Satellite Internet?

[JD Jones]

Now you know why, as an electronics design engineer, I am a late adapter of new technology. The digital parts of that embedded technology of what is in those dishes is something like I would have worked on back in the day.. The analog parts would have been some other design teams job. The electromechanical issues and software being yet other teams responsibilities. Dealing with the temperature extremes such a disk must withstand is NOT s simple task for a commercial mass produced product.

But you are still paying for atrocious service, no? In the hopes the new dish design will fix the problem and actually last for a reasonable period of time.

Is the replacement dish free?

Replacement? I don't think they need to be replaced. There are well over 100K of them in service now and only a few have had complaints.

Just the other day I saw a comment from a guy who said whenever his dish is level it fills up with water and the birds utilizing it as a bath were blocking his signal. LOL

They will continue to tweak their product as time passes. That means when mine finally comes it may be better than what was originally offered.

 

[windeguy]

I guess there is no real problem after all. Just a few whiners in the mix.

 

[JD Jones]

I guess there is no real problem after all. Just a few whiners in the mix.

I agree.

There's always unhappy people out there.

I don't think I've ever seen a video on Youtube that doesn't have negative comments either.

 

[JD Jones]

Posted on Twitter:

CEO Johnsen: we’re producing 5,000 Starlink dishes a week, and will have “multiples of that” in coming months. New, lower cost unit coming out later this fall.

 

[JD Jones]

SpaceX's First Starlink Mission Launched From California Will Deploy An Entire Fleet Of Satellites With Laser Links

The mission is known as ‘Starlink Group 2-1’, it is the company’s 29th mission dedicated to building the Starlink constellation. On Monday at 8:55 p.m. PDT. a flight-proven Falcon 9 booster will carry 51 satellites to orbit from Space Launch Complex 4E (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base in...

www.tesmanian.com

SpaceX has not launched a Starlink mission in a bit over two months, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said in mid-August that the company paused Starlink satellite deployments because they are working on completing the first batches of next-generation satellites equipped with laser communication links. Now, SpaceX is ready to launch Starlink satellites with inter-satellite lasers. An entire fleet of next-generation satellites will be deployed on September 13th during the first Starlink mission launched from California. The mission is known as ‘Starlink Group 2-1’, it is the company’s 29th operational mission dedicated to building the Starlink constellation. On Monday at 8:55 p.m. PDT. a flight-proven Falcon 9 booster will carry 51 satellites to orbit from Space Launch Complex 4E (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

Starlink Group 2-1 will be the first mission to carry all satellites with lasers. “These are V1.5 Starlinks with laser inter-satellite links, which are needed for high latitudes & mid ocean coverage,” SpaceX founder Elon Musk shared. These lasers enable the satellite fleet to operate without the need to communicate with a ground station on Earth. Instead, the satellites will beam data to one another via the laser links which enables a much faster data transfer rate to users on the ground because light travels faster in the vacuum of space than through fiber-optic cables. “[…] Data packets do not need to touch regular Internet – data can flow from user terminal to satellite/s to user terminal [customer dish antenna],” Musk explains. Once the satellites are in their designated orbit, the set of satellites equipped with lasers could be operational within the next “4 to 6 months.”

 

[chico bill]

One has to question the profitability of satellite internet. How many consumers will it take to maintain such an expensive network?
Just like the once promised ubiquitous satellite cell phones from companies like Iridium - they are priced beyond the average non-government person's budget.
I thought Musk's original goal was to be able to provide internet to under served poorer countries. His prices seem to run counter to that goal.

 

[JD Jones]

One has to question the profitability of satellite internet. How many consumers will it take to maintain such an expensive network?
Just like the once promised ubiquitous satellite cell phones from companies like Iridium - they are priced beyond the average non-government person's budget.
I thought Musk's original goal was to be able to provide internet to under served poorer countries. His prices seem to run counter to that goal.

Good point. They have already sold more than 100K dish antennas at a loss of about 1k each but expect to start making money once they bring the cost of manufacturing them down.

The long-term goal is to provide low-cost service to poorer countries.

It would be worth your time to follow them on the internet. Some of the stuff they are doing is fascinating.

Have you seen the new rocket they are developing? Over 40 stories tall with 29 engines. Amazing.

 

[windeguy]

A big rocket ship is need for MARS, The STARS and one step beyond. And this one isn't big enough:

SpaceX

SpaceX designs, manufactures and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft.

www.spacex.com

 

[JD Jones]

And even more amazing is all of the rockets he's designed are reusable.

Watching these rockets coming back down to earth and landing upright, and other times landing on floating ships is an astonishing feat.

The videos of those landings seem like something out of a Buck Rogers movie. It's hard to believe they're real.

There's a video floating around YT somewhere that shows the space inside the new SN15 spaceship. It looks like a building inside.

Quite a difference from the spacecraft we've seen in the past with a few persons crammed into a small shell.

I find it all fascinating, and it's just one of the projects he's working on.

 

[chico bill]

Good point. They have already sold more than 100K dish antennas at a loss of about 1k each but expect to start making money once they bring the cost of manufacturing them down.

The long-term goal is to provide low-cost service to poorer countries.

It would be worth your time to follow them on the internet. Some of the stuff they are doing is fascinating.

Have you seen the new rocket they are developing? Over 40 stories tall with 29 engines. Amazing.

Reminds me of that old business model:

"We're losing money on every sale, but we expect to make it up on volume".

 

[kmfjd]

I have the service in Canada, upload speed is usually around 7-10Mbps , download speed average is between 70-300Mbps , most importantly there are no more millisecond interuptions every hour, the connection is stable now (at least in my area there are enough satellites in place)

Way faster than what i can get at our place in PP

 

[JD Jones]

How the tides change. I was looking at the Altice website and saw they have 100 Mbps Fiber Optic for around 3000 pesos so for shits and giggles I left my contact information.

I received a call from them the next day. I bitched and moaned at the poor service guy until he said "We can do that!"

The next day an installer showed up, looked around, and told me: "I'm going to put in a service request to cable your building."

Sure enough, a tech showed up the next day, told me he was there to do the "levantamiento" and walked around for a few minutes with a wheel device that measures distance.

Two days later, the installation team showed up (yesterday) and started pulling cables. It started raining so they left, and came back this morning at 8 am and finished cabling the entire building.

It took them about an hour and they were done.

The last step is the installation of my apartment, which they said would be in the next 2-3 days. for the last 4 years, even though their Fiber Optic cable is in front of my house.

So, I am almost there. 100 Mbps for about 80 bucks a month.

So, goodbye Starlink, hello 1000+ channels of streaming on my buzz box.

Finally, I can tell Claro to take a hike with their 1 Mbps connection that drops every 3-4 minutes for the last 4 years, even though their Fiber Optic cable is in front of my house..

Ain't life grand?

 

[reilleyp]

How the tides change. I was looking at the Altice website and saw they have 100 Mbps Fiber Optic for around 3000 pesos so for shits and giggles I left my contact information.

I received a call from them the next day. I bitched and moaned at the poor service guy until he said "We can do that!"

The next day an installer showed up, looked around, and told me: "I'm going to put in a service request to cable your building."

Sure enough, a tech showed up the next day, told me he was there to do the "levantamiento" and walked around for a few minutes with a wheel device that measures distance.

Two days later, the installation team showed up (yesterday) and started pulling cables. It started raining so they left, and came back this morning at 8 am and finished cabling the entire building.

It took them about an hour and they were done.

The last step is the installation of my apartment, which they said would be in the next 2-3 days.

So, I am almost there. 100 Mbps for about 80 bucks a month.

So, goodbye Starlink, hello 1000+ channels of streaming on my buzz box.

Finally, I can tell Claro to take a hike with their 1 Mbps connection that drops every 3-4 minutes for the last 4 years, even though their Fiber Optic cable is in front of my house..

Ain't life grand?

Every sentence that you wrote got better and better. I thought maybe it was an April fools joke. Things do not happen this smoothly in the DR. Then you wrote "they said would be in the next 2-3 days for the last 4 years". That confused me. Did this happen 4 years ago? Is this a true story?

 

[JD Jones]

Every sentence that you wrote got better and better. I thought maybe it was an April fools joke. Things do not happen this smoothly in the DR. Then you wrote "they said would be in the next 2-3 days for the last 4 years". That confused me. Did this happen 4 years ago? Is this a true story?

Whoops. Fixed that. Thanks. I wouldn't be surprised if the installer shows up tomorrow.

Now it's time to buy the C8 high speed network cables to hook it up to all my stuff.

 

[reilleyp]

Whoops. Fixed that. Thanks. I wouldn't be surprised if the installer shows up tomorrow. Now it's time to buy the C8 network cables to hook it up to all my stuff.

Please keep us posted with the end result. May I ask what town this is? Altice has fiber optic running past me, maybe 100 feet away, but they tell me it is not available even though there are 20 of us that would most likely connect.

 

[JD Jones]

Please keep us posted with the end result. May I ask what town this is? Altice has fiber optic running past me, maybe 100 feet away, but they tell me it is not available even though there are 20 of us that would most likely connect.

This is in San Cristobal. They had to run the cable around 150 mt.

 

[chico bill]

How the tides change. I was looking at the Altice website and saw they have 100 Mbps Fiber Optic for around 3000 pesos so for shits and giggles I left my contact information.

I received a call from them the next day. I bitched and moaned at the poor service guy until he said "We can do that!"

The next day an installer showed up, looked around, and told me: "I'm going to put in a service request to cable your building."

Sure enough, a tech showed up the next day, told me he was there to do the "levantamiento" and walked around for a few minutes with a wheel device that measures distance.

Two days later, the installation team showed up (yesterday) and started pulling cables. It started raining so they left, and came back this morning at 8 am and finished cabling the entire building.

It took them about an hour and they were done.

The last step is the installation of my apartment, which they said would be in the next 2-3 days. for the last 4 years, even though their Fiber Optic cable is in front of my house.

So, I am almost there. 100 Mbps for about 80 bucks a month.

So, goodbye Starlink, hello 1000+ channels of streaming on my buzz box.

Finally, I can tell Claro to take a hike with their 1 Mbps connection that drops every 3-4 minutes for the last 4 years, even though their Fiber Optic cable is in front of my house..

Ain't life grand?

$80 bucks - you talking loonies?
Cause 3000 pesos only translates to $53 in what I consider bucks

 

[JD Jones]

The correct number is $2729. I never said I was good at math.

 

[beeza]

I've just paid the reservation deposit of $99 to Starlink. The website struggled to justify my Dominican address correctly, but when I used the Googlemap plus code function, it told me that service would be available in 2022 and I can pay the deposit.

Watch this space..........

 

[franco1111]

Might not want to move your service location now.

"Starlink nightmare: Moving service location a few feet delays orders until 2023​

Some people who preordered Starlink broadband say they made tiny changes to their service locations on the Starlink website and immediately had their delivery dates delayed by a year or more.

This isn't a case of changing an address from one city to another; people say that using a newly prominent map tool to more accurately pinpoint their house essentially sends a person who preordered to the back of the line."


Read more here:

Starlink nightmare: Moving service location a few feet delays orders until 2023

PSA: Using Starlink website map tool sends preorderers to "back of the line."

arstechnica.com