.

It sounds like I'll just keep my figures crossed that availability gets sorted out in the next couple of years.
 
Just today - Middle Tennessee area
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Price adjustment confirmed


I almost got a newer antenna, but I had a friend who wasn't using his (he lives in town and was part of the original beta). I traded him some pc stuff and he gave me the antenna+cash. We also transferred it to the new address to make sure it would be good. That transaction is now completed and it's now in my name. I have been using it for about 10 days.

I have bonded vdsl which is about 34 down/ 1.8 up. On starlink I average about 120 but I will say the dips can pretty dramatic. Unfortunately, I'm still in my dsl contract for another month or so. However, I know how transfer of services can be, well awsome. I generally prepare early.
 
One of my Coworkers just got it, around the STL area out at his farm, he seems to like it a lot (compared to DSL), getting around 100 Megs down, with latency around 40 ms. He hasn't installed it on his roof yet, so it's missing about 10% LoS, so I'm sure it will get better.
 
Price adjustment confirmed


I almost got a newer antenna, but I had a friend who wasn't using his (he lives in town and was part of the original beta). I traded him some pc stuff and he gave me the antenna+cash. We also transferred it to the new address to make sure it would be good. That transaction is now completed and it's now in my name. I have been using it for about 10 days.

I have bonded vdsl which is about 34 down/ 1.8 up. On starlink I average about 120 but I will say the dips can pretty dramatic. Unfortunately, I'm still in my dsl contract for another month or so. However, I know how transfer of services can be, well awsome. I generally prepare early.

I forgot to say this while the dips can be crazy so can the upper range. I have gotten as high as about 300 mps and sustained 240 mpbs at times.
 
Well, it would seem that Starlink has unlocked it's mobile service as talked about here:

https://rvlifestyle.com/starlink-for-rv/

This is awesome for full-time RV'ers that want to work from their RV's.

It could be a game changer for traveling internet.
I don't live in an RV but I do have a nice towable one and it has a couple of computers, screens, and cellular to ethernet and wifi system, and wifi to ethernet and inner wifi. I would be happy to add this for a tertiary means of obtaining Internet. It's nice when the weather is frightful on your trips. Regarding trips, https://abcnews.go.com/WN/Media/campers-killed-arkansas-flash-flood-albert-pike-campground/story?id=10889327#:~:text=June 11, 2010— -- At,Mike Beebe. For places like that I also have a few Yaesu FTM-400XDR dual band radios mounted in the cars and trucks, plus FT5DR HTs, and a 991A in the RV.
today https://www.kark.com/weather/weather-headlines/multiday-severe-weather-event-begins-monday/ it is teeing off today through Wednesday.
 
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Well, it would seem that Starlink has unlocked it's mobile service as talked about here:

https://rvlifestyle.com/starlink-for-rv/

This is awesome for full-time RV'ers that want to work from their RV's.

It could be a game changer for traveling internet.

seems like it is +$25 extra for portability:

Existing Starlink customers can add Portability from their account page which then immediately becomes active. It costs an additional $25 each month, on top of monthly subscriptions that already start at $110 after a one-time hit of $599 to purchase the Starlink kit.
 
I don't live in an RV but I do have a nice towable one and it has a couple of computers, screens, and cellular to ethernet and wifi system, and wifi to ethernet and inner wifi. I would be happy to add this for a tertiary means of obtaining Internet. It's nice when the weather is frightful on your trips. Regarding trips, https://abcnews.go.com/WN/Media/campers-killed-arkansas-flash-flood-albert-pike-campground/story?id=10889327#:~:text=June 11, 2010— -- At,Mike Beebe. For places like that I also have a few Yaesu FTM-400XDR dual band radios mounted in the cars and trucks, plus FT5DR HTs, and a 991A in the RV.
today https://www.kark.com/weather/weather-headlines/multiday-severe-weather-event-begins-monday/ it is teeing off today through Wednesday.
You create yourself a home office for work from home, or you just have stuff in there to use?
 
I am a licensed Ham Radio operator so RF is my second language plus I did it in the military. It is not that hard.

The coordinates for moving the dish can be sent to the dish and all the dish has to do is move to the designated x,y,z coords after it is calibrated.

The transceiver can be anywhere you want it to be.

Here is a picture to help you digest this simplicity that I speak of

This is a FlexRadio 6400M High Frequency Band Transceiver
It is feeding a 32 foot Steppir Big IR Mk II Vertical Antenna in the woods about 100 feet away from my radio.

This antenna is good from 3.5mhz to 50mhz frequency - Same with the Transceiver pictured.

If I can do this with HAM Radio Equipment surely anyone can do this with a simple dish (Antenna), a few servos with some XYZ coords, and a remote little tiny tranciever that sits in your house with a little cooling fan in it. No need to pack all that shit into a dish.

Its not that hard.

Radio Transmitter and Reciever
View attachment 438343

Vertical HF Antenna in the forest on my property

View attachment 438344

HAMS build stuff like this all the time. Its not hard to do and these people are doing it on shoestring budgets with soldering irons.

Yes this is large and its for working satellites, yes we HAMs have CubeSats orbiting right now that we can work UHF and VHF on and work them as long range repeaters. We can even work the ISS as well.



We can even shoot high power VHF at the moon and bounce it off the moon and talk to other HAMs on the other side of the Earth but here is another example of a dude who built this using soldering irons and raspberry Pis. I am sure he doesn't have a $35 Billion development budget.


Outside of the whole phased array issue, the scheme you describe as illustrated in your picture here (antenna -> coax -> ADC inside the transceiver) would not work at the frequencies Starlink operates at. The losses of running KA band over coax are too great. A 6 inch 40ghz cable costs about $400. When working at these frequencies, if you want to locate the ADC or DAC far away from the antenna, you will need to attach a downconverter or upconverter at the base of the antenna to convert to a low frequency IF to then run over cabling. For performance reasons, at these frequencies it is hugely advantageous to have the paths as short as possible from antenna -> downconverter -> digitizer. Even the PCBs used are specialty substrates; you can't just use normal FR4 circuit boards for those frequencies. Once it's digitized, then it doesn't really matter anymore and it becomes a lot easier to work with. But when you're dealing with high frequency signals in the 20-40ghz range, everything is critical.

Working in KA band is something you really can't do well with a soldering iron and raspberry Pi. VHF is child's play in comparison.
 
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Elon said in an interview with Tim Dodd (Everyday Astronaut) last week that the v2 of Starlink Sats are capable of 10x the throughput, though can only be launched with Starliner. Might be a bit some a serious upgrade to something that appears to be coming along.
 
Finally got mine up and running. Had to cut the cable and extend it 150 feet with cat6e, because I'm surrounded by trees. When given the choice between Att 5M dsl and starlink...Screenshot_20221001_084543_Gallery.jpg
 
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Very nice. I've had 15 Mbps wireless internet ($55/mo) for about a year and it's all I could get because I'm rural. I was on the wait list for about 6 months but eventually got mine (a couple months ago). It's very fast. Not as fast as my Gigabit Comcast connection in the city, but it's close enough to be satisfying.

The latency...still needs some work. Most of the time the latency is great. I can connect to Counter Strike servers in my state at 50ms. But there will be brief fluctuations through the day where it will shoot as high 250+ ms. It's enough to impact gaming when it happens, and has resulted in frustration in numerous occasions.

Weirdly enough, these fluctuations happen more frequently on my days off. But I'm still happy for when it is working well, which is most of the time.
 
Just received an email today that Starlink is going to impose 1 TB cap on their users.

To ensure our customer base is not negatively impacted by a small number of users consuming unusually high amounts of data, the Starlink team is implementing a Fair Use policy in the US and Canada in December 2022.

Under the Fair Use policy, all Residential customers will receive unlimited data, and will start each month with Priority Access, which means their data usage will be prioritized during times of network congestion.

Customers who exceed 1 TB of data use on a monthly basis (currently < 10% of users) will automatically be switched to Basic Access for the remainder of the billing cycle, which means their data usage will be deprioritized during times of network congestion, resulting in slower speeds.

Data used between 11pm - 7am will not count towards your Priority Access.

In the last last six months, you have used over 1 TB of data during at least one month, which means you may be switched to Basic Access if your usage patterns stay the same.

Starting today, you can now monitor your data usage on your account page. Read more in Starlink’s Fair Use policy and in the Terms of Service.

You will have the option to opt-in to automatically upgrade back to Priority Access should you exceed 1 TB of data per month.

Thank you for being an early customer and for your continued support of Starlink!

Starlink Team

NOTE: The Terms of Service also include updates on using the HP Flat Starlink designed for in-motion use. By continuing your use of Starlink, you agree to be subject to the
Fair Use policy and the updated Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. If you do not agree to these changes, you can cancel your Starlink Services at any time on your account page.

I understand why they might need to do this, but I believe this is very poorly handled. Right away they acknowledge this affects nearly 10% of their base, which seems too high to make it seem like these are "problem users". If anything, this just shows that 1TB of a data cap in this day and age is significantly too low. 1TB would have sufficed five to ten years ago, but that's really just a joke in today's modern household. I haven't been offered an unlimited data upgrade, but if that soon follows, then it feels like a smash-and-grab on customers who are already bought in on their $700+ equipment.
 
They didn't call you a problem user, they said you used an unusually large amount of data.

Any mention of what it will cost to undeprioritize yourself?
 
They didn't call you a problem user, they said you used an unusually large amount of data.

Any mention of what it will cost to undeprioritize yourself?
Obviously I'm reading between the lines and explaining what they meant. If us 10% weren't a problem, they wouldn't be restructuring their service after we were already on board. I'm reading on the Reddit that it costs $0.25 cents per GB. That would add up quick. Even weirder, Starlink is showing my usage to be *double* what my personal router says my bandwidth usage is, and other Reddit users are claiming similar.
 
Obviously I'm reading between the lines and explaining what they meant
O ye of tender skin! (I kid, I kid.)
I'm reading on the Reddit that it costs $0.25 cents per GB. That would add up quick.
Absolutely. Seems pretty pricey.
Even weirder, Starlink is showing my usage to be *double* what my personal router says my bandwidth usage is, and other Reddit users are claiming similar.
Not to justify it, but the cable companies do the same thing. Ditto the phone companies with cellular data. So, uh....at least they're not being uniquely evil?
 
O ye of tender skin! (I kid, I kid.)

Absolutely. Seems pretty pricey.

Not to justify it, but the cable companies do the same thing. Ditto the phone companies with cellular data. So, uh....at least they're not being uniquely evil?
Cable companies had their customers pay $700 for equipment and then stipulated data plans after the fact? Which ones?

I'm not sure if you're pretending to be dense about it, but you seem to be missing the point.
 
Cable companies had their customers pay $700 for equipment and then stipulated data plans after the fact? Which ones?

I'm not sure if you're pretending to be dense about it, but you seem to be missing the point.
No, the part about them having different numbers for data usage than you do.

Thanks for taking out that liltle bit of snark, but you were too late.
 
No, the part about them having different numbers for data usage than you do.

Thanks for taking out that liltle bit of snark, but you were too late.
Apologies for misunderstanding, but I'm even further confused by your statement. Phone companies inflate data usage? Again, which companies? Those phone companies didn't start doing this out of nowhere, so it still seems like you've missed the same point.

Also, those companies give you options for unlimited data, which I haven't been given. So I'm not understanding how this is common.
 
. Phone companies inflate data usage? Again, which companies? Those phone companies didn't start doing this out of nowhere,
I didn't say "inflate". I should've put the word "differ" in there. I'll try to find some links but there have been a bunch of stories over the years about people being told their usage was over some limit, and the phone or cable company saying their numbers might not match the person's.

it still seems like you've missed the same point.
Do you know what "at least they're not being uniquely evil" means? It means "they're not the first company to do this." That's all. You're reading extra into it.

Here's an example of other companies warning about "excessive" usage: https://arstechnica.com/information...loaders-says-network-cant-handle-heavy-usage/
"So, got a call from the Mediacom fraud and abuse department today. The rep told me they were calling customers that have "higher than average" bandwidth usage as they are having network issues. I hurried up and checked my account and only used a bit over 2.5TB last month. He told me my upload was 450GB over their average and if I didn't reduce my usage they would either throttle or disconnect me. I argued that I used less than half of the total data allowed by my plan, but he said my 1.2TB of upload was too much and that this was my warning."

Here's an oldish Verizon forum post that's similar ("it says I'm close to my limit, but it also says i'm at 2.4gb of 6"): https://community.verizon.com/t5/My...ta-quot-with-plenty-of-data-left/td-p/1073362

I'm having a hard time finding a link with the "our measurement may not be teh same as yours" but I know I've seen them over the years (but not for a few years.) Wait, here's one: https://forums.att.com/conversation...atch-my-actual-usage/6126564fd66cab3a97e62d41 "Reported data usage doesn't match my actual usage"

Here's xfinity: https://forums.xfinity.com/conversa...a-usage-not-accurate/61710235356f1c35c0ab3287 "Xfinity's data reporting does not match my Sophos firewall reporting." (a bunch of people saying the same thing in that thread). In that thread, an Xfinity person says "The TV box's apps for streaming like Netflix, Disney +, etc do use internet data. They may not be showing on your firewall's reports. For privacy reasons, our access is limited to see what the data usage is. "

I wasn't making any kind of value judgement about you. I was just saying "what you're experiencing is not something that Starlink is the first company to do."
 
Also, those companies give you options for unlimited data, which I haven't been given. So I'm not understanding how this is common.
Also: I don't know that this is *common*. I just know that it happens. Hopefully they'll give you an unlimited option. I just got my first "you're almost at your cap" from Xfinity myself a couple months ago, so I know where you're coming from (although in this case, there were two newish computers freshly downloading Steam libraries, so they could well have been right that I was near the limit.)
 
I am not pleased with this, I got the email last night also.
We (family of 5) our streaming (youtube/hulu/amazon prime) easily breaks 1 TB a month. With a couple 4k screens, couple of PC's, Xbox series X, and a few other things, 1.5 TB is low month for me.
So I am going to spin up a DNS cache server (lancache unless someone has a better option) this weekend, hoping to curb the kids gamepass constant 50+gb games on 3 devices every week.

I knew the "unlimited" wouldn't last but i didnt think they would cut it down to 1TB
 
I have zero reason to get Starlink now. Fortunately, my local provider just upped their speeds to 1 gig and their cap to 5 terabytes so it's no longer booty. This is pretty disappointing and stupid news.
 
I have zero reason to get Starlink now. Fortunately, my local provider just upped their speeds to 1 gig and their cap to 5 terabytes so it's no longer booty. This is pretty disappointing and stupid news.

So far, I've been somewhat surprised by Tmobile 5G Home internet personally. I average about 300Mb down and 40 up with unlimited data at $50/month no equipment fee. Similar speeds with Xfinity would have been around $80-100/month although no xfinity data cap in my area yet. Looks like Starlink isn't an option anymore either though.
 
So far, I've been somewhat surprised by Tmobile 5G Home internet personally. I average about 300Mb down and 40 up with unlimited data at $50/month no equipment fee. Similar speeds with Xfinity would have been around $80-100/month although no xfinity data cap in my area yet. Looks like Starlink isn't an option anymore either though.
Data caps on internet is literally the dumbest thing in the history of ever.
 
Also: I don't know that this is *common*. I just know that it happens. Hopefully they'll give you an unlimited option. I just got my first "you're almost at your cap" from Xfinity myself a couple months ago, so I know where you're coming from (although in this case, there were two newish computers freshly downloading Steam libraries, so they could well have been right that I was near the limit.)

Nothing about the Starlink "cap" compares to what Xfinity does. When you hit the Xfinity cap, they begin to automatically charge you $10 extra for every 50Gb you use on top of that. For someone who already hit cap, they will very likely blow through an extra 50GB very quickly and the result will be a huge increase in your bill. What Starlink is proposing is nothing like that. Your bill will not go up.

This is more like what you see with "Unlimited" Cell-phone plans, every single one of which has a clause about slower speeds for heavy users and/or during peak hours, etc.

What it means exactly to have your data "deprioritized" is not clear yet. I'll be testing this myself by going out of my way to use excessive data and then seeing what happens. Personally I think that actual data is better than angsty nerd-rage over-reactions. If "deprioritized" means that the service goes to shit then they deserve as much bad press as possible. But it's also possible that the changes to the service will be minor. We'll see soon...
 
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Got the email also, but I only use my starlink when I am out staying at my property so I doubt I will hit it.
 
So far, I've been somewhat surprised by Tmobile 5G Home internet personally. I average about 300Mb down and 40 up with unlimited data at $50/month no equipment fee. Similar speeds with Xfinity would have been around $80-100/month although no xfinity data cap in my area yet. Looks like Starlink isn't an option anymore either though.
What is the data cap on the Tmobile home internet service?
 
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