Starlink .... thoughts?

[Post and beam]

I am so p1ssed off with BT/Openreach after 4 failed attempts to actually provide service at our new build.

I give up and am thinking of a Starlink service. 4G/5G in this village is non existent.

Does anyone have any first hand experience of Starlink.

Tried the app yesterday and got a prediction of occasional dropouts due to 4.6% obstructions. But the direction of these obstructions is to the south. The mount would be on the north wall with the house behind me so no surprise the signal would not be good from behind.

[Crofter]

We use a Starlink Mini on our boat. It's been basically flawless. It only cuts off in truly horrendous downpours, but we're talking tropical thunderstorms, not normal rain.

My FIL uses a standard Starlink on his house and says it's been perfect. He gets about 350mb/s which is about ten times faster than his old BT connection.

 

My only concern about Starlink is that the packages and prices can change quite a bit. At some point Elon will probably throttle your connection unless you like enough of his Tweets 🤣

[SteamyTea]

17 minutes ago, Post and beam said:

4G/5G in this village is non existent

I use 5G, have a look at the providers and see when they are upgrading the infrastructure.

No idea about Starlink, quite expensive isn't it.

[Kelvin]

We’ve had Starlink for almost 4 years. It’s been more or less problem free. When we moved to the new house I had some trouble getting it to reliably reconnect so contacted customer support which is done via the app. Contact is then mostly done through email. They have a process they follow which resulted in them sending me a new cable and then a whole new system (dish, router, mount, and cables) Our original system then started working but it was too late to cancel the replacement. They told me to keep the replacement just in case. This was all free of charge. A few weeks ago they sent me a Starlink mini for free all we have to do is pay the £4 monthly keep active fee and if we use it we get a 50% discount on the usage fee. 
 

It’s become noticeably faster over the four years and we regularly see over 300Mbps download and 25Mbps upload. The ping has also improved from over 30ms to under 20ms. 
 

It’s expensive though it has become cheaper since we first started using it. 

It works even in horrendous weather. The only thing that has an impact is obstructions so careful placement is necessary. The app helps you with this though. 

 

 

Since the Vodafone/Three announcement I am now getting a good 5G signal outdoors with speeds that match Starlink so that’s an option. 
 

 

Edited 12 hours ago by Kelvin

[JohnMo]

29 minutes ago, Post and beam said:

4G/5G in this village is non existent

Have you tried all the providers - we have only Vodafone works, everything else is a big fat zero.  Worth asking anyone that comes to house, what provider they with and what the phone signal is like.

 

If you can get 4G 99% of the time its a great signal

[saveasteading]

32 minutes ago, Crofter said:

At some point Elon will probably throttle your connection unless you like enough of his Tweets 🤣

Politics aside, ( which would encourage me to find any alternative) he seriously could do some drastic policy reversal, but I guess the worst case is having to find an alternative.

 

Is there a satellite competitor?

 

Politics not aside: is the article that he thinks Brits sit outside hovels, smoking pipes real?  

 

[Kelvin]

4 minutes ago, saveasteading said:

Politics aside, ( which would encourage me to find any alternative) he seriously could do some drastic policy reversal, but I guess the worst case is having to find an alternative.

 

Is there a satellite competitor?

 

Politics not aside: is the article that he thinks Brits sit outside hovels, smoking pipes real?  

 

Not for residential use yet. OneWeb is LEO based but mainly aimed at commercial use (last time I checked) There are a few other LEO systems planned to compete with Starlink (Amazon for one) Plus there are some high Earth orbit services but they have much higher latency (hundreds of ms) so not that useful for residential use. 

[BotusBuild]

DuckDuckAI responds:

Starlink's main competitors include OneWeb, which focuses on connecting underserved areas with its satellite network, and traditional satellite providers like HughesNet and Viasat, which use geostationary satellites but generally offer slower speeds and higher latency compared to Starlink. Each alternative has its own strengths and weaknesses, making them suitable for different user needs.

[Crofter]

Kuiper, from Amazon, has launched about 100 satellites so far and is ramping up quite quickly now. I think they plan to be offering a service by the end of next year. 

By comparison, Starlink has launched over ten thousand satellites to date. 

 

The Chinese are also building at least two systems, but I don't know whether that will be available in the UK.

[-rick-]

I doubt any competitor will be truely competitive until they are launching on reusable launchers (like SpaceX). Before that the costs just don't add up. Other reusable launchers are coming (Blue Origin has its second launch scheduled this week) and RocketLab are working on one but SpaceX has a very large head start.

[Crofter]

35 minutes ago, -rick- said:

I doubt any competitor will be truely competitive until they are launching on reusable launchers (like SpaceX). Before that the costs just don't add up. Other reusable launchers are coming (Blue Origin has its second launch scheduled this week) and RocketLab are working on one but SpaceX has a very large head start.

Yes they have a huge head start.

But the Chinese are about to launch their own reusable vehicle (some time this month), and Blue Origin have such incredibly deep pockets that they don't really seem to care about launch cost at this point. They issued the largest launch contract in history, buying up dozens of launches on various rockets including Atlas V and Ariane 6.

Interesting times.

 

Of course it would be nice if we had a satellite internet option that wasn't lining the pockets of a billionaire or an authoritarian state. 

[crispy_wafer]

Another happy user with Starlink, anywhere between 180-290Mbps down 25Mbps ish up.  No issues with it at all.  Lad plays his games over it, fifa or whatever it's called, fortnite etc.  Latency is not an issue.

[Beau]

We had a nightmare trying to organise a new line through BT but in the end got it done through the Post Office. I see they have sold that part of their business to Shell Energy who might be able to sort your new connection. I think Openreach do the work regardless but Openreach were not the problem in our case.

 

We are in a rural area with poor telephone lines. Some have gone for Starlink and others Airband. We went with Airband based on price and no Elon Musk but not sure how widely available their service is

Edited 10 hours ago by Beau

[-rick-]

18 minutes ago, Crofter said:

Blue Origin have such incredibly deep pockets that they don't really seem to care about launch cost at this point. They issued the largest launch contract in history, buying up dozens of launches on various rockets including Atlas V and Ariane 6.

 

They realise that they are far behind and if they don't start building a network (and learning how to run it) they don't stand a chance so yes they are throwing money at it. But my general concern with them does seem to be that they have too much money so are building very traditionally and not doing much different from the Boeings of this world. I expect that will mean that even once they have a reusable rocket it will still cost a lot more per launch than SpaceX and they will have to spend a lot more time and money fixing that (if it's fixable). Even their pockets aren't deep enough to launch 10's of thousands of satellites using those high cost launch platforms.

 

18 minutes ago, Crofter said:

Of course it would be nice if we had a satellite internet option that wasn't lining the pockets of a billionaire or an authoritarian state. 

 

Amen, though don't expect the Chinese systems to get licenses to operate in the west (and that brings up another point, Starlink has been buying up all the radio frequency licenses building an even bigger wall around themselves).

[BotusBuild]

3 hours ago, Post and beam said:

after 4 failed attempts

Was one of those with EE? Good for a few people on here.

 

Was there a common issue causing each failure?

[Thorfun]

3 hours ago, Post and beam said:

I am so p1ssed off with BT/Openreach after 4 failed attempts to actually provide service at our new build.

we had issues as well but persevered and eventually got it all sorted for free and got about £700 in compensation as it took so long! 

 

not going to lie though it was a very frustrating process

[Post and beam]

35 minutes ago, BotusBuild said:

Was one of those with EE?

No.

Openreach are unavailable to speak to. So they did not appreciate that they needed to cut some trees to get a line of site for an overhead cable run. 

The first engineer that discovered this did not leave any notes for a subsequent engineer. so the issue was repeated when he arrived. 

In between this there were 2 cancellations of my service altogether from my previous address because they cannot seem to arrange a home move correctly.

On Tuesday last they just failed to turn up all day with no communication  to me of any kind.

They have lied about offering me dates for another visit. apparently waiting now for 3rd party permission to cut the trees. If they dont have this permission i dont see how they could offer me a new date. further proof that they lied to me.

I am done with the incompetent idiots.

[Thorfun]

5 minutes ago, Post and beam said:

I am done with the incompetent idiots.

hang in there! make a complaint to your provider and ask them to escalate it in Openreach. then ask them about the compensation (i think it's about £6/day of delay). it will get sorted eventually i'm sure and it'll all be worthwhile.

 

Starlink is expensive when i looked in to it and the 4G signal by us was just about usable but not for a permanent solution so we stuck it out and am happy now, plus i have about 2yrs free broadband from the compensation payment.

[ProDave]

This thread sums up the dire situation with providing decent broadband to any rural community.

 

We were with By on a lousy slow ADSL connection a few years ago and it looked like nothing at all was happening to provide a decent connection.  We knew fibre cables passed the end of our road, so at least we thought we might get FTTC with just the copper for the last bit, but that didn't happen.

 

Then a local private company stepped up.  We now have decent speed broadband 100Mbps up and down.  If you get a fault, you are phoning a local company, almost always the same person, no silly switchboard to frustrate you, and when they fix the fault they call you back and tell you what it was.  I wish there were more of these local companies.  This is delivered by point to point bespoke radio link.

 

Only now, 5 years or more behind when it was wanted have we had a company digging up our road laying fibre to each property.  I son't be taking them up on their offer.  Their fibre is buried in shallow bare trenches under the road verge and nowhere near deep enough as far as I could tell where it crosses the road.  First utility that needs to access their own services will likely cut the poorly laid fibres.

[Post and beam]

12 minutes ago, Thorfun said:

i'm sure and it'll all be worthwhile.

The thing is i have had this service at my rental for the past 16 months while we built this house. It really isn't worth it. The BT TV offering is not good. 

[Thorfun]

59 minutes ago, Post and beam said:

The thing is i have had this service at my rental for the past 16 months while we built this house. It really isn't worth it. The BT TV offering is not good. 

i agree. i just use them for the underlying broadband. i have individual subscriptions for the streaming services i want.

[BotusBuild]

@Post and beam,

You'll not get comms from Openreach. They talk to their customer, which is not you, it's your broadband provider. I know this from having to deal with BT and Openreach during my working life. Openreach themselves are crap at comes internally  let alone externally.

For my recent connection I started with Plusnet, and switched to EE on recommendation on here. EE were very good at keeping me informed. I also had a line of sight tree chopping issue.

Between switching from Plusnet and EE I did this myself as it was an easy job. As it happens EE would have covered the cost, unlike Plusnet. So, as you can see, choice of BB provider is important.

As has been said, persevere, but I do recommend using EE, and I have FTTP.

[Omnibuswoman]

2 hours ago, Thorfun said:

hang in there! make a complaint to your provider and ask them to escalate it in Openreach. then ask them about the compensation (i think it's about £6/day of delay). it will get sorted eventually i'm sure and it'll all be worthwhile.

 

Starlink is expensive when i looked in to it and the 4G signal by us was just about usable but not for a permanent solution so we stuck it out and am happy now, plus i have about 2yrs free broadband from the compensation payment.

 

I would echo the above with respect to Openreach - we had ongoing problems for about 6 months with BT trying to establish a connection. The Openreach fools engineers turning up, assessing the job as needing to go on the 'too difficult' pile, and making excuses not to do it.

 

I made a complaint to the Chief Exec of BT, and this got me a complaints handler who persevered like nobody's business to see this through. In the end, the connection was made. The heroes engineers that did it accidentally gave away that this one had been in their office for some time, and no one wanted to do it as it was hard. 

 

At the end of all of that palaver, we received over £700 compensation (the statutory amount per day), which paid our broadband bill for more than two years.

 

In the interim, we were using an EE 4G dongle which worked really well, despite the 4G signal here being a bit iffy.

[Onoff]

We have Starlink. Hassle free by and large and the support service is excellent if you need to talk to them (we had an initial hardware failure when we first got it). 

[Post and beam]

Well i bought a starlink standard this afternoon. Once i have it installed i will report back here and then tell BT  to do one.