Starlink

[RJSakowski]

Me too RJ. My service isn't nearly as bad as yours, but we too live on a dead-end road with limited homes. Centurylink is not putting any money into upgrading their service, unlike Mosaic in our area. Mosaic is putting fiber in everywhere, but our road is one of the few in a "protected" CenturyLink area. Pure crap is what it is. CenturyLink will die out with Starlink coming.

The sad thing is that Centurylink got a large grant to upgrade rural broadband in Wisconsin some years back but invested in their more profitable areas. It will be interesting to see what happens with this latest tranche of grants in Wisconsin. Like you, I have no other option for a wire/fiber optic based solution. Satellite service has been poor here; the next door neighbor tried it and went back to the land line. Because of the hills, we can't use terrestrial relays.

There is a proposal to set up a network of mini relays serving a few homes each. The "towers" would be farm silos or utility poles linked together with similar relays in the line of sight. Such a relay would serve the half dozen or so homes in our valley with a capital investment far less than running fiber optic cable.

Starlink is another possibility. The one issue now is cost but if we can provide voice service with it, it is economically feasible (we don't have cell service at the house because of the surrounding hills.). Anorher consideration is serviice during a power outage, although a UPS could take care of that.

 

[Lo-Fi]

Starlink is definitely fast enough to support sharing a connection with a few neighbors assuming you can get line of sight to set some directional WiFi links going out to them as the final leg.

 

[Ultradog MN]

I threw out my television 20 years ago. Haven't had one since. Neither did my wife when I married her 8 years ago.

 

[pdentrem]

That needs updating to disconnecting the WiFi!

 

[7milesup]

If you decide to do a long range AP or similar, I would look into Ubiquiti systems. They have decent pricing for what amounts to enterprise solutions. Their control console is pretty amazing.

 

[Forty Niner]

Anyone out there have Starlink internet yet? I just sent in my deposit.

I'm currently moving to a rural location and losing my 200+mbs Spectrum internet. I have AT&T DSL at the rural house and the d/l is just over 4mbs.
Just like others who have posted here, I am searching for a better option. I paid my deposit to Starliink and am on the wait list. We'll see if that ever becomes a reality.

A neighbor at the rural location uses an unlimited T-Mobil hotspot which is quite good. But when I inquired to T-Mobil they turned me down saying they didn't want to overload their tower..... AT&T hotspot plans are expensive and have data caps here.

 

[Aaron_W]

That depends on where you live. I live at the end of the line for service, a half a mile from the nearest customer. We will never get fiber optic service out here. The payback isn't there. Our "broadband" service is less than 4Mbps. download and .5Mbps upload. And those are the good days. During wet weather, it drops out completely. Centurylink, our provider, says the service meets their specifications.

I'm not even that remote, 100 miles from San Francisco and 2 blocks from the county courthouse, so you would think we would have decent internet. Speeds in the county are pretty lame and only get worse as you get outside the couple of small cities up here, in fact the county had an investigation open with the FCC against AT&T and Comcast for intentionally reducing service speeds. The industry shill who was running the FCC the past few years blocked the investigation because of course his buddies at AT&T and Comcast would never do such a thing.

My wife is a much bigger computer gamer than I am so she was all over Starlink before I even knew what it was. We are just waiting for our area to be included. I will be happy to add another nail in the coffin to the traditional cable and internet providers, just a bonus if it makes the dreaded buffer circle go away forever on youtube videos.

I think a lot of services know their days are numbered, and are just riding it into the ground because the cost of competitive upgrades are outside their budget. They’ve lived too long on a customer base that didn’t have another choice.

Of course it’s hard to compete with the shear mass of resources Musk can bring direct, and spaceflight is his passion. Starlink is a stepping stone in that plan.

The cable and internet providers have brought this on themselves. They thought they were too big to face real competition, but they didn't count on a real life James Bond super villain to step in and ruin their gig.

 

[Grinderman]

Just an update about Starlink. I put my deposit down in March of 2021 and still waiting. The other day I looked outside and a guy was marking our lawn with paint and little flags. I went out to find out what’s going on and he told me they are installing fiber optic internet on our road. I felt like giving the guy a hug! We have had poor internet here always (1.5 mbps down). Bye, bye Starlink, hello fiber

 

[mksj]

FYI, I just installed the Starlink system, pretty straight forward providing you have a clears view of the sky. You can check your location with a phone app that they have. I previously had ATT wired internet which was pretty slow at 6-8 Mbps, with the Starlink I am closer to 100 Mbps with an average latency of around 50ms. I do not expect them to pull fiber into were we live, speaking to the ATT tech the business model doesn't support it. My main reason for switching is with ATT the monthly bill for their internet/Direct TV package just keeps going up and the TV channel content is horrendous considering how much you pay. Almost all the channels are infomercials and the few regular TV channels also bombard you with advertisements. So pretty much plan to stream everything going forward, will see how that goes. Will have to see how it does in rain storms/bad weather, but given that the DirectTV satellite also goes down in heavy rainstorms it can't be any worse. I consider a reasonable investment, and they have a 30 day refund policy from the date that the dish is delivered. I put in my order for the Starlink about Dec. 2021, so about an 8 month wait.

 

[Boswell]

I live outside of town with only electricity provided as infrastructure. No chance of fibre or any other form or hardwired internet. I was on the wait list for Starlink until Verizon started offering 5G Home Internet service. I was able to increase my bandwidth over the previous rural wireless solution by about 4X and cut my cost in half. Long story short, I pulled off the Starlink wait list and got my $100 deposit back. The verizon 5G home internet is not 100% reliable but good enough for now.