Comment by doogerdog | Hacker News Reader

Comment by doogerdog | Hacker News Reader

I'm not a fan of Musk overall, but Starlink is pure gold for us in rural America. Before this, my best option was 25Mbps for $125/mo.

I installed mine about 5 months ago. You really need to put it in a location that has no obstructions for the antenna's oval of coverage. The speed varies a lot but overnight and mornings I get downloads of 90 to 180Mbps. Afternoon and evening the range is 60 to 110Mbps. I measure these speeds myself from actual transfers of large files over the course of about one hour. Now and then I check to see what Ookla - SpeedTest - or Cloudflare report. They never agree with each other, even when running concurrently.

The FCC is not going to use Ookla data. The antennas are self installed. Many will be slowed down by obstructions, bad cabling etc. As mentioned above, many people only test when they have trouble. Once the trouble is fixed the new speeds are not added to the Ookla database.

Viasat is in a sad position. I don't see how they have a future at all. I think they only have two satellites that were launched by cheap Proton rockets. With Russia gone, they would have to pay much more for any future launches. The one thing they can do is spread fear to keep their business afloat a little longer.

I'll piggy back off this comment.

It's pure gold for people in rural Australia as well. Our country is extremely vast with most of us concentrated on the cost in major cities. Our fixed internet speeds are not that great at all in major cities, let alone in the country.

Starlink provides fantastic speeds that no other solution can currently provide in the country. It's also not bureaucratically tied with another company that needs to provide the infrastructure. Which means you don't need to go through the hassle of an ISP, then the ISP liasing with the company that actually owns the infrastructure.

100%. My brother and I ordered it for my parents. We had an absolute max of 20 down previously. Dad was able to set it up by himself and we’re north of 200 most of the time. Absolute game changer

I built my own WISP which I have run for 20+ years, to get myself connectivity. Now I'm seriously considering dismantling it because Starlink is almost as fast and way cheaper and less maintenance.

Are Falcon 9 launches more expensive than Proton?

Proton was very unreliable and while the rocket was cheap insurance was incredibly expensive. Proton got destroyed in the market and virtual all new contracts went to SpaceX. Proton has been removed from commercial service and is now only flying for Russia.

Russia is now basically out of the global launch business, there is no coming back after the shanked OneWeb (they will launch on Falcon 9 now).

Even beyond that, Viasat and other will have huge issues. Amazon literally just bought up essentially the whole market of heavy lift for a long time. They essentially bought all available Ariane 6, Vulcan and New Glenn launch.

There literally can not be a series competitor to Starlink outside of Amazon because there literally is not enough global launch capacity (outside of China).

OneWeb Generation 2 sats are contracted to fly on Relativity Space, they have not even made it to orbit with their first rocket and OneWeb already bought flights on their second rocket.

Any other competitors will need to make equally shaky deals with unproven companies, that are promising rockets around 2025 but those will likely be late and even once they fly scaling their operation will take many years after that.

Expect existing companies to announce agreements to fly on RocketLab Neutron and Firefly Beta in the next 2 years. Because otherwise you are not getting a huge constellation into the sky. Except with SpaceX and then you are just funding your competitor.

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