Monday, February 22, 2021

Starlink coming soon...

I am looking forward to trying out Starlink satellite internet.  I signed up a couple of months ago as a beta tester and was just notified that I should be able to get it this fall.  You can see in real time all the Starlink satellites currently in orbit here.  My Big Bend Telephone DSL is relatively slow compared to big city internet at 6 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload speeds.  The download is adequate for my surfing needs but that snail-paced upload speed is dismal for high res live streaming and uploading long videos to YouTube.  The only problem I foresee out here is that the dish doesn't like temperatures over 104 degrees.  Everyone in the US can get in on the ground floor and sign up now and put down a refundable $99 deposit.  Once service is available for your area, the equipment is $499 plus tax and shipping and the monthly fee is $100.  Worth it to try out (especially if you have no other option) as you have 30 days to get a full refund if it doesn't work out for you.  With just over 1000 satellites already up there, SpaceX is on schedule to launch at least another 1000 this year.  So far the beta testers are pretty happy with how it works.  Go SpaceX!   64,70,34,0,B

3 comments:

Russ Smith said...

I look forward to see how it does for you. I just received an email advising that I'm eligible for the beta but I can't do with the occasional outage right now. We do pretty good with our rural wimax service with 18-20 down and 4 up, but we'd like "big city" speeds with low latency. It's the latency that concerns me. Hopefully it will be as quick as advertised.

Michael D. Berry said...

watch Joe Rogan's latest interview with Elon Musk (#1609 on Feb 11) wherein he takes a few minutes and explains what Starlink is designed for and how it will help rural and remote access - what it is and what it is not. It's a small part of a 3 hours plus discussion.

Bizmark said...

I ordered one a couple of weeks ago for a remote communications site that I maintain in upstate NY. The antenna has built-in heaters to help keep the snow off, too bad they don't offer one with an additional heat sink on the back for warmer areas.

This will be a game changer for off-grid locations. Now you'll be able to build a home just about anywhere and be able to work from there with the same connectivity as an urban location.