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Comment by thecrumb | Hacker News Reader

What a crock. Why are they rolling service out to RVs and planes when they don't even have capacity for existing residential users...

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Or... Why roll out to residential users when there are RVs and planes still without service?

Anyway, any residential ISP advertising "unlimited" is almost certainly full of shit. They shouldn't be allowed to advertise with this sort of language when there are in fact limits imposed. Leading people to believe otherwise has always been unfair.

Because the initial selling point was “providing access to those living in rural areas without great alternatives” and then they tried to get a bunch of government funding for providing residential connectivity in those areas (And then failed at providing it)?

> (And then failed at providing it)?

Lol, a datacap of 1TB a month is hardly a failure for the very rural users who don't have the choice of signing up with the likes of Comcast (who pull this same sort of "unlimited*" bullshit too.)

I never met a residential ISP that I felt did business honestly, but to call Starlink a failure because of a 1TB limit is some serious mental gymnastics. Same old scummy ISP practices? Certainly. A failure? Give me a break.

That's not what I'm referring to.

Starlink was attempting to get almost $1B worth of grants from the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, which exists to "bring high speed fixed broadband service to rural homes and small businesses that lack it".

They quite literally failed to prove that they could provide the service they claimed.

> The FCC has rejected the SpaceX unit's bid to receive $885.5 million in aid through the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund. The broadband provider "failed to demonstrate" that it could deliver the claimed service, according to a statement.

https://www.engadget.com/fcc-rejects-spacex-starlink-rural-b...

I appreciate you said "almost certainly". My cousin runs a WISP and when I asked him about someone maxing their bandwidth out 100% of the time, he said they'd make it work, not limit the customer.

An honest WISP is actually the exact sort of scenario I had in mind when I hedged that claim. In my experience, small businesses are sometimes honest but the big ones almost never are.

Residential customers are a volume play, where the service may be competing with a local terrestrial service provider, and customers maybe price sensitive.

RV, boats and airplane customers will be more lucrative accounts to serve.

Because it has to get worse before it can ever get better. The current generation of satellites are too small to ever be profitable. So they have to get the next generation up there. That requires the rocket to be ready, and lots of money. So they need to get people signed up even though it will degrade everyone's performance, in order to pay for the upgrade that will hopefully enable better performance in the future.

Nice way to do business ? Scam people ?

What's the scam?

Start out advertising unlimited and then make it not unlimited once you’re invested as a customer

RV traffic is already de-prioritized compared to residential.

Planes are being charged way more money than residential.

In what way are they lacking capacity?

Speeds are coming down. That clearly indicates capacity is declining.

$$$$ vs. $$$

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