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Comment by Jedd | Hacker News Reader

As a happy Starlink customer for the past 12 months -- and who uses it primarily for video conference, remote desktop, browsing, and similar -- I'm very happy with any policy change that improves the performance of my service by reducing the impact from people currently abusing the service.

Yes, it was sold as an 'all you can eat' service, and yes, there were no such constraints previously, but pragmatically there's finite limits with satellite services, and equally, you're going to always get customers coming in and 'taking the piss' out of these services.

It's hard to not get a tad grumpy when your modest Citrix session at 300kbps is throttled because it's competing against 25Mbps streaming video (and you just know that plenty of those are the weird 'have the TV on in the background all day' people).

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It would be a huge stretch to characterize usage over 1TB a month as abuse. My family likely rips through 1TB of data in about 10 days if I had to estimate. So some sort of throttling after 5TB would be more appropriate for 30 days, as obviously a main use case for Starlink will just be normal family internet usage which means a hell of a lot of video.

Unless you are streaming multiple 4K movies per day I just don't see how that's possible. I have a family of 5 and my kids watch several hours of Disney+ and YouTube per day, plus my wife and I watch an hour of Netflix after the kids go to bed, and on top of that I work from home and... I've never exceeded even 500GB in one month.

Our family routinely gets close to our 1.2TB cap.

Working from home contributes, but another big contributor is the Nintendo Switch and Steam. Both of them are constantly pulling down big game updates. If you have a PS5 or Xbox, it would be a similar situation if you own a decent sized game library.

1TB isn't what it used to be...

As noted, data usage after 11PM (until 7AM) isn't considered as part of your data utilization, so you can schedule any game updates between those times.

Most of the time, you aren't even playing the games actively, so you won't even notice the ~6h delay after patch release.

So now when you buy a game you have to wait until your overnight download window opens to play it?

> So now when you buy a game you have to wait until your overnight download window opens to play it?

That's a very disingenuous interpretation of parent's suggestion.

My reading of their comment was that a) there's 1/3 of every day that's not covered by this quota / throttling allowance, and so b) it's easy to configure your game store download manager to pull game _patches_ during that window.

I guess AAA games are around the 50GB these days? If you're buying dozens of these each months, you may have some larger self-control issues to contend with.

Keep in mind we're talking about people using a nominally beta internet service that's got a minimum average ~50ms latency, at any point in talking to one of a thousand satellites.

People that are using Starlink tend to be here because there's no options, or really really really poor options (eg. geostationary satellite - which is what I was on previously, with its 150GB / month limit, 600ms latency, etc). Some appreciation for the fact these pipes are finite and shared is expected and assumed, much more so than urban internet users with nice fat terrestrial connections.

How in the world is that disingenuous? That's the direct implication.

What do you mean by 'the direct implication'?

GP said you can schedule game updates for the 1/3 of each day that you're not metered.

P incorrectly translated that to 'when you buy a game you have to wait a day to play it'.

So, as I already argued, these are not the same thing -- purchase & download of a game (impulse) vs regular patches (easily scheduled out of hours), and for a new game it's entirely up to you if you want to pull that down immediately (a modest percentage of 1TB).

Triple a games are more like 200gb these days

CoD, 2k,and Ark Survival, sure, but VERY few games are 200gb

First World Problems.jpg

> 1TB isn't what it used to be...

Maybe on Fiber but if I was using a satellite service idk, I might understand the difference.

Having lived in a rural home with WiMAX the idea of having 1TB caps with high speed sounds like something you don't get to complain about.

> Maybe on Fiber

Until now Starlink was advertising speeds as 50–200 Mbps. On the low side that is competitive with VDSL2 FTTC. On the high side, that's faster than the packages most users take out on FTTP*

* In the UK, anyway, by far most FTTP users take out entry level packages. These packages often coincide with FTTC speed tiers; if they don't, 100 or 150Mbps is the highest entry level tier.

I dont know what UK VDSL2 is but in Canada if you're outside a city or town you spend $75/m on 20mbps that fails whenever it rains.

My friend who moved to a rural farm has been raving about how life-changing Starlink has been for him and he only lives 20 minutes outside a town with 40k people and 1.5hrs from a city with 4 million.

And we allegedly live in a country where gov subsidies justify the exorbitant ISP prices and allegedly rural people benefit from that... Where a free market wouldnt. Allegedly.

Yikes, that's appalling. VDSL is an evolution of ADSL. You can get speeds of 50-78 Mbps, depending on distance to cabinet, for under £30/month. Coverage isn't universal, but it sounds better than in Canada.

It's also interesting (but disappointing!) Canada's been let down by the telecoms regulator in an entirely different way. In the UK, BT was beginning to roll out fibre, but that was cancelled in favour of privatisation in 1984. Here we are nearly four decades later, and only now is FTTP being rolled out in earnest.

Some steam games I've installed this month were 96gb, 48gb, and 72gb. That's to say nothing of videoconferencing, watching media, etc etc.

1TB is pretty modest for a household.

Believe it! I can’t explain how you use so little, but 3 TB/month is typical in the UK. https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2020/12/openreach-see-...

That's 3TB/year.

> The average property connected to the Openreach network used around 3,000GB of data in 2020, or around 9GB per day

Whoops! I am quite out.

More recently, that's doubled to 0.5 TB/month[1].

Still, the point I should have made is: is using twice or thrice the (presumably) median unreasonable? Not necessarily.

Of course, deprioritisation after a certain amount isn't unreasonable either, provided there is succificent truth in advertising.

[1] https://advanced-television.com/2022/10/13/study-uk-homes-us...

Easy to hit 1TB if some of your family members are unknowingly compromised by botnets.

Just to be clear here, the reason that you feel that 1TB/30 days from a low orbit satellite ISP (a relatively recent technological development mind you) is insufficient is simply because your family happens to use 1TB/10 days on what is I assume a wired internet connection?

"How quickly the world owes him something he knew existed only 10 seconds ago".

https://youtu.be/PdFB7q89_3U?t=97

“How quickly the advertised-as-unlimited internet service he paid for owes him unlimited internet service he knew was deprioritized only 10 seconds ago.”

Let’s be real, they’re simply making a case that 1TB/mo is far from abuse as far as an unlimited, capless internet service should be concerned.

Did these starlink customers agree to a contract saying this could happen? Probably. That doesn’t change the fact that it’s a pretty low threshold* when compared to unlimited.

*edited from cap

It is still unlimited. Just at a lower speed

A limit now exists on speed. That’s not unlimited.

A limit always existed on speed (and consequently bandwidth) -- it's just that now they're proposing to apply that limit more equitably.

"abusing the service"

1 TB isn't a big amount tbh. Watch few youtube videos or 4k videos and you will reach 1 TB within 5-10 days. I live with 3 family member who continuously watches and we always cross 1 TB per month, so I don't think we are abusing the service.

That being said, I do understand it might be fair for starlink as it is a satelite internet.

Most people aren’t watching 4k unless they have the tv on all day. Most people watch on lower res devices

What??? Anyone with a 4k TV that uses netflix is watching 4k a good portion of teh time. What does time with TV on matter? Plus, most new shows are in 4k including kids shows.

Anyone with a 4K TV who has the premium subscription, and has manually changed their settings.

From Netflix:

  Basic     ($8.99 per month): Standard definition (480p) content on a single screen at a time.
  Standard ($12.99 per month): High definition (up to 1080p) content on two screens at a time.
  Premium  ($15.99 per month): Ultra HD (up to 4K) content on four screens at a time.

Some people complain about the 4K quality.

From Netflix:

  High definition (HD) 720p:         3 Mbps
  Full high definition (FHD) 1080p:  5 Mbps
  4K/Ultra HD (UHD) 4K:             15 Mbps

So 1 hour of 4K video is 60x60x15/8 = almost 7GB

That's 142 hours of watching Netflix (outside the nightly window) almost 5 hours per day. I can assure you Netflix doesn't make that much good stuff

Thanks for linking some actual data

I can confirm that my wife and kid easily blow through 500 gigs a month just watching TV. The wife likes to leave the news channel on all day, and I don't think that's a ghastly, unheard-of, abusive thing to do with a TV

If I leave any games on auto-update and work from home all month, we get pretty close to Comcast's 1.2TB cap every month

The cap-free usage at night is nice, though. Assuming we don't all start streaming 3D point cloud videos or meshes and textures any time soon, that should keep the service comfortably usable for a few people at a time all month.

> The wife likes to leave the news channel on all day, and I don't think that's a ghastly, unheard-of, abusive thing to do with a TV.

Are you using Starlink, or are you one of those people commenting on this thread about how much bandwidth you use on non-satellite services?

In any case, I understand that you don't think it's ghastly to leave 'TV on in the background all the time, every day', but please understand in return that the rest of us contending for the same network resources don't think this is reasonable.

> If I leave any games on auto-update and work from home all month, we get pretty close to Comcast's 1.2TB cap every month.

This sounds like this acceptable usage policy doesn't affect you at all, in any way.

Also, that you're unaware that your auto-update games download manager has a facility to schedule downloads at certain times of the day.

To bring things back around for you: You strongly implied that any household that uses a terabyte per month outside of late night hours is "abusing" the service. I'm just here to explain that you're wrong in your accusation.

It's very easy to hit that cap with a moderately-sized family doing normal things all month, no piracy needed.

You didn't answer my question - are you a Starlink customer, and are you impacted by this policy change?

> You strongly implied that any household that uses a terabyte per month outside of late night hours is "abusing" the service.

This is at best incomplete, or at worst incorrect.

I said that for the Starlink service people consuming excessive network bandwidth are abusing the service - because they're impacting the performance for 'normal' users -- a set that includes me.

If you're consuming more than 1TB on a service that isn't as physically restricted as a LEO satellite service, well good for you.

This story is about Starlink changing their terms and conditions to limit the impact of inconsiderate users.

Aside - my gut feel is that they're actually targeting the >10TB / month users, or some other relatively high threshold of really heavy & persistent users, but by simply stating a ceiling they're tacitly saying anything up to that volume is okay - and they don't want to normalise really large volumes, hence picking a 1TB figure.

We are altering the terms and conditions. Pray we don't alter them further.

So this doesn't affect you at all.

I haven't had a recent console for quite a while, but can't you just set it to automatically download (not install) downloads at night? So many people are complaining (and rightly so) about having to wait before playing

The news is one situation a lot of people have it just on. Not much to do about that, even though they're repeating the same items over and over again.

Netflix asks you every few hours if you're still watching.

Would be great to have some sort of 'attention' detection, for example some gaze tracking camera in your tv, so it can automatically switch between SD and 4K, but also dim the backlight to save energy. I'm just not sure if I would want a camera in my tv which checks if I actually look at it.

Soon you’ll need YouTube premium for 4k anyway

For some perspective, in ~2006 I had satellite internet. We had a rolling 30 day window for 8gb of bandwidth.

Are you watching 4K videos everywhere? On you phone? Every hour of every day?

Most people won't even notice if it's 1024p instead of 4k. Really

"1TB per month" sounds awfully entitled. And yeah, deprioritizing sounds like a fair solution.

You don’t get 1TB on your cellphone when roaming.

What is “a few” videos. 20 minutes @4k is1gb per visit.

So you’re talking about 1000 videos in 5-10 days. Are you seriously watching 200-400 20 min videos per day?

That’s 4000-8000 minutes per day! Also you have to go through this outside of the nightly window.

That means you’re watching 66 hours of video every 16 hours.

Even if this was the case, then that’s literally the only thing your family does, and you should be happy that that can be covered with only $100 per month lol

per video*

Continually watching 4k video all day is definitely not normal internet usage and I agree with Starlink that it should be policed.

> it was sold as an 'all you can eat' service

This is the bigger issue here. It's not about the limit, its about the bait and switch. And no, I don't accept arguments that people should know better, because if the customer is supposedly smart enough to know that limits were inevitable, then so did starlink, which means this was a deliberate tactic (I'd call it a grift tactic at that). The responsible approach would have been to start everyone on a fairly tight limit and then either expand it if the network could handle it, keep them if it couldn't, or just charge more for more bandwidth. That way customers could make a sound evaluation of value/cost.

> bait and switch.

...Full self-driving...

> This is the bigger issue here.

It really is not.

Changing the ToS such that the top few percentile of people performing some seriously abnormal network activities, to ensure that the majority of your customer base remains happy with the service, is not grift.

'The sign said don't pee in the pool, it didn't say don't bring in bottles of pee you prepared at home and open them in the pool' is not a defence -- people should know better, and it was probably expected that some tiny number of customers would effectively ruin the 'unlimited' service for everyone was.

The responsible approach, as you misunderstood it, was to say 'Here are the T&C - we may change them at will, and shall notify you, at which point you can choose to cancel your service'.

Your pee example is not the same thing at all. There was no 'technicality' being breached by people using lots of bandwidth, they were doing so because that's EXACTLY what they paid for when the signed up for an 'UNLIMITED' plan.

A better example would be signing and paying for, a 2022 BMW, and instead getting a 2010 Kia. Sure it still drives, but it ain't the same thing.

Obviously there is a limit in the physics of the thing. And now that someone is peeing in the pool, we can no longer have nice things.

Remote work from my van requires video conferencing, easily more than 200 hours per month. 1 TB would limit me to 5 GB per hour. I have been doing much more than that the last 5 months on Starlink.

I object to you calling that abuse. I certainly am not 'taking the piss' out of this service. I pay over 250 euro for Starlink (including 24/7 offgrid batteries and dish) so by suddenly limiting me to 1000 GB I now pay over 0,25 euro per GB.

I am in sparse regions where my satellites are not overtaxed (no cities nearby for 300 km).

If Starlink would equally trottle everyone in speed when the system is oversubscribed at peak times a day I would not mind as much, but a data cap throttles/limits me much more. And now I also have to start counting my traffic and set alarms (waking me up) to voluntairily limit my data.

5GB/hr sounds more than enough for video conferencing!? Does your job require you to do that in 4k?

Nor does videoconferencing require you to be transmitting/receiving video throughout the entire session.

I cut my bandwidth usage when working from home by using the toggle on receiving video when I wasn’t interacting that almost all apps provide.

(it’s also nice to mute your own video when not talking to save the resources of others and also save yourself from “camera fatigue”)

You are doing 1 1/4 full time jobs' worth of video conferencing per week, every week?

Overemployment is a thing now, apparently.

“people currently abusing the service”

how is using a service according to what was promised “abuse”?

or that 25 Mbps is the zoom video call to someone's mom dying of cancer's last words. Who knows? The service is oversold and overcapacity, as some predicted. Still better than dial up tho.

The most Zoom claims to use is 4Mb/s.

I am in video conferences all day every day, I easily burn through 1TB/mo without torrenting or warez. I use my internet to work. Throttling impedes my ability to earn.

Are you using Starlink for these all-day every-day video conferences?

4Mb/s * 3600s * 8 hours work per day * 20 days / 8 bits = 288GB.

Just for the sake of it I opened youtube video[0] at 1920@60 and capped the network to "Regular 4G/LTE" in Dev tools, which caps it at ~150KB/s (~1200Kbps). After a bit of stuttering I had a video without pre-buffering. Of course later, where the codec just can't compress enough it starts to buffer (part in the forest at 6:00), but that for a FullHD video at 60FPS with a very dynamic scene change.

If I were to watch these videos for 8h in a row it would be only 4GB a day or 86GB for 20d/m. FullHD video. At 60FPS.

Sure, video conferencing is a bit a different beast, because there is no way to compress a dynamic stream so effectively... Except if you don't run you conference from a Porsche 356 going through the woods then 90% of the picture is just walls of your room/office. It CAN run just fine with 1-4Mbps.

Hell, we had a good enough video calls in Skype almost two decades ago, on a meager DSL lines with 1-5/Mbps limit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jY7RF9r8YFw

If it is sold as unlimited, then using the service at the maximum bandwidth all month is not abuse - that is normal use.

I think you should be grumpy with you service provider who seems to have no idea how to properly manage traffic ;)

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