Starlink introduces 'data cap' of 1TB per month

[Arika]

Just now, Kisai said:

If the "wired ISP"'s would do what they were legally required to do, there would be no need for Starlink to exist in North America.

that's nice but i don't live in the US.

[wanderingfool2]

10 minutes ago, Kisai said:

There is a penchant for people on this forum to want to win an argument by invoking ad hominem personal attacks. All that proves is that they have no argument at all.

You are the one who also called him a coward (after he correctly pointed out where you were wrong).  All you are doing is using hate towards a single person and letting it be the motivation behind blindly attacking a rational argument for throttling.  Again, there has been lots of people pointing out flaws in your logic, yet you blindly go about bashing people claiming they have no argument.

 

12 minutes ago, Kisai said:

No. Starlink is marketed at being for "anyone", there are no competitors for satellite internet. Or do you think  this is really intended for everyone https://satellitephonestore.com/service-iridium-go

You are being asinine by comparing it to wired connections.  Here's the hint, if you think there are no competitors for sat. internet then you have to concede that they are offering a service that justifies a cost (if all other sat. providers offer worse service for higher prices).

 

Again it's not marketed for those people who have stable wired connection, to say that is completely ignoring the whole point of it.  Guess what that RV thing you posted isn't about people who have wired internet, it's for people who meet my description [people who can't get good quality internet].

 

16 minutes ago, Kisai said:

If the "wired ISP"'s would do what they were legally required to do, there would be no need for Starlink to exist in North America. But no. This product is marketed as though it was cable internet. Complete with imposing caps for no reason what-so-ever.

 

You can make the argument that wireless bandwidth is consumable, but these throttles are not on the wireless side of the equation, they're on the device-side. That's how satellite tech works. You rely on the users to behave, because if anyone doesn't, they wreck *everyone* on the service. 

You obviously need to get out of your house.  I know people in Western Canada who don't have internet (and currently use Starlink, prior choice being spotty mobile network).  Do you not realize that for some areas it's cost prohibitive to offer the upgraded adsl service to an area?  You are just being stupid for thinking caps are imposed for no reason.  Do you seriously not understand the amplitudes of people here pointing out that sat. internet is greatly bandwidth limited in regions?  Do you not understand that you only get throttled when there is congestion issues?  You are hating for the sake of hating

[Kisai]

2 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

 

 

You obviously need to get out of your house.  I know people in Western Canada who don't have internet (and currently use Starlink, prior choice being spotty mobile network).  Do you not realize that for some areas it's cost prohibitive to offer the upgraded adsl service to an area?  You are just being stupid for thinking caps are imposed for no reason.  Do you seriously not understand the amplitudes of people here pointing out that sat. internet is greatly bandwidth limited in regions?  Do you not understand that you only get throttled when there is congestion issues?  You are hating for the sake of hating

So, you're defending this companies who refuse to upgrade their networks, because the government doesn't have a gun to their head. Sorry no.

 

The place I used to live two decades ago, had no high speed internet while Vancouver had cable.  This has been the general case for the entirety of Canada. Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver get high speed internet, the rest of the country get dial-up, then ADSL, and only got fiber in the last 4 years. MEANWHILE, people who live in these well connected areas are STILL on ADSL because, oh look, Telus or Shaw don't want to upgrade their networks.

 

Starlink is not a replacement for Fiber, ADSL or Cable internet. It's a replacement for "no internet", the very areas that they claim won't have caps. Do you really expect a few hundred people to subsidize this? No. Not everyone is living on a private island.

 

Elon clearly expects everyone in major cities to consider it competitive with their fiber, ADSL and cable offerings. Maybe it will be for places that have no competition, like in Canada. Or places with universally crappy internet like places that also have crappy electricity services ... but who's going to pay for it over there? Nobody. This is priced clear out of the range of j-random-farmer in south Asia or Africa. This is priced for luxury yachts (which RV's are "land yachts")

 

The fact that they're considering data caps, when they barely have any customers, is not a traffic-congestion issue, it's them just being greedy.

 

[wanderingfool2]

17 minutes ago, Kisai said:

So, you're defending this companies who refuse to upgrade their networks, because the government doesn't have a gun to their head. Sorry no.

You obviously are oblivious to some of the costs associated with deploying new cable runs etc for providers.

 

Here's a hint, I was privy to some of the backend costs associated with deploying to the area where I could only get T1 connections.  The estimated cost to run the line was a million dollars.  In a similar location, where they set a price of $10k for deployment...I watched how they did it.  Literally had 10 construction guys, digging down, then laying the fibre.

 

In non-dense areas, or areas where cables run underground it can be extremely expensive.  Here's the hint as well, if they have to run $500 worth of new cabling to a place to upgrade it (and upgrade a SAC box that only supports 10 users), the ROI is going to be multiple decades.  Also, if you are talking about Starlink, the cost for keeping Starlink running is a whole lot.

 

23 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Elon clearly expects everyone in major cities to consider it competitive with their fiber, ADSL and cable offerings

Prove it, show where it clearly is meant for major cities.  It's stupid assuming it's meant for major cities, and constantly harping on that as though that is fact.  You are wearing rose colored glasses.

 

Here's a nice quote for you though

Quote

"The challenge for anything that is space-based is that the size of the cell is gigantic... it's not good for high-density situations," Musk said. "We'll have some small number of customers in LA. But we can't do a lot of customers in LA because the bandwidth per cell is simply not high enough."

So again, you are just blindly making stuff up to justify your hatred.

 

25 minutes ago, Kisai said:

The fact that they're considering data caps, when they barely have any customers, is not a traffic-congestion issue, it's them just being greedy.

Yes, because you are so right of "greed".  That's why it's only going to affect some smaller % of people and only affect them if they are in an area where they can't serve them correctly due to bandwidth constraints.

 

Putting in data caps on a bandwidth limited space to prevent one user from messing up the experience of other's isn't greed in the sense trying to extort money.  It's simply making it so that the regular users don't get a bad experience from one person.  Oh and here's another hint, at the current rate and customers they haven't really hit profitability yet for it.

[Arika]

34 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Or places with universally crappy internet like places that also have crappy electricity services ... but who's going to pay for it over there? Nobody. This is priced clear out of the range of j-random-farmer in south Asia or Africa. This is priced for luxury yachts (which RV's are "land yachts")

i had no idea that i was rich enough to afford an RV or a yacht.

 

you know there is a "mobile" option and a 'static" option right?

[mr moose]

6 hours ago, Arika S said:

i had no idea that i was rich enough to afford an RV or a yacht.

 

you know there is a "mobile" option and a 'static" option right?

Yacht in the south of France?   I thought I detected a slight upper class enunciation when reading you posts.

 

 

[Arika]

37 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Yacht in the south of France?   I thought I detected a slight upper class enunciation when reading you posts.

 

 

literally me:

 

 

The S in my name even means Sailor, i was so meant for boats!

[mr moose]

12 minutes ago, Arika S said:

literally me:

 

 

The S in my name even means Sailor, i was so meant for boats!

I knew it,  how many butlers?  do the maids where french maid outfits or are they all cat girls?

 

 

[Arika]

7 minutes ago, mr moose said:

do the maids where french maid outfits or are they all cat girls?

They are all Catgirl maids!

[Quackers101]

27 minutes ago, mr moose said:

are they all cat girls?

PS. they are all scared of water and a reason to use starlink, when the days are long.

[Kisai]

10 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

You obviously are oblivious to some of the costs associated with deploying new cable runs etc for providers.

No, I'm not. If you offer a service, you are responsible for maintaining it, which mean upgrading/replacing infrastructure that was installed 50 years ago.

 

10 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Here's a hint, I was privy to some of the backend costs associated with deploying to the area where I could only get T1 connections.  The estimated cost to run the line was a million dollars.  In a similar location, where they set a price of $10k for deployment...I watched how they did it.  Literally had 10 construction guys, digging down, then laying the fibre.

That's a new install. If you live somewhere that has electricity,  phone or cable, that work was done in the 20's, 50's or 80's. You know how they install fiber? They go back into those same access tunnels they made when they installed electricity, phone, gas, or cable. If you happen to live somewhere where utilities are not buried, it's even easier, those electricity, phone and television cable services are on the pole with 100m of your home.

 

You can not equate the person who lives on a farm 100 miles from the next farmer with the people who live 1/4 mile from each other down a rural road. The reason these places don't have service is because they already have a shared service from someone else (which was the case with at least one rural community in BC,) or the city already had one local service provider that was ahead of the curve, until they weren't, and Telus or Shaw didn't buy them out yet.

 

The place I literately lived in the 80's, had NO CABLE and NO GAS until the 90's. The Shaw cable box was literately at the corner of our property, and whenever the power was out to our house, cable was out for the entire south east side of the river.

 

10 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

In non-dense areas, or areas where cables run underground it can be extremely expensive.  Here's the hint as well, if they have to run $500 worth of new cabling to a place to upgrade it (and upgrade a SAC box that only supports 10 users), the ROI is going to be multiple decades.  Also, if you are talking about Starlink, the cost for keeping Starlink running is a whole lot.

 

Again, you're arguing in circles. You can not expect a satellite service to have any ROI if you market it only to farmers and RV/Marina parks. They expect ROI by having people in dense areas sign up, because they can afford it, and maybe their local crappy ISP hasn't upgraded a single thing in 30 years. This is the same traffic congestion argument the cable companies use. 

 

Wireless bandwidth is use-it-or-lose-it. Everyone on cable back in the late 90's and early 2000's were basically sharing the same pipe to the cable headend. So once they had more than 5 customers, they had to actually install more capacity. Meanwhile, phone service was direct to the head office and each customer had their own connection. But today's VDSL2 is usually just a small box on the sidewalk within 100m of the building. 

 

With Wireless, you make the cells smaller. Which is what cellular networks did in built up areas.

 

 

 

10 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Putting in data caps on a bandwidth limited space to prevent one user from messing up the experience of other's isn't greed in the sense trying to extort money.  It's simply making it so that the regular users don't get a bad experience from one person.  Oh and here's another hint, at the current rate and customers they haven't really hit profitability yet for it.

No it's just a cash grab in the hopes that users will be unaware of it and fork over thousands of dollars in overages. You know what actually happens though? People just cancel the service without paying. That's what happens with cellular wireless data, and that's what happens with wireline data "overages"

 

People are not stupid enough to pay for data overages, because they know their usage wasn't meaningfully impacting the network, otherwise they would have noticed their inability to use their service. 

 

You know what people did back in 1990's with Napster and the early 2000's with Kazaa? They maxed out their bandwidth 24/7 because they were told they had unlimited internet.  That's why caps came out. Because the ISP's saw they could make a profit off the pirates. That was back when games were still under 1GB and streaming video was not a thing.

 

Today this is ISP's double-dipping on charging the streaming provider and their customer for the same bandwidth.

 

Data caps are not "congestion management" it's solely greed. If they really wanted to manage traffic they would provision the devices to limit the time slots to a set level of bandwidth, and if in fact a certain geographic area is congested, they wouldn't offer the high bandwidth options at all. 

[Donut417]

9 minutes ago, Kisai said:

If you happen to live somewhere where utilities are not buried, it's even easier, those electricity, phone and television cable services are on the pole with 100m of your home.

To add on to this. I heard AT&T literally zip tied fiber to copper phone lines to install them faster. 

[wanderingfool2]

52 minutes ago, Kisai said:

No, I'm not. If you offer a service, you are responsible for maintaining it, which mean upgrading/replacing infrastructure that was installed 50 years ago.

 

That's a new install. If you live somewhere that has electricity,  phone or cable, that work was done in the 20's, 50's or 80's. You know how they install fiber? They go back into those same access tunnels they made when they installed electricity, phone, gas, or cable. If you happen to live somewhere where utilities are not buried, it's even easier, those electricity, phone and television cable services are on the pole with 100m of your home.

They are responsible for maintaining a certain level of service.  You are NOT responsible for upgrading the infrastructure.

 

Again, you are arguing blindly out of hate.  If you bothered to read what I said, there was already a dedicated T1 line in place, and the estimate as a million (in the backend).  Again, a similar location, which by no means in a new install, was the $10k.  Not everything is cut and dry as you think it is.

 

Here's the process for upgrading to fibre, since you don't realize how expensive it could be [again I got privy to a large chunk of the process as I had to be onsite, or things I viewed or heard when I was talking to the rep/accidentally CC'ed on the email chain]

Tech sent to site to inspect areas, find/identify the correct conduit, SAC box, and pole the line needs to follow [in this case it was within 100 metres to the SAC box but had to go to the pole and through the conduit]

Permits required to work

Dedicated crew in place to pull bring the fibre along the existing line [it was a 4 person team].  Based on the area, it still took them another hour to pull the line. [So that's 4x$15]

 

Even when you ignore that, assume it's a fibre pull to a standard house.  If you assume $0.30/meter, the average distance to a SAC box is probably about 100 meters (standard block size).  That is a cost of $30/house of deployed fibre, plus the extra $20 to convert the fibre to the phone lines/internet (and that's low balling really).  That puts a cost to install at the very very minimum $50/house (of which they would need to recoup costs).  That doesn't even begin on the fact that to do that they have to drag a trunk line to the SAC box and all bunch of other costs.

 

Anyways, the point is there are plenty of places that will not have wired connections that can really compete.  So just stop with the foolhardy argument that it's intended to compete against the highly dense wired connections.

 

1 hour ago, Kisai said:

Again, you're arguing in circles. You can not expect a satellite service to have any ROI if you market it only to farmers and RV/Marina parks. They expect ROI by having people in dense areas sign up, because they can afford it, and maybe their local crappy ISP hasn't upgraded a single thing in 30 years. This is the same traffic congestion argument the cable companies use. 

You are the one who keeps insisting that it's unreasonable, yet making the same argument that it's intended for dense areas.  It's pointless talking to you, given that you seem to lack the ability of proper thought/reasoning when it comes to this subject.  I've already quoted you where even Musk says it won't be for dense areas, anyone who knows even a tiny bit would tell you that sat. internet is not mean for density, all the articles talking about Starlink talk about if you are in a city don't do it...and yet you are willfully blind by saying that they are expecting those people to purchase Starlink.

[suicidalfranco]

took them 4 years but they are finally bringing fibre to my house in the rural part of the commune i live in.

upgrading from 100mbps to 2.5gbps. with a 12€ increase in my contract. going to 37 monthly.

 

difference between italy and north america: infrastructure was never let to devise of cable companies. In this case the fiber network is managed by a wholesale company

https://openfiber.it/en/operators/partner-operators/

 

and this is what competitions looks like

[PaulFCB]

 1 gbps for 6$/month, my 8TB and 18TB Seagates have some work to do to keep up with the Blu Ray Movies cause no cap. This has been standard for about 7 years now, for 3 years even where my mom lives since retiring on the country side got gigabit cable lmao.

 

 8$ for 5 gbps and 10$ for 10gbps coming in the future but only a few neighborhoods have it so far, there are some costs for installation though, also my cables are from 2001 so clearly need to change them.

[oali24]

On 11/7/2022 at 4:29 PM, Arika S said:

that's nice but i don't live in the US.

yeah but I think her point is more that in many places the broadband is bad due to the government policies, not because wired internet is not viable like the accumulation of monopolies in Canada. Australia has a different problem in that the government did not want to invest in proper fibre in 2013 that likely would have cost less especially with how much the cost of fibre has declined, I'm from Jordan where data prices are really cheap due to very high competition and there are lots of fibre options for those who can afford it as there is loads of competition. Starlink also raises concerns that money that would have been spent by customers on the maintenance fibre network are diverted to starlink instead, I'm not suggesting you downgrade your internet for no reason, but I don't think we should necessarily be hoping for starlink and sattelite internet generally to become the main way to connect people in places where it wouldn't be necessary.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/nov/10/secret-figures-reveal-coalitions-cut-down-nbn-tech-three-times-more-expensive-than-forecast

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/may/08/they-will-do-nothing-to-fix-it-why-the-nbn-still-matters-to-many-voters

[wseaton]

Anybody who thinks Starlink can compete with terrestrial broadband thinks Elon can build a warpdrive.

 

Terrestrial providers, especially in N America are limited by greed. Starlink is limited by physics. Guess who wins when it comes to competition? All terrestrial providers have to do is roll a cable, or set up a 5G tower. They just dont care because there's not enough clients in the RV park over the mountain to make it worth it. Elon has to do a space launch...then another one in 5years. 

 

Starlink's spreadsheet doesn't add up and it doesn't pass basic checkbook balancing. Elon can't replace Starlink repeaters fast enough in the long term. He's competing with HughesNet. I would rather buy Theranos stock than invest in Starlink. Its Iridium on steroids. 

 

Thats cool Starlink is providing Netflix for remote locations. Humanity is saved. Starlink can't compete with areas that already have terrestrial broadband because the infrastructure costs are too high. Terrestrial providers can just lower prices. Elon can't. 

[Arika]

24 minutes ago, wseaton said:

Thats cool Starlink is providing Netflix for remote locations. Humanity is saved. Starlink can't compete with areas that already have terrestrial broadband because the infrastructure costs are too high. Terrestrial providers can just lower prices. Elon can't. 

Tell that to telstra who increased their prices because they hold a monopoly over large swaths of rural Australia.

 

Telstra adsl

$99+$24/month

7mbps up

0.6 Mbps down

 

Starlink

$139/month

250 Mbps down

40 Mbps down

 

There are my 2 options. 

[suicidalfranco]

2 hours ago, Arika S said:

Tell that to telstra who increased their prices because they hold a monopoly over large swaths of rural Australia.

 

Telstra adsl

$99+$24/month

7mbps up

0.6 Mbps down

 

Starlink

$139/month

250 Mbps down

40 Mbps down

 

There are my 2 options. 

Can't argue with this people, now he will tell you how fiber or 5g is better and completely ignore the fact that no ISP will bring you fiber or 5g.

I'm happy that I'm finally getting fiber to the home, a bit less for the extra 12 a month for the next 4 years, but I won't deny that s to starlink is a viable option when all you have is adsl or worst.

And it may end up being what I'll end up relying on when I'll purchase my next house which is further into the countryside compared to where I live now.

 

And I've seen starlink in action, had to do some in place assistance for a client cause the remote assistant tool we gave him couldn't pick a reliable 3g/4g signal from where it's base of operation was located.

He did have starlink thankfully, and with it I could have my colleagues connect to my laptop with TeamViewer and help solve the issue I couldn't figure out.

[Arika]

1 hour ago, suicidalfranco said:

Can't argue with this people, now he will tell you how fiber or 5g is better and completely ignore the fact that no ISP will bring you fiber or 5g.

I'm happy that I'm finally getting fiber to the home, a bit less for the extra 12 a month for the next 4 years, but I won't deny that s to starlink is a viable option when all you have is adsl or worst.

it's what i always see. it's people who live in the city with perfect fiber or cable internet saying "starlink makes no sense, why does it exist, it's so expensive, why would anyone buy it?"

[Dabombinable]

29 minutes ago, Arika S said:

it's what i always see. it's people who live in the city with perfect fiber or cable internet saying "starlink makes no sense, why does it exist, it's so expensive, why would anyone buy it?"

Before NBN (and the ADSL2 we finally got 2 years before due to "pair gain" bullshit) it would have been amazing. Yeah, we'd have the upfront cost but the monthly cost and data allowance - even if limited to 1TB total full speed data (not just a certain period of high use) Starlink would have been far better than putting up with highly unreliable, expensive, 50GB/month low signal mobile internet (towers were on the back side of our areas hills so 2 bars was the best most days). And the throttled speed was only 256Kbps (in practice we never even saw 128Kbps and still had dropouts).

[suicidalfranco]

17 minutes ago, Dabombinable said:

even if limited to 1TB total full speed data (not just a certain period of high use) Starlink would have been far better than putting up with highly unreliable, expensive, 50GB/month low signal mobile internet (towers were on the back side of our areas hills so 2 bars was the best most days). And the throttled speed was only 256Kbps (in practice we never even saw 128Kbps and still had dropouts).

yeah but didn't you know? it's mobile therefore instantly better than sat, no question asked. and the math dont lie: 256kpbs > 240mbps

take that Musk!

 

/s

[suicidalfranco]

47 minutes ago, Arika S said:

it's people who live in the city with perfect fiber or cable internet saying "starlink makes no sense, why does it exist, it's so expensive, why would anyone buy it?

and in before why would live out of the city 

[GOTSpectrum]

3 hours ago, Arika S said:

it's what i always see. it's people who live in the city with perfect fiber or cable internet saying "starlink makes no sense, why does it exist, it's so expensive, why would anyone buy it?"

I'm pretty lucky in some regards, I have a gig connection option... but it is only semi reliable. My other option is a blazing fast 6/3 connection which although is better than many have access too its not really competition. With starlink around I at least have another option if my current connection continues to have issues in the long term 

[oali24]

On 11/10/2022 at 12:31 AM, Arika S said:

it's what i always see. it's people who live in the city with perfect fiber or cable internet saying "starlink makes no sense, why does it exist, it's so expensive, why would anyone buy it?"

yeah, it does have its use but its more current government policies that allow monopolistic services to exist like in places like rural australia, right now it makes sense in your case to use starlink but it might eventually become uncompetitive as they start adding more restrictions like this and the cost of installing fiber continues to fall. There are definitely areas that are too remote for fiber but this is still a very small percentage of internet users.