the reason iask is that i was offered beta testing of starlink but when i finally received confirmation of its UK launch the cost was truly out of this world..nearly £500 for the equipment and then the monthly subscription was more than twice my current providers...and they stated that there wouldbe breaks in service / service not guranteed so i decided not to take up their service.
Early days moorlander999, as a Beta participant you have to roll with the punches, when StarLink get a few more satellites aloft and roll out the service to the general public, things will be different, by then pricing will be competitive and the service will be 100%.
I doubt “One Webb” will make it’s service open to the general public anytime soon, but will be good for commercial uses, GPS and military use etc.
Quote: Originally posted by Bob61 on 05/5/2021
If it gets any faster it will change pages while you are just thinking about it
More than just web pages? Am I missing something? Apart from social media of course.
I do use internet banking but it doesn't have to be very fast to add up my money
Ha I certainly know what you mean about speed in counting my money too!
I do think you are missing a lot of things that a broadband connection is used for ... And let's ignore gamers who really do need a lot of speed.
This country has largely been kept ticking along by a large army of people working from home. Far from only city traders mentioned by Francais, these are often workers close to minimum wage! My wife works from home usually 3 days a week and she manages a team of customer care advisers on behalf of a national business. All of these advisers need sufficient bandwidth to access several systems for their employer, several systems for their client, be able to communicate with each other as a group and privately. The manager also need access to live call statistics, be able to see their screens, access even more systems and take part in video conferencing. (I've probably forgotten loads of what she does but she won't be reading this!). Often these people will be sharing a connection with someone else also working from home.
While my wife is busy working upstairs, I frequently need to be able to stream television or radio. I watch far more streamed TV than I do the broadcasts that come through the aerial or dish and often in hd or 4k (although I haven't got hd eyes these days!). I expect my entertainment to be as trouble free as her work ... You don't want to watch a 250km bike race for the picture to freeze 50 metres from the line!
I wouldn't class us as heavy users and I do find that 150 Mbps is plenty but add in 2 homeworkers and kids studying for school and someone gaming and you can see why providers are aiming to supply ever increasing speeds
We are lucky in an urban environment with a full fibre connection. It's not going to be practical or cost effective to supply full fibre to a lot of remote rural properties which is where the sort of service available from Starlink is really quite exciting.
Very well put Mart if you don’t mind me saying, during this lockdown we have wanted to keep more in touch with family, especially my BiL 67, who since 1982 has lived in Berlin with his Turkish lady partner.
Neither of them have a mobile phone, no PC/Laptop internet etc the only mode of communication with them is via landline or snail mail, they don’t even have a CC between them, it’s almost as though they are still living in the 1970’s.
In a way I admire them for avoiding the trappings of this modern age, each to there own I guess.
I am struggling to keep up with all these StarLink launches, anyway two more batches of 60 have gone up in the last week, making that a total of 1,558 StarLink satellites in LEO, with another two launches to be squeezed in before the end of the month bringing the new total to 1,678
It will be interesting to see how many they will have in orbit by the end of the year, I am guessing at least 3000, with that many, they should be able to roll out the service to the general public around the world, not just Beta customers.
One off the challenges for StarLink is getting the go ahead in all the various countries to allow consumers to sign up to the service.
Well another 60 StarLink satellites were deployed yesterday, interesting that Viasat has spat there dummy out, and is seeking to have Starlink deployment halted as of 1st June this year.
Of course that will not happen.
Viasat along with a few others offer a vastly inferior internet satellite service and have had a captive hold on the market since around 1986, it would seem that there time is up now that StarLink has arrived.