Comment by wkat4242 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wkat4242 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Well Starlink here in Spain costs 40€ per month. That's a lot less than the unlimited Garmin inreach plan (74,99€!!) that only allows you to send short messages!

And that's the regular plan. Deprioritised Starlink costs €29/month! Still way way more useful service than inreach.

I have inreach and for €19,99 I get 10 SMS per month (i don't subscribe every month) and I also have to pay a €39,99 yearly fee. Starlink is undoubtedly cheaper here.

Of course it's not really the same kind of service. Inreach is a rugged 100 grams device for hiking with its own battery power that can stay connected for days. It can stay connected even in my bag and has a button to call for emergency services.

For internet backup I have a 4G modem right now, connected to my unifi router with auto failover and a script that adds credit to my prepay card over SMS. It serves me ok. But I'd love to have a starlink mini for backup. Just the regular one is a bit big so I didn't get it yet.

"For internet backup I have a 4G modem right now, connected to my unifi router with auto failover and a script that adds credit to my prepay card over SMS. It serves me ok. But I'd love to have a starlink mini for backup. Just the regular one is a bit big so I didn't get it yet."

Is 4G a good backup? I am also in Spain and in my neighborhood we often suffer from power failure under heavy rain, I guess a local transformer is shorting as it impacts just a few streets around my house. But when it happens I also lose phone connectivity. The nearest antenna seems to be located in the few streets impacted and smartphone seemingly cannot reach another one nearby. This made me realize the short radius of mobile network range around a single antenna.

It sounds more like a building material or geography issue. I've used LTE upwards of 10km off shore. In areas where there isn't good line of sight or if buildings tend to interfere with signal, the access points need to be positioned more densely

Well home 5G wifi has trouble covering all rooms at decent quality, I guess because the walls are thick, so building material may be an issue. I obviously never tried going on the roof to check because it happens when it is raining.

If you have good service anywhere in your house, the issue is WiFi

Interesting. It sounds like you're referring to Garmin's "Safety" plan, which in the States is $15 per month, and the unlimited plan is $65. Meanwhile, Starlink starts at $120 per month.

WTF? Entry price for starlink is £75/month in UK! ADSL is typically ~£25-30 for unlimited 80/20 for comparison

I think the pricing is based on coverage, usage density and demand. The UK probably has enough terrestrial coverage of amy sort that they figure they can upcharge anyone who still wants/needs Starlink, since it's mainly setup to be internet service for those who have essentially no other decent choice.

Alternatively, maybe the meaningful coverage areas are so small and dense that the price should be higher. Since Starlink's biggest limitation is that performance suffers in more densely populated areas.

If you can get 80/20 ADSL, you're not buying Starlink.

Some people underestimate how much hate we can have for our legacy ISPs.

I’d be happy to pay a premium to never give them another dollar ever again.

Everyone hates their ISP.

What are your current expectations around price and bandwidth as the Starlink service becomes more popular in your area?

If you have the opportunity to have a fibre or copper connection directly to your unit, it seems like a crazy decision to consider Starlink.

> Everyone hates their ISP

Not really, I loved a local new independent provider that strung its own fibre around, but moved out of that building :(

They were particularly great because they didn’t (at the time) do phone or tv, just pure solid internet. No legacy industry to protect by limiting torrents or gb/month limits (fuck you Bell Canada).

€50 in Ireland, down from €65 in the last year, down from €99 in 2022. Because they know where you are, and how much money your average target customer in a country has, and how saturated their satellites in that country are, they can be very specific about pricing.

Average disposable income in Ireland is a lot higher than in Spain (source: I moved to Spain from Ireland myself). So there must be more at play there than just purchasing power. If it was purely based on that it would be more like 70 euro compared to Spain's 40.

Could be saturation indeed, as Ireland is very sparse in rural areas. And so is Spain, outside the few urban centres.

The Republic Ireland is rolling out fiber to all properties. The standard rate for gigabit fiber is ~60 euro at the moment, less if you just want 500mbs, so SpaceX was just responding to competition as fiber got to more and more properties.

Getting Starlink a few years ago was the first time we had reliable internet at our family farm, and we were stoked. We also started getting better and better service as fiber rolled out across the country, but we never got above 250mbs. Now that fiber is here, it's no longer necessary except perhaps as a backup.

I'll grant that Spanish people are on a bit less than the Irish, but please don't be misled by GDP Per Capita numbers. Irish people are hurting, especially in the parts of the country beyond greater Dublin. Dublin is well-served by €20/mo all you can eat 5G that seems to hit 300Mbps without effort, so there's no reason to compete with that. But out in the Cork mountains, where the broadband readiness date has now slipped two years to "Jan-Dec 2026," most people I know are hand to mouth or on assistance or at least not earning Dublin bucks. €50 is a stretch for such, but €20 for LTE was barely getting me 2Mb when I finally gave up on it, despite having a baller antenna.

I know, I lived in Galway for a while. The best I could get for a long time was this "ripwave" crap from Irish Broadband. Which wasn't actually broadband, on a good day it would approach dialup speeds. On a bad day it wouldn't actually work at all. It was ridiculously bad.

It was no wonder that people started rolling their own WANs with point to point wifi connections until things finally picked up.

But starlink would be a good option there, right?

$80 in NZ while fibre cost around $110.

VDSL is being phased out.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com