Here is the relevant thread.  Would a mod please reopen that thread and append the responses in this to that thread?

Starlink

New info

SpaceX Starlink user terminals tested by board members as beta nears

"SpaceX’s nascent Starlink user terminal technology – the consumer hardware that will connect customers to a vast space-based internet constellation – is being put through its paces in a series of closed tests with employees, board members, and investors.

This news comes around the same time as SpaceX took two significant steps towards a beta debut for Starlink internet service, completing the eighth successful launch of Starlink v1.0 satellites and opening a new web portal where anyone can sign up for updates on service availability in their region. According to COO and President Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX means to begin rolling out Starlink internet service once 14 launches are completed and ~840 satellites are in orbit. Whether or not that figure includes SpaceX’s first launch of 60 ‘v0.9’ Starlink satellites back in May 2019, it’s safe to say that that 14-launch milestone is just two or three months away if the company can sustain and average of two to three launches per month.

Specs-wise, the same virtual seminar revealed that a normal level of connectivity for a user terminal will be around 100 megabits per second (mbps) down and 40 mbps up. According to Musk, Starlink internet latency (often known as ping) might actually be better than fiber internet, offering ~20 ms for Version 1 and ~8 ms when Version 2 debuts (ETA unknown)."

15 July 2020 Update:

1.  SpaceX ‘Starlink router’ approved by the FCC

"A critical subcomponent of SpaceX’s Starlink ‘user terminal’ has received FCC approval, shedding additional light on the antennas and hardware customers around the world will use to access the orbital internet.

Deemed SpaceX’s “Starlink Router” in FCC regulatory approvals published on July 14th, the documents reveal that user terminals will ship to customers with a WiFi router – possibly designed and built by SpaceX itself – in the box."


A prototype of SpaceX’s Starlink user terminal – the antenna customers will use to access the satellite internet network. (SpaceX)

"Customers will have four options for installing the antenna, taking between five minutes and three hours to complete. Once the antenna is secured, customers will plug in a single cable into the terminal and route that cable to a convenient location inside the building that needs service. Based on SpaceX’s recent FCC filings, that cable will plug into a Starlink router capable of delivering power over ethernet (PoE) to the antenna, allowing a single cable to deliver power and connectivity. The router, of course, will have to plug into a wall outlet, meaning that the user terminally technically needs two cables, but that distinction is splitting hairs."

2.  SpaceX Starlink internet-beaming satellite service takes next step for beta test

"According to an FAQ on the beta published on Reddit, SpaceX will kick off the beta with users in the "northern United States and lower Canada, with those living in rural and/or remote communities in the Washington State area".

Participants also need a clear view of the northern sky because Starlink's system of satellites can only provide internet service between 44 degrees and 52 degrees north latitude."

I hope they go to lower latitudes.

3.   Reddit "copy" of beta test agreement

22 Feb 2021 Update

Starlink poised to double its speeds to ~300 Mbps by the end of the year

"Starlink may already be providing rapid web access to several remote areas today, but the satellite internet service is poised to get even better this year. As per recent comments on Twitter from SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Starlink’s speeds should double to about ~300 Mbps later this year, with latency dropping to about ~20 ms. "

16 April 2021 Update:

SpaceX Starlink internet could exit beta this summer

CEO Elon Musk says that SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service will “probably [be] out of beta this summer” as the company continues to rapidly improve “service uptime, bandwidth, and latency.”

On top of Musk’s belief that Starlink will be ready for primetime as few as 3-5 months from now, the SpaceX executive also believes that the company will have enough satellites operational to enable customers to take their Starlink dishes just about anywhere the service is allowed and even install and operate them on mobile vehicles.

   This is accurate. Service uptime, bandwidth & latency are improving rapidly. Probably out of beta this summer.

4 May 2021:


Updates will now be provided in the thread as they occur.
News: @SpaceX announces that over 500,000 people “have placed an order or put down a deposit for Starlink.”

Price increase inbound

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I'm glad I pulled the trigger on my kit right away. Had I waited two hours, I would have had to pay the higher price.

I guess I drank the Kool Aid because I don’t have mine yet and I’m okay with a price increase.  It’s been over a year since putting the deposit down, and as of 5 minutes ago, service is scheduled to expand in my AO next month.   Fingers crossed.

If I am paying $110, I better be allowed to move it and Starlink actually supports relocating the dish. In my test moves I have been locked out of my HQ service address several times until a slot opened up (I had to click refresh several times a day until it was open again and I grabbed it.).

is there a detail map of the hexes? moving about 10 miles this summer and not sure if I will still be in the same one.

I think there is, but I am wondering if that REALLY matters [within say 22 miles ], or if it is to just try and thwart folks from getting the gear and an account and using it outside of the area that they have authorized.

Musk has stated or suggested that mobile Starlink is coming or may be coming or will come when their usual optimistic schedule has been rendered useless.

So the payroll angle was only good for awhile?

On a previous page I had the impression that even if you were miles away from your delivery address, if you had a dish and an account, everything would be fine.-

It now sounds like that didn't work out?

No offenses meant, it just should be confirmed, detail wise, before folks may think they can head off wherever if they have the hardware.






ETA: The new software is too funny! Ryan beat me with an edit via Brownells.

Just got mine delivered yesterday. I got in just before the price increase.

Just hooked it up this morning. Download speeds are ranging anywhere from 150-250 mbps. I’m in rural Maine and we’ve been using DSL that typically only got about 2 mbps cause that was all we had access to.

Still waiting on mine to ship.

Congrats!

We were getting a whopping .48 mbps on our AT&T nighthawk router last night.

Moved my radome to my mast to make room for the Starlink dish on the back of my boat.  I have a feeling I’ll be staring at that empty space where the dish is supposed to mount for a long long time.

After 9 days of use, we've had heavy rain with lightning, a heavy snow storm, sleet and today the wind hit 51mph. My only outage was for ~40seconds on the front end of the snowstorm, I think the heater got behind for a minute.

I had ordered my first one for internet service at my cabin, but after a winter of shitty Mediacom cable cutting out multiple times a day and 3 days of work lost so they could be let in to the house to "check the signal" with nothing fixed...this one is staying on my roof at home and i'm getting a second for the cabin.  

What was your estimated service date in the app last time you looked?  I'm scheduled for service to expand in my area next month and want to get a realistic expectation on if they are meeting their dates now.  I've been bumped once so far, from Mid-late summer '21 to April '22.

I got a notification that mine was ready to ship this week. I check the estimate every now and then, and it was last estimated mid-22. So if yours shows next month, yours is probably immanent.

I hope so,  Thx for the info.

110 a month is cheaper than I was paying for that shitty OTR Mobile 4G LTE that had a 300gb hard cap. Granted it took a while to get to 300gb at 3mbps on a good day if you held your mouth just right with a 700 dollar cell signal booster targeting it’s tower.

We got our Starlink last month. It’s fucking amazing even with our obstructions. 96-97% clearance. We used to dread needing a phone or a windows update when it was like a gigabyte. Now, it’ll smoke it in like 45 seconds. Or, “wow, this is what the 4K tv is supposed to look like,” with zero buffering.

Last estimated service date before I got the option to complete order stated “mid 2022”, so i ended up getting it a little earlier than that.

Like a lot of posters in this thread, I had done the preorder back in Feb 2021. The date had been pushed back a few times since the preorder.

About the same as my Suddenlink account in Mammoth Lakes.. $119

Great, thx.  It appears we may be getting it this time.  I also got on the list Feb '21 so it's been a long wait.

I was invited to the beta twice but passed since i wasn't set up to load balance two ISP's at the time and it wasn't yet reliable enough to switch to (I work from home). Then I preordered March 1st, '21. Finally got to complete my order this week.

Well, I'm out.  T-mobile started offering cell network based home internet in my area and I gave it a try.

I'm usually between 50 Mbps - 90 Mbps, unlimited data and $50/month.  No cost for equipment.  Prior to this we had no home internet other than hot spotting from our cell phones.

After the last price increase, combined with a new service availability, I don't see a huge benefit for me.

First impressions….

Worth every damn penny.

Day one I didn’t position it well, and was having a lot of of issues. Of course a bad storm rolled in that night in top of it.

For reference, have three ViaSat dishes and four hotspots(with full building cell boosters) I rotate between.

The best ViaSat was decent at best, but highly inconsistent and spotty at worse. The worst one was damn near unusable. It acted like it was always being throttled, even being on the best plan and severely under data caps, yet would still post moderately decent speed test scores (50-50mbs down) with super high ping. But actually try and use it, and good luck. I would have to deal with buffering every 5-10 minutes streaming 360p. ViaSat bill was probably close to $1K a month combined, maybe a little less. Hotspots another $240 or so a month, plus initial investment of equipment.

At worst, I seem to be getting 100/10 from both dishes. Which is blazing fast for me rural. I’m over the moon about it. Last few days I have only one outage if 15 seconds that was reported of no signal received(and I’m pretty sure that’s about the time I would have driven in front of it). It’s been damn good, and they are still on the ground in a temporary spot.

Have Premium on order as well, excited to see the difference.

From everything I’ve read, the people who complain about it or the cost tend to be people who have other options. Even at $110 a month, it is pennies compared to other options that used to be available. I’d gladly pay more as it’s such a value add, primarily because it seems they do have the intention to not overload the network geographically.

If you order after the price increase, do they throw in a free JB sticker?

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I canceled my service after I moved 25 miles away.

I wouldn't even then......up to a few months ago our ONLY option was Ziply and we were paying 250 for TWO routers for a total of........70MB.

IMO, if you're complaining about the price increase (or cost of hardware), you're not their target market.  If you're complaining, it means you have other options.  For those of us where HughesNet was the only other option, it's 1) a godsend, and 2) still a great value.  

We've had Starlink for a year and it's been a game changer for us.

Starting to think Fedex lost my Starlink kit. Status updated to delayed on Saturday, no movement since. You had one job, Fedex.

Sticking with 30mbps LTE for $20/month.

Just couldn't pull the trigger when they sent me the email that it was my turn.

No shit.  I had the "choice" of HughesNet or TCT, which is basically cell towers and antennas.  It was at least better than HughesNet, but the upload speed was worse than StarLink and it was $158 a month.

I had no other option until about a month ago.  Then T-mobile started offering cell based home internet in my location.

I’m getting 90 Mbps, no data cap, for $50/month.  

Now, a big reason that T-mobile pushed service out to my rural location was competition with Starlink.  The guy who helped me mentioned that.  So, in a way, Starlink did give me an option.  But not by offering internet to me, but spurring other companies to compete.

Just noticed today that Starlink now has a coverage map!

Well at least ALL the larger city's in Louisiana have access now, the city's that ALREADY have fast internet.

I signed up for T-Mobile 5G internet, i'm sure glad I did not get a covid vax , and I get 170 down and 90 up.

SO much faster than ATT DSL!!

Have not cancelled and got my deposit back yet from starlink, waiting to see how T-Mobile does and I will decide which to go with if ever I get notified that my starlink order is ready.

They have availability there because there is low demand for it. People can get affordable high speed internet from other providers.

I thought the whole point was to get high speed internet for those out in the sticks like me.

You want them to arbitrarily decide whether each customer has access to other options and deny them based on this decision?

Been waiting well over a year here outside Birmingham, just loaded a fictitious address into their website and it says the system is at capacity.  So I guess I'll be happy with shitty 3mb Windstream for a while longer.

I think that shows how crappy the US internet infrastructure is

5 miles from me it's available.  If I have a friend in that grid order it would it work in my grid?