Does anyone have Starlink?

[PTmowerMech]

I'm about fed up with my ISP. Rate increases. Paying for 15mbps and rarely even get 10.
I live 8 miles from town. About a year or so ago, they started laying fiber this way. They got about a mile out of town and just stopped. Coming from the other direction, they laid it all the way to the county line, (which is about 2 miles from me) and stopped.

I've been looking at Starlink for about a year now. It's finally available in my area. But have been putting it off because it's $120 per month. I'm sure there's taxes too. Plus there has been absolutely no one to talk to. Their customer service is all emails. I hear they respond pretty quickly. But if internet goes down, so does my email. Unless I walk outside with my phone. And even then it's shotty.

Does anyone else have Starlink?

 

[Hammermechanicman]

I have starlink. I replaced DSL that was only getting 3mbps. I am happy with starlink.
Speed test from the starlink app

 

[PTmowerMech]

That's amazing. What's your customer service attempts been like?

With my phone company, I can call them with a problem and it's usually resolved that day or the next. Unless it's a weekend.
Or if I'm complaining to them about paying for 15mbps and only getting 3.

 

[Hammermechanicman]

I have not had to contact starlink for customer service. I was an early adopter and pre-ordered and waited over a year for the service to be available. When it was they sent the kit and I set it up and no issues. Frontier DSL was a PITA. Every time you call you get the "You are in a high usage area" I would complain and it would speed up to the 20mbps I was paying for then a few days later back to 2 to 3 mbps.

 

[bertsmobile1]

Do you know any one who is connected by the fibre ?
While it is frowned on by ISPs there is nothing stopping you from either sharing their connection via a microwave bridge or getting second connection at one of the houses that have fibre and using a bridge.
Unless you have 10 kids all watching HD netflix at the same time you will never need anything better than 10MBS .
I use mobile Wi-Fi for the web
I have 2 phones and I never use them for anything other than making phone calls & taking to odd photo .
Some times check the weather if I am motorcycling
Both are very cheap prepaid yearly services ( $ 15 AUS / month ) and both give me 5 Gb of " free" data
So that is 10Gb at up to 30MBS for $ 30/ month
Down side is without an actual ISP you are limited to web mail services .
I still have a dial up email only account to preserver my old email addresses .
I used to have a DSL service but the data limit at "full" speed kept on dropping and the Peak hours kept on getting longer so I was always getting shaped to 256 kb .
When I bought it I got 20Gb at full speed during peak times 8am to 8 pm
When I dumped it that had changed to 5 Gb at peak which was 8 am through to 2 am

 

[Hammermechanicman]

No Fibre here yet. I have a few of my networking clients setup with wireless links to barns and other buildings using ubiquiti Loco M5's.

 

[StarTech]

You guys are complaining about speeds. Try starting out at 1200 baud, moving up to 33kbps, switching over to DSL when became available @ 3mbps. It was like night and day. Then when I moved and AT&T couldn't even provide DSL in my area so I went with Charter/Spectrum and got 10mbps. Currently they are promising 300mbps in my area but computer is limited to 100mbps. Anyway all I see is around 77mbps on downloads and around 12mbps on uploads. So it take around 4 minutes to upload a 350mb file. That is only slowness I notice here.

Now service rate $95 for internet is rough. But hoping the optic fiber system being installed will cost less but if I was will to pay for cell phone that I don't need then I can get 300mbps service from Verizon for $40. The problem is with the phone it costs more than what I am paying for the current service including the VOIP phone.

Anyway I watch TV and being on the computer at the same time without hiccups. So I can't complain about the service other than the cost.

 

[Hammermechanicman]

When I was on DSL I couldn't stream netflix without buffering every couple minutes and any large file transfers just timed out. No problems on starlink

Still got a couple 1200 baud modems out in the barn. If you need them LOL

 

[StarTech]

You should try downloading a 150mb file on 33K baud and everytime have someone pick the damn phone up during the multi day download. Getting a multiple download accelerator helped as I could restart downloads where the download got interrupted on the old system but DSL resolved that problem.

Now with the cable the download accelerator program is no longer of any use.

You have find ways to get done on slow connections. As TV I am lucky to be in an areas with 40+ channels over the air. Most are useless to me. Just watching (mainly listen to it) the new MeTV cartoon channel lately.

Anyway I got to get to the shop as I burning daylight and the heat will hit me later this morning.

 

[PTmowerMech]

So Starlink just called. The CS rep was very knowledgeable, nice and professional. He sold me. He said if I had any problems, I could just call that same number and id get support. But I didn't notice on their website that it's a monday through Friday type support.

Also, they offer refurbished equipment for over $100 less than the new. But it comes with the same 2 yr warranty.
I'm signed up and paid.
I'm going to use the Dish Network pole that's already mounted just outside the office window to mount the Starlink dish on. Hopefully, I can pull the dish cables out and simply run the Starlink cable through the same hole. (I should be so lucky).

I was watching this video about the pole adapter. They say it sucks. It only fits on the pole about 3/4" to 1." And it's only got one set screw. But in the link below the video, there's an aftermarket one that made to fit Starlink dish. It fits down the pole several inches and has like 6 set screws.