No wonder! In the recent hurricane, Starlink was the only thing that connected us to the world. Phones were down— landlines were down as well as cell towers— and cable and therefore cable and phone-based internet. People were cut off for weeks, unless they had Starlink and a generator. Then you were just fine.
One of the best things we had was a mobile Starlink attached to a brush truck. People could come up to the fire station and use the wireless network it projected, and we could take it out to the backcountry to help distant families let their loved ones know that they were safe.
I’m a big fan. They really came through when needed.
4 comments:
Good for those who need it. My ISP charges me $25 a month, so I have no need to change.
My experience of Hughesnet was some 20 years ago when it was the only (marginally) faster option to DSL in some areas. But I read lots of reports from North Carolina, mostly from Hams, who reported that Hughesnet in it's current 100mbps iteration was up, fast, and reliable. after the hurricane. So Starlink is not the only option for satellite internet -- although if you can get it, it is probably faster, and it has portable/mobile/battery-power options that I suspect aren't feasible with Hughesnet.
I work in the wireline telecom industry as a Senior Engineer (emphasis wireline-to include fiber optics) and my understanding of Starlink is you can get between 25 & 200mbs on average. Which isn't bad at all in a rural area but there is no guarantee on what speeds you will get up or down.
I suspect this has to do with your terrestrial location in relationship with a Starlink satellite in geosynchronous orbit above...it's always about location, distance and finally cost of infrastructure.
Personally, I long for the day when my rural area gets FttH as I have a measley 17mbs down from my current fiber fed to copper DSLAM situation...lol...but it is what it is and was enough to kick Dish & Direct TV to the curb along with their incessant price gouging and get Hulu etc. for cost savings as a consumer.
One last thing, never assume because you are on Starlink (or any other ISP) that what you say or what you view on the internet goes unmonitored.
Everything goes back to a POP...AT&T and Verizon are plugged into them and they are the conduits back to Big Daddy.
Jus sayin,
nmewn ;-)
Our Starlink lets us stream without a trace of lag. It's never out of service except for the occasional gap of a few minutes in a very, very heavy downpour. Locally, our options before Starlink were satellite (horrible service from Hughes years ago, I hear it's better now), local WiFi (horrible slow unreliable service constantly), or cable if they ever got around to connecting to our street (others in the county report constant outages). We ditched the local WiFi and our DirecTV satellite when we got Starlink.
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