this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2023
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I was waitlisted a while back but because of all the Elon bullshit when I got my email saying it was available I opted to just stick with Viasat.
Thats the thing.
Outside of the Ukrainian war, I'm not seeing much good use of this Starlink constellation.
Urban areas are already built to 5G, meaning high-speed wireless internet at far cheaper prices than satellite could ever hope to deliver.
Suburban areas have high 5G coverage, though it isn't perfect yet. As well as aging 4G (okay), but also a plentitude of fiber options from Verizon and Comcast. No, it isn't perfect, but the crappiest Comcast connection is still better than the best Starlink could ever offer in terms of price and reliability.
Rural areas are already covered by Viasat. Which is going to be more efficient due to the simple nature of only needing like 5 to 10 satellites in the 100-year orbit height... rather than 60,000+ Starlink satellites in the 5-year orbit height.
Ukraine gets a benefit because Russians are actively trying to jam the communications, so ~5 to 10 satellites could get disrupted, but its a lot harder to jam 60,000 satellites floating around. So yes, Starlink did manage to find a niche... only to have the lord of the communications openly claim that Crimea belongs to Russia and shutdown a Ukrainian operation.
So suddenly, Ukraine can't trust Starlink anymore. So who the hell wants to use this constellation?
Latency sucks with Viasat. You won't play multiplayer games on it, and even web browsing will be sluggish with how many round trips displaying just a single page requires nowadays.