Starlink satellites

[nuclearlemon]

i also have the 1970s phone lines and only one service that provides over those lines. no spectrum/comcast where i live. my other two options were hughes and viasat and apparently it's not a surprise to anyone here about how bad they suck. range provides service over phone lines but it's $80+ taxes for 1-10 mbps. i may as well use my phone for that. almost a year in, i've been happy with starlink, but i'm only doing internet browsing and streaming movies. no gaming or anything.

 

[dan1554]

I just got my starlink delivered along with this news. Definitely not excited about it, but where we're moving (in 2 weeks ) the only other option is $90/mo for 15mbps max. Hoping starlink never gets so saturated to make it look enticing.

 

[Corbet]

I'm streaming on 2 TV's, (apple tv, often recording multiple programs) have a Ring doorbell, internet and wifi calling with cell phones (3) all running on my Starlink with no issues. Well, way less issues than CenturyDink. But even 20MB would run all that most of the time. My biggest problem before was that lack of stability of DSL. Often I was under 10 and as low as 2MB and that didn't fly. Now I generally see over 60, sometimes 200, and never below 20. Now if I could just keep the power on with the 50 year plus old grid down here. We have the wifi on a battery back up but generally it's not fast enough to not reset the modem when we get a power chirp. Which happens a lot even in good weather.

 

[J1000]

Starlink down? Globally??

 

[dan1554]

Looks like it. Edit- back up

 

[simps80]

Goddam 1FB POTS lines with DSL
I guess I am sticking with Ma Bell

Slow but never goes down unless the SLIC down the street winds up under water for the afternoon anymore

Is it almost 2023?!?

‘Merica used to be good at stuff
Like patching pot holes
Get off my lawn TikTokers

 

[SteveH]

While everyone is complaining, I get 11 MB down and 1 MB up from $85/mo. with Centurylink DSL. This is only because I have a high-tech paired modem with 4 copper wires (!). Prior to that, we got 4 MB down, .5 up. I can stream and do work at home, but web page loads are painfully slow if there are cool photos....

Our electric company (Mountain View) is putting in fiber to the meters next year and promises 100 MB (or more if you want to pay for it). I will lose my Centurylink email address, but as if to add to the agony, Centurylink recently 'upgraded' their email recently and now I get about 85% of my emails and rest are lost or arrive days later. So, Centurylink can literally do nothing right.

Centurylink is the epitome of the last bastion of Bell Telephone system (gov't monopoly), complete with the attitude that you're stuck with them and whatever schocky offshore support you get, you should be happy for it. I will flee them with indescribable joy.

 

[DaveInDenver]

While everyone is complaining, I get 11 MB down and 1 MB up from $85/mo. with Centurylink DSL. This is only because I have a high-tech paired modem with 4 copper wires (!). Prior to that, we got 4 MB down, .5 up. I can stream and do work at home, but web page loads are painfully slow if there are cool photos....

Makes no sense, does it?

We had a bonded Qwest DSL in our Denver house that got us 40Mbps but that was in 2003...

Out here I can walk to the Centurylink central office, it's about 6 blocks away, and the best they offer us is 7Mbps/1Mbps.

The technology has matured even though it's not possible to cheat physics and downtown GJ isn't really the sticks. A loop of all copper at about 1km should be able to support much more than that in 2022.

My guess is, though, it's a combination of things, not least of which is no one seems to want to outlay cash to run fiber here. Many cities and counties have been willing to absorb or at least split the cost with a telecom and I don't think that's the case here.

Centurylink can literally do nothing right.

Ain't that the truth. I actually liked our DSL back in the day. It was reliable and at the time not ridiculously expensive for getting around two orders of magnitude (about 150x faster more than 256Kbps modem!) average bandwidth.

Although I suspect they do OK with all the municipalities offering broadband and of course they inherited the old US West last mile stuff mainly because they wanted Qwest's backbone infrastructure. They make their money on wholesale and seem firm about doing the absolute minimum the FCC and local public utility request of them.

 

[rover67]

I left century link about a year ago. I swear I would have done something nasty to them if we hadn't figured out something different. Total apathy on their part, it's like they know the copper laid in the 70's is garbage and have zero desire to fix it because it is antiquated architecture that will never make them money again. They have no reason to invest in its repair or upkeep. And, living in the mountains the junction boxes are always getting destroyed by plows and phone lines on pole are always getting whipped around and disconnected, and snow melt always finds the ridiculous connections they call adequate. I literally traced my own f'ing phone line through the neighborhood and fixed no less than 4 connections that were abysmal. That's AFTER they made ME replace the buried line to the house, then said I did it wrong and literally threw on across my lawn. it was like that for 3 years. no change.

Our best was 4mbps with more like 2 regularly and a ridiculous amount of noise with almost constant interruptions due to that.. Dispatched people all knew it sucked and would just try to find work arounds by using different lines or re-doing connections and it never got better. None of that is even considering that the actual service was down a lot and unreliable. The amount of anger and frustration they caused me was indescribable.

Anyhow we ended up building a network of radios and antennas in our neighborhood that allows us to get service from an antenna in the canyon served by fiber and in town on the hospital where we have a fiber backup..

Sure I had to fund the installation of an antenna on our neighbors mountain and actually build it all with a poured concrete base and hundreds of feet of buried power and solar backup, impossible to hammer in ground rods, wind, cold, lightening... but it was worth it. Also fortunately one of the neighbors is the brains behind it all and masterminded it. I just helped build the big stuff out. It wasn't my idea and we benefit from his desire to see high speed internet in rural areas.

Now we have reliable gig service and I did not know how much it would change our lives but it is night and day. Especially with two of us working from home every day.

We considered starlink but figured what we did would be easier to manage and control since we built it all.... plus we knew it'd be faster.. so far so good....

 

[Crash]

I left century link about a year ago. I swear I would have done something nasty to them if we hadn't figured out something different. Total apathy on their part, it's like they know the copper laid in the 70's is garbage and have zero desire to fix it because it is antiquated architecture that will never make them money again. They have no reason to invest in its repair or upkeep. And, living in the mountains the junction boxes are always getting destroyed by plows and phone lines on pole are always getting whipped around and disconnected, and snow melt always finds the ridiculous connections they call adequate. I literally traced my own f'ing phone line through the neighborhood and fixed no less than 4 connections that were abysmal. That's AFTER they made ME replace the buried line to the house, then said I did it wrong and literally threw on across my lawn. it was like that for 3 years. no change.

Our best was 4mbps with more like 2 regularly and a ridiculous amount of noise with almost constant interruptions due to that.. Dispatched people all knew it sucked and would just try to find work arounds by using different lines or re-doing connections and it never got better. None of that is even considering that the actual service was down a lot and unreliable. The amount of anger and frustration they caused me was indescribable.

Anyhow we ended up building a network of radios and antennas in our neighborhood that allows us to get service from an antenna in the canyon served by fiber and in town on the hospital where we have a fiber backup..

Sure I had to fund the installation of an antenna on our neighbors mountain and actually build it all with a poured concrete base and hundreds of feet of buried power and solar backup, impossible to hammer in ground rods, wind, cold, lightening... but it was worth it. Also fortunately one of the neighbors is the brains behind it all and masterminded it. I just helped build the big stuff out. It wasn't my idea and we benefit from his desire to see high speed internet in rural areas.

Now we have reliable gig service and I did not know how much it would change our lives but it is night and day. Especially with two of us working from home every day.

We considered starlink but figured what we did would be easier to manage and control since we built it all.... plus we knew it'd be faster.. so far so good....

That’s amazing, Marco! Good on ya.

 

[nuclearlemon]

In case anyone wonders about bad weather with starlink, I'm using my phone and streaming a movie and I'm in the blizzard in wyoming. (I'm 30 miles east of cheyenne, they have nothing. It's been a blizzard all day here and negative wind chills)

 

[Corbet]

Great to hear. I didn’t notice any issues with the last storm here either. But no where nearly as bad as that.

 

[Corbet]

I left century link about a year ago. I swear I would have done something nasty to them if we hadn't figured out something different. Total apathy on their part, it's like they know the copper laid in the 70's is garbage and have zero desire to fix it because it is antiquated architecture that will never make them money again. They have no reason to invest in its repair or upkeep. And, living in the mountains the junction boxes are always getting destroyed by plows and phone lines on pole are always getting whipped around and disconnected, and snow melt always finds the ridiculous connections they call adequate. I literally traced my own f'ing phone line through the neighborhood and fixed no less than 4 connections that were abysmal. That's AFTER they made ME replace the buried line to the house, then said I did it wrong and literally threw on across my lawn. it was like that for 3 years. no change.

Our best was 4mbps with more like 2 regularly and a ridiculous amount of noise with almost constant interruptions due to that.. Dispatched people all knew it sucked and would just try to find work arounds by using different lines or re-doing connections and it never got better. None of that is even considering that the actual service was down a lot and unreliable. The amount of anger and frustration they caused me was indescribable.

That describes our situation exactly as well. And we as a community discussed doing the exact same. We just didn’t have as good of line of sight to a source. Then the resident with the knowledge moved away.

 

[Corbet]

Dumping snow here today, 15”+ so far. Starlink has melted all the snow off the dish. Speed is very satisfactory.

 

[floating_lc]

I also had century link and it was the worst service and company I have dealt with in a while...Starlink is not only more reliable but it is about 5x faster (the bar was pretty low). Also....the option to take it with on remote trips and bike races does not suck.

 

[nuclearlemon]

After almost a year, I came home early from work due to weather and was trying to stream some tv...starlink kept losing signal. After a hour or so, I finally decided to see what was up and try rebooting the router.

Apparently the dish heater can't keep up with this wyoming storm and it has problems getting a signal when it's buried In a snow drift. A quick shovel and I'm back to internet and streaming