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Comment on SpaceX projected 20 million Starlink users by 2022—it ended up with 1 million

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?

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PlexSheep@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I find your comment to be a bit North America focused. Surely there are many places in the world where that stuff is handy.

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- dragontamer@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  You realize that the Ukrainians are spending $2500 / month per terminal, right?
  
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  - ironsoap@lemmy.one ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    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.
    
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    dragontamer@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    You don’t understand today’s economy.
    
    Companies today run below costs to trick you into thinking they are legitimate businesses.
    
    You need to calculate the actual costs of launching 60,000 satellites every 5 years because this dumbass idea literally falls out of the sky because the orbit paths are so low.
    
    Much like how Uber or MoviePass have fake business models with fake prices for years, Starlink has a fake price on the consumer facing side.
    
    So how do we get closer to the real price? We look at the thousands of terminals or other large scale deployments of Starlink. Like Ukraine’s $2500 price point.
    
    I understand that $100/month internet is gamechanging. However, it is also fake if it’s coming from Starlink, because we Americans can find companies for years to make a loss in 3rd world countries and fake our growth.
    
    Adjust the stats closer to reality, and you see the immediate problems.
    
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  - redcalcium@lemmy.institute ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    What?! The Ukrainians pay for starlink service? I though Musk said he donated them and eat the service cost?
    
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    astral_avocado@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Iirc he did at first until the US military worked out a deal with Starlink.
    
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i2ndshenanigans@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I support a few business that have locations in Texas that can’t get fiber or cable internet. We use Viasat for them. I wanted starlink since we were seeing people with the service that had way better speeds and latency compared to Viasat.

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sznio@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

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.

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.

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MeanEYE@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
No wireless communication will beat physical connection ever. Period. There’s not argument in it to be had.

All of wireless bandwidth can be crammed in a single fiber optic cable. All of it, with room to spare. And then you realize you can run as many as you like in parallel while in wireless communication only one device can talk at the time.

Cables are here to stay.

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