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re: Star Link Internet in NELA

Posted on 12/20/23 at 11:09 pm to
Posted by FCP
Delta State Univ. - Fightin' Okra
Member since Sep 2010
4814 posts
Posted on 12/20/23 at 11:09 pm to
quote:

pros and cons of Star Link Satellite Internet?
Had it as the only internet option for a couple of years. Ultimately, Spectrum spent a small fortune to bring fiber to me, and we've moved over to that.

Pros: It will work almost anywhere. As long as the dish can see a window of the sky, it will find the satellite constellation.

It's an easy installation. Literally plug and play.

Support is robust, and Starlink will ship you replacement equipment for almost any reason.

Speeds are impressive (especially as compared to HughesNet). We routinely pulled speeds around 100Mbs off-peak, and we never dropped below around 20Mbs or so. Latency is the real issue with any kind of satellite internet. I've seen Hughes test around 1000ms (i.e., a full second). Starlink ran around 30-40ms, only slightly slower than fixed copper networks. OTOH, latency drops under 10ms with fiber--routinely getting 4ms with Spectrum.

Cons: Upfront costs. It was about a $700 investment for me to buy the equipment. Also, the monthly charges were on the high side. I live it a high-use area, so my bill was $110/month. Starlink did drop some subscribers to $90/month in low-use areas.

Although support is robust, the only solution for hardware issues is for them to send new equipment. I had a dish, a cable, and a modem/router all fail over the 2 years we subscribed. They sent the replacements right away, but it took a full week for me to get the last shipment. That was pretty damn frustrating. They did adjust my bill on that delayed shipment, but we were still offline while awaiting FedEx to get here.

Weather can be a factor. Usually we only noticed service loss with heavy rain, but we would notice speeds drop off with "regular" rain.

As noted above, the overall speeds varied greatly. We could do just about everything we needed (WFH, some gaming, and shitposting on TD.com), but things like video calls were affected by the latency.

Basically, Starlink is the only legitimate answer if there are no other available physical networks. If there is fiber or even a reasonable-priced copper network, you will get either equivalent or better service for a lower price. Also, if you are dealing with a terrestrial provider, they will likely have available technicians to repair issues much sooner than Starlink can ship you a replacement via FedEx.
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