a musk company over promising and under delivering. Surprise surprise
this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2023
415 points (96.4% liked)
Technology
58131 readers
5174 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
At least he's consistently underwhelming across the board though.
I guess that's the only thing consistent of his behavior.... kinda sucks that companies like SpaceX are all related to him. I'd love to root for Starship to achieve it's set goals but also I'd hate to see him get even more rich... if that makes sense
No surprise there. It's overpriced, the quality is poor, the connection is frequently unstable, and the owner of a company is a bigot, who's also intervening in a war. To absolutely no one's surprise, this never would have reached the numbers he promised
Talk for yourself. Some of us need starlink. Quality is great. Price is high but it's space internet. Again connection is pretty fucking stable. Playing GeForce now on my TV thanks to starlink.
He's a cunt but product is not
I agree. It's the only option for internet in many places. I'm very happy with my Starlink service. I'd drop it in a heartbeat if there was a better option but for now it fits my needs.
load more comments
(19 replies)
I've heard mixed reviews, the big problem seems to be stability, at least around my area. I've heard it goes down frequently in heavy rain and snow (I'm in Canada), and people have had problems with satellites being blocked by trees (lots of trees in Canada).
For people with no access to Internet as is that's still a huge upgrade, but for people who were hoping it would open up the possibility of moving to and working remotely in more rural areas without good wired internet coverage it's a total letdown.
Hasn't gone down since March. Went down yesterday. Worldwide outage. My previous sat system went down frequently. Like once a week. Was 30mb down at full. Usually managed 15 most days. Sundays were pretty much unusable. Other options were dal at top 15.
So starlink is a fucking god send.
I think it is exactly that. Yes trees impact but you don't put the dish there. We had a good damn cyclone. It was fine. We were the only people in the area who had internet. The road washed out along with fibre. Can't get a better recommendation than that.
load more comments
(3 replies)
The product is objectively the worst possible option in any place that has options, which is most places. It may be useful for some people in some remote parts of the world. Doesn't make it a good product though. It just makes it the only product on offer.
Sooo.... some people need starlink?
Its not competing against cable or fiber, its competing against satellite internet and DSL. My family has a place in rural Maine and we used to have Hughesnet satellite internet and starlink is half the price and like 50x the speed.
We have options, just not good ones. After Starlink, the next best option where I live is 4G internet, which is way slower. Another satellite service or dialup are other options, both much worse than Starlink. We do not live in a remote location, just barely rural, and only a few kms from a town with gigabit fibre. Starlink is a fantastic service that has only gone down twice for us in the 7 months we’ve had it, and even then only briefly. I don’t think I can fully impress upon you just how much better it has made things.
It's better than than the rest. It works really well. What are you basing your reasoning on
I just checked the price and its $599 for the hardware + $99 deposit + $50 shipping. After that the service costs $120/month. I pay $65/month for fiber at the moment.
If you have fiber, it's unlikely you will benefit from something like Starling. Transfer data wirelessly through a constellation of satellites will have running costs much higher than just having a fibre. That is unless you have to dog a trench or run a fibre on mast for km for just one customer, which is where Starling starts making more sense.
Starling is for rural customers, mobile customers, and possibly an option to counter monopoly abuse by some Telco companies. But if you are in a city with fibre, then do use the fibre, that's your better option.
I paid the deposit over 3 years ago and they still haven't done shit.
load more comments
(24 replies)
Given how stable Elon is with his other companies, why would anyone be skeptical of letting him supply them with a utility service?
No way in hell I’d entrust my internet service to someone who unblocks Nazis and blocks the people who complain about Nazis.
As long as you post a Nazi tweet a day, your connection should be fine, though. It's called Tweet Heil.
XHeil.
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?
I find your comment to be a bit North America focused. Surely there are many places in the world where that stuff is handy.
You realize that the Ukrainians are spending $2500 / month per terminal, right?
This isn't a cheap system. Yeah, focusing on America where we have subsidies for rural internet (Government to pay part of those costs) is for a damn good reason. I'm not sure who can afford this in practice.
It is said that the terminal costs $1,300. And I'd expect that the communications will be hundreds+ / month. There's not actually a lot of people around the world who can afford that, but shoot. You can tell me which countries you think this is a good business idea for.
As I said earlier: Ukraine has crazy requirements where the Russians are conducting electronic warfare (and other... warfare...) where the costs are worth it. Anyone else? Because Viasat is right there at like $100/month. Unless you NEED a way to escape the Russian jamming of traditional satellites, why would you pay Starlink's crazy high costs?
https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/05/10/1051973/russia-hack-viasat-satellite-ukraine-invasion/
"Rural" includes oceans. So airplanes who are flying across oceans use Viasat right now, and its likely cheaper and more available than Starlink in practice thanks to the far fewer satellites that Viasat needs to launch and maintain. Yeah, 10 satellites are way, way cheaper than 40,000+ satellites. Who'd a thunk it?
I work on a ship and am in the Galapagos right now. Thr island is covered in Starlink terminals and they've changed the internet existence here. Posting this via public starlink WiFi. I have a friend in the Philippines, and same there, huge impact.
His point about your US centric point is valid.
Starlink has many issues network wise, but the price point is per country so it is still being well used around the world in rural existence.
load more comments
(4 replies)
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(3 replies)
Meanwhile, in Australia, the pricing structure and availability of Starlink is so competitive that it is demolishing the national/ state-owned infrastructure (NBN co), who are haemorrhaging users to Starlink.
In part because the previous conservative government ruined the network for pricing and in part because of the superior performance of the lower satellites. Either way, Starlink is faster and cheaper than infrastructure the citizens already own.
I just checked and it's almost double what I'm paying currently for 100/40 fibre.
I don't know where you got your figures but u suspect they're faulty.
At best it might be an alternative to Skymuster.
load more comments
(4 replies)
It's a shame what happened with NBN in Australia. Fantastic idea, shit execution because they cheaped out.
The poor man pays twice
They didn't cheap out. Liberals (the name of the conservative party, basically Republicans) spent 3 times as much money for a shitter product, and now Australia has to spend it all over again to redo it.
load more comments
(1 replies)
I hate the fact that a billionaire moron from another continent is ruining sky over my country
Elmo Musk fanboy heads exploded.
I see tons of ads when I drive around rural Indiana for Hughesnet. I've never seen an ad for Starlink. Why aren't they even marketing it to rural midwesterners?
Elon companies have never really done traditional marketing. Maybe they're just allergic to it?
I can sort of see that with Tesla. The word of mouth thing working for a pricey car brand. But the only way you're going to get farmers to know about Starlink is to advertise it to them.
They honestly don't even seem interested in anyone in the midwest getting it. They're only really interested in the coasts.
To get Starlink near me you need to be put onto a waiting list for them to roll it out to your area. But closer to the coasts (you don't even have to be all that close, Idaho gets it) and you can sign up and get started right away.
load more comments
(1 replies)
I almost got it, but gave up because of the CEO being the way he is. It's very likely that they will raise prices or add a lot of bullshit restrictions after initial adoption, and the dish is kind of expensive to buy and cancel once the bullshit starts.
And 500k are from ukraine
It works as long you ain't got to carry out a special military operation in Crimea!
load more comments
(1 replies)
view more: next ›