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That they can't agree on the pricing for a dish model doesn't surprise me a bit, they seem so disorganized even in their public marketing.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the worst. My other account was working for two months but then Starlink changed the payment form GUI and suddenly they no longer accepted my European bank accounts or Apple Pay or iDeal payment systems anymore, only credit card numbers. European people rarely have credit cards and certainly can't suddenly aquire one while roaming. And of course it would only work if you had a working roaming internet... wait a minute....
When I eventually had opened a new bank account with a credit card at great cost and expense, Starlink of course did not accept it. No recourse, no contact, no payments, nada.
Anyone want to buy two revision 3 Starlink dishes, as-is, where-is, never been used? [1].
[1] From an Australian personals ad: "Rain gauge for sale, as-is-where-is, never been used".
A joke told by Bush Tucker Man Les Hiddens while traveling in the Australian outback desert.
You also have a local Telco regulator and a consumer rights regulator too
Do you have proof of that? I have proof they have never been preactivated. I'd like to learn if it's different elsewhere or elsewhen.
I have needed to activate and re-activate more than a 100 starlinks to date and it never was easy.
We also helped rural Spain, rural Ukraine and on other continents and islands with setting up optical mesh and satellite internet, most of which had Starlink links as backup.
The idea of activation only makes sense for transfers and buying at retail.
What? Almost everyone has a debit card and credit cards are very normal. I found some stats:
https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/people_with_credit...
50-60% is not rare. And presumably they didn't specifically require credit cards rather than debit cards, which are even more common.
Additionally, just because we have credit cards doesn't mean we use them in daily life. SEPA based payments work out far better.
[1] https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/people_with_credit...
Are European debit cards maybe somehow different than US ones, and the experience differs between the two?
Sure does! Just signed up with BBVA some months ago and got a Visa debit card from them called "Aqua". https://www.bbva.es/en/personas/productos/tarjetas/tarjeta-d...
The only places I've found that only accept credit cards are hotels.
For many things they do, but I'd never order from an new/semi-reputable company online via SEPA credit transfer, and for analogous reasons a company would never accept SEPA direct debit from unknown customers.
If you have a credit card but don't want to use it for an uncertain online pre-order of a new product, what do you use it for?
I have credit and debit cards. Basically no point in using the credit card, so I only use it for emergencies when nothing else works, which has been exactly once in my life so far, and that was in Mexico. In Spain (home) / around Europe I've never had an issue with my debit card, so it's what I keep using everywhere.
What I meant was: Why use SEPA credit transfer (or more generally any other payment method without a dispute process) if you don't trust the merchant?
I concur, using credit cards is rather dangerous, especially online and in app forms for both buyer and seller alike [6].
>SEPA based payments work out far better
Indeed, but since recently (2018?) European banks couldn't confiscate your money on a whim, like the US credit card companies did for decades. Now European banks do too, just like PayPal [4].
Enshittfication was first coined by Cory Doctorrow [3] here [2] and it applies everywhere now [1].
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/6fb1602d-a08b-4a8c-bac0-047b7d64a...
[2] https://doctorow.medium.com/social-quitting-1ce85b67b456
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
[4] https://emerchantauthority.com/blog/what-to-do-if-your-paypa....
[5] https://hn.algolia.com/?q=freeze+bank
[6] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Your link is about chargeback. I'm pretty much exclusively using credit cards for daily payment and I can't even remember the last time I got any problems. I never pay interest either.
I get that you don't like or trust credit card, and it isn't popular in Europe, but don't be generalizing. Even in Europe my credit cards work well, except for the unpopularity of Amex.
I do not get why people insist on defending the credit card companies and their ungoing enshittification and changing rules and laws[1]. I would prefer you refuting my central argument[2].
Credit card laws and rules have many more problems than just chargebacks. For two decades online payment webpages stole credit card numbers and stole money from people. I could list many more documented cases.
Elsewhere someone argues that debit cards are not credit cards. I agree. Of course Starlink forms reject debit cards too.
[1] https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/when-company-declines-your...
In this case, it's better than debit cards as you are not out of money until the bank reverts the fraudulent charge.
Now with 3DS this is way better, but I am way wearier of using my debit card number online (so I generate temporary cards) compared to credit - if they steal the card number, there is no problem.
Flights from NYC to LDN might have different prices for example.
Taxes, business model, demand etc
Some countries don't get the Pixel discounts available in the US. Black Friday isn't everywhere.. Same with availability of Apple Care
The equipment was originally manufactured at $3000. Now it's below $750.
Have you ever paid for satellite Internet before?
Paying less than $1 per GB is something that happened because of starlink.
Yes, as the first public internet provider in North Europe (1988) I paid for almost all satellite Internet services before and usually was one of the earliest adopters. For example [1].
In 1997 I met with Ian Alexander and proposed him to deploy his first 400 meter long rigid airships at 10km-20km height to become the first very low-orbit internet provider. He subsequently got an experimental flying permit in my country through my political parliamentary contacts.
It turned out to cost $40K per month to crew the rigid airships 24/7, just barely profitable for a 500km circle of reception.
>Paying less than $1 per GB is something that happened because of starlink.
The actual cost of 1 GB transit traffic in 2024 is $0,00006944 (I am sorry, I may be off by a factor of 1024, than it could be $0,0711, My apologies, as soon as I have this confirmed I won't be able to edit this HN comment anymore).
Starlink buys internet transit traffic locally where your receiver is, then bounces it off their satellite back to you. So they pay very little compared to what they charge you. And I have never ever been able to download 1 GB for $1, they throttle you long before you reach 75 GB per month.
And when your area is oversubscribed they just throttle your traffic, no need to raise the price.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_satellite_constellatio...
Other estimates and other credible sources point out that SpaceX made adequate profits if you count the military and government subsidies[1].
Not only the Chinese government is deploying their own satellite internet, several other are too. Probably because its profitable.
I remember many rumours of Elon Musk in Moscow at the founding of SpaceX with former Pentagon people? Lots of other reports on military considerations of SpaceX. Hard to verify [2][3].
[1] https://spacenews.com/spacex-providing-starlink-services-to-...
[2] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3082067/Russ...
[3] https://spacenews.com/first-satellite-for-chinese-g60-megaco...
He settled on founding SpaceX on the flight back because after the oligarchs lead him around a bunch with no intention of actually negotiating a sale, they straight up spat at him.
I regularly go over 1TB in a month without throttling on the standard plan...
I'd like to pay that kinda money for transit in sub Saharan Africa.
We don't all live in Ashburn and Frankfurt.
Some people are connected only via Intelsat and OneWeb
As for starlink throttling. There's people doing multiple TB per month every month. Go try that on your residential Viasat, HughesNet or Eutelsat plan
Transit is only expensive when you're small. What makes you think it's a big part of operational cost? Or something to base the retail price on? You likely spend more on power and staff
In Europe, starlink buys virtual or real l2 transport circuits and carries traffic to Frankfurt. They use lasers to carry traffic too when they don't have ground stations like in Kazakhstan
You can't afford to use Iridium to watch Netflix if you could even get enough bandwidth
Anyway the manufacturing costs are down from $3k to $750 ish. So things are looking up
Why would the Dishy hardware price be different for locations as well the hardware cost isn't?
> wish I had enough money to complain about discounts!
I am quite sure I have even less than money you. We complain because it is unfair.
Incidentally, overcharging is one reason one becomes the richest or second richest man in the world [1].
[1] https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#34ebc7873d78
Also, costs are not geographically uniform. They need regulatory permission to operate in a country, and some countries make that easier than others. Sometimes market access means paying lots of tax too.
In most nations, in even some totalitarian dictatorships(dictatorships hate those opinionated and powerful), you are only allowed to deny services by conditions and to extents tolerated by law.
Some developed countries are moving towards Internet and smartphones as human rights, and handing out phones to homeless people. That implies it's rather phone network operators that don't have the entitlement to speak of such entitlements.
The nation owns everything. The nation can take and give anything anytime so long its owners agree(the monarch, the dictator, the party, the people collectively). It's always been that way.
It cant take anything from an individual that they aren't willing to give up. They can make things very hard for them if they decide not to.
Maybe BGAN might be cheaper. But you aren't watching 4K TV on that
It's even more expensive in Africa. Where you'd think it shouldn't.