Starlink .... thoughts?

[Adrian Walker]

1 hour ago, -rick- said:

 

Cost wise, Starlink is already profitable so any 5G add on service doesn't have to worry about paying for that..

It is operationally profitable.

It's interesting that it has to launch over 2,000+ satellites every year. 

[-rick-]

4 minutes ago, Adrian Walker said:

It is operationally profitable.

It's interesting that it has to launch over 2,000+ satellites every year. 

 

I thought it was profitable including the satellite launches but could have misunderstood.

 

They are raking in billions a year and thair launch costs are extremely low because of rocket reuse.

 

 

[Kelvin]

5 hours ago, -rick- said:

 

I thought the full fibre products fed back the fibre direct to the local exchange (which should have at least some degree of backup power and be prioritised to restoration in event of an outage). Not sure if they have generators or not (I would guess they do in places with frequent outages). So maybe outages isn't such a worry?

Not around us. If there’s a power cut the fibre goes off line. 

[Alan Ambrose]

It shouldn't do - are you sure it's not just your own router or OR's ONT going dead?

[Nickfromwales]

1 hour ago, Alan Ambrose said:

It shouldn't do - are you sure it's not just your own router or OR's ONT going dead?

Don't they still have / utilise 'exchanges' for fibre? Surely it's not direct from source?

[Iceverge]

Our 5g supplier has decided to pull their service. 

 

We have a fixed antenna on the wall outside with a Cat6 to the router. 

 

Would this cable do for starlink or is it a special one? 

 

 

[Post and beam]

11 hours ago, Iceverge said:

Would this cable do for starlink or is it a special one? 

The Starlink cable is proprietry and a standard ethernet cable will not work. 

The ends of the Starlink are slightly different. They also claim that because their antenna is quite high power that ethernet cable cannot cope.

[-rick-]

1 hour ago, Post and beam said:

The Starlink cable is proprietry and a standard ethernet cable will not work. 

The ends of the Starlink are slightly different. They also claim that because their antenna is quite high power that ethernet cable cannot cope.

 

Certainly true of the original dishes, but I thought some of the newer ones had other options. I've seen plenty of people use normal ethernet cables (possibly with adapters) online.

[Redoctober]

Just an update to this thread since I asked about others experiences etc. 

 

I have now installed a Starlink system myself - I purchsaed the Standard Kit / Set up for £75 - it arrived within 10 days from the USA.

Due to the high winds we experience here, I just felt the wall mounted brackets they provide, didn't seem strong enough - to few points of contact for my liking. So I purchased a more robust one for £65 and fitted it to the chimney. 

 

All set up and working and  a much improved experience from the system which I had before - which was a SIM card relying on a mobile network coverage. 

 

Using their App, the system is performing very well with 100 mbs being recorded - whatever that means😁

Edited 5 hours ago by Redoctober
typo

[Iceverge]

Nice. There's a residential and residential lite. 

 

Is the upgrade worth it for an extra €15/month? 

 

 

[Redoctober]

@Iceverge not sure if this is a question to me specifically, but all I can say is -  I was paying £18 per month for our internet via a mobile network - Although it worked, we found it to be sluggiish and very tempermental at best. These frustrations led me to research Starlink. 

I now pay £35 p m  with Starlink and the performance is so much better. 

[Alan Ambrose]

>>> Don't they still have / utilise 'exchanges' for fibre? Surely it's not direct from source?

 

As I understand it a direct fibre from exchange to you. In a bundled cable with other fibres of course - except for the last drop to you. Cables joined every few km I believe.

 

>>> Although it worked, we found it to be sluggiish and very tempermental at best.

 

The speed of mobile connection, of course, depends on where the local cell towers are and whether you have good sight of then, which networks they carry, whether they have 5G or not, whether you're using an antenna and how good it is, how well it's positioned, and also how clever your router is. I was surprised to see I had 60 Mbps download yesterday, and we're quite rural.

[-rick-]

1 hour ago, Alan Ambrose said:

>>> Don't they still have / utilise 'exchanges' for fibre? Surely it's not direct from source?

 

As I understand it a direct fibre from exchange to you. In a bundled cable with other fibres of course - except for the last drop to you. Cables joined every few km I believe.

 

AFAIK it's a GPON network:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPON

 

So a single strand of fibre is shared between groups of houses with splitters in splice boxes as houses split off. The bandwidth you get is shared between the other people on the same fibre but you are very unlikely to notice any issues because the links are very fast. The laser transcievers can go at least 2km, 10km is easily available so there is no need for any active (powered) electronics between you and the exchange. There may be some very rural places where the exchange is more than 10km away, in which case BT might have chosen to use a powered green box as an aggregation point rather than deploy more specialised transceivers.