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Comment by new_realist | Hacker News Reader

$500 beta terminal cost, connections cut out every ten minutes, connection varies by weather. Latency variable, a bit worse than most DSL.

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The article specifically has a quote from someone in Montana on CenturyLink DSL paying $120/month for 1Mbps, and getting 100x faster connectivity through their $99/month StarLink service (with some intermittency because the constellation and ground station network isn’t complete). Latency is acceptable enough to play a first person shooter, and target latency is 16ms-19ms (and meets the requirement for the FCCs rural broadband contract [1], which is latency below 100ms).

For those with marginal service, this is a material improvement. It’s also firming up the case that StarLink will generate billions of dollars per year in revenue (eclipsing SpaceX’s launch revenues), from both government contracts (rural broadband and DoD) and unsubsidized subscribers. This doesn’t include revenue from StarLink’s contract building missile tracking satellites for the Defense dept (based on StarLink sats) [2].

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/10/spacex-gets-fcc-...

[2] https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/6/21503165/spacex-space-dev...

“No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.”

This is the exact opposite of that. HN is hyped for Starlink because it's cool tech, not because it's a great user experience.

That's wrong. In this case, as with the iPod, the tech enables a dramatically better user experience. Compared to existing satellite ISPs you get dramatically better latency and dramatically faster/easier setup (no professional installation required, plug and play in 5 minutes). It's also likely to be far cheaper if you actually transfer a decent amount of data, and early tests seem to show better reliability in poor weather as well.

It's even better than DSL and some wireless ISPs or 4G hotspots with marginal connections, which are probably the main competition for Starlink.

> In this case, as with the iPod, the tech enables a dramatically better user experience.

The whole reason CowboyNeal was attacking the iPod was that technically it was a step backwards. It couldn't do anything that a Nomad couldn't. The part that it did well (and that he missed the importance of) was the usability and polish.

> Compared to existing satellite ISPs you get dramatically better latency and dramatically faster/easier setup (no professional installation required, plug and play in 5 minutes). It's also likely to be far cheaper if you actually transfer a decent amount of data, and early tests seem to show better reliability in poor weather as well.

All true, but can you see HN caring about any of that if SpaceX wasn't involved? The HN userbase is overwhelmingly city folk; I suspect only a tiny proportion of us have ever used satellite internet before.

Yes, I can see HN getting excited about a dramatically better satellite internet option regardless of who it came from. OneWeb, Amazon, etc could have had this attention if they had gotten here first.

Um, no — people are hyped because it will provide decent low-latency connectivity to areas that can’t even get a DSL line or more than a couple of bars of LTE.

This beta test period is literally called the "Better Than Nothing Beta"

Aw, not "beta than nothing"?

the beta test period will probably have a higher ratio of uplink to user bandwidth than any time in the future.

these satellites are radically undersubscribed right now, serving a handful of users tops. that's not going to model what happens if this works & grows.

The cutouts vary. It's not "every 10 minutes". DSL latency is not standard, it can vary a lot. Latency for the beta is worse than it will be for production. For the people this is marketed to, it's life changing. If you think it's overpriced, you were never the target demographic.

> If you think it's overpriced, you were never the target demographic.

Isn't that true of every product?

I would say it becomes increasingly relevant given that SpaceX has a multi-billion dollar SAM at the currently expected price/performance.

Almost. It's possible for a company to overprice the product for their target demographic. But then it's likely that they fail to acquire customers and go out if business. So it's generally true.

It's still very easy to forget.

I think parent was taking a stab at DSL, not StarLink. They could be from Australia, haha.

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