Starlink cuts satellite dish price from $600 to $300 in excess-capacity areas

The $600 standard price was replaced with regional pricing of $500 or $300.

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It is essentially science fiction coming true to have a phased array antenna in the GHz range as a consumer device which has a $300 price tag. Twenty years ago you needed to be a major world military to build such a thing and the price tag would be seven digits. That is essentially what electronically steered radar is just at much higher power output.

Most of the time I don't really think about it and it just works but the fact that Starlink dishes exist at all is kinda amazing. Add to it that they are in constant communication to a constellation of thousands of sats overhead is even more surreal.

Supposedly SpaceX has filed for FCC certification on a Starlink mini dish which is about half the size of standard and presumably lower power. I would switch in a heartbeat for my boat even if it has lower speeds because sweet jesus does Starlink suck down the watts.

 

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So I just checked and the hardware for me would be $411.10 for the dish, wall mount, shipping and tax. A lot more reasonable than it used to be. But monthly service would be about $130 including tax which for the speeds they provide isn't a very good deal IMHO. But if you have no other choices it is a godsend.

I know Comcast has applied for Federal funds to run fiber out to our subdivisions but haven't heard if they were awarded or not. If they get green lighted we should have broadband available within the next 2-3 years hopefully and I'll just stick with my current 10-35Mbps rooftop microwave setup until then. But if they get turned down I'll probably bite the bullet and go with Starlink.

Or knowing Comcast there is a non-zero chance they do what they have been doing for 30+ years now. Apply to for federal funds, get approved, keep the money, deploy nothing. In five years apply for more federal funds because the need for broadband is even more critical.

 

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It seems a shame they removed the automatic alignment from the newer dishes in order to save money.

Honestly it is a lot of complexity and worse the moving part complexity which is not great for long term reliability for not much utility. Even not aligned it works fine. This is more true now as they have increased the density of the sats.

Sure you should align it for best results but even roughly pointing north is fine. This isn't like a GSO dish where you have to perfectly get the azimuth and declination right.

In mobile application it isn't going to stay pointing North anyways and it works just fine. In fact those of us who were early adopters hacked the dishes to get them to lay flat because it trying to rotate all over the place as the boat/rv is also rotating just made a mess of thing. Otherwise eventually it got what I joking called gimbal lock in that it would get lost and never find the sats again. Once it would get in that state it seemed to search in all the wrong spots endlessly looking until you powered it off and on. Not sure if it was an edge case in the software or what. Cripple it so it can't move, stick it on a pole, and point it straight up and it has worked fine for over a year now long before fixed dishes were officially a thing.

 

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Your comment made me wonder if there is a way you could buy Starlink, use it for 2-3 years, and then if fiber comes to your neighborhood, sell the Starlink hardware (at some discount like for $200) and transfer the account to a new person? Or do they not allow transfers?

You can transfer it to a new person. SpaceX doesn't care. If you get a discounted dish you must keep that dish and plan (boats/mobile plans don't get discounted dish price) for a year (IIRC) before canceling/changing or you will be charged the discount amount.

Warning to anyone buying a used dish you must make sure the prior owner releases the dish from their account. Ask for a screenshot and also check the serial number on SpaceX sign up website. If they do not release it you own a paperweight. SpaceX will not help. You can not activate it. Zero exceptions. As far as SpaceX is concerned you aren't the owner of the dish until it is released by the prior owner. For all they know maybe you just stole a dish off someone's roof. Side note this setup also means the dishes are not frequent targets of thieves as a stolen dish is worthless except in tricking someone to buy a worthless dish.

 

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If the new Starlink antenna is a phased array, that would mean that to at least some extent it would be able to align itself without having to tip-tilt it. Does the new Starlink antenna have more give in its alignment requirements than the old antenna?

All Starlink dishes are phased array antennas. The alignment regardless of manual or automatic only needs to be rough. The dish electronically steers the beams it just has to be pointed in the general rough right direction. Even that is likely not really necessary in my experience. Mobile dishes just point up in a random direction with a slight cant to let the water slide off and they work. The dish on my boat is essentially pointed up at nowhere in particular but I do have it slanted slight forward but in a day of sailing that means the dish is pointing every direction North, East, South, and West, plus heeling on its axis and it works fine.

I think the automatic alignment initially was due to the fact that the network was very sparse with entire orbits completely empty so the dish did some tricks to point towards the direction with the most sats. Today that isn't really needed. For stationary locations they still have you point it towards the "best" location because why not.

 

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when the business goes bankrupt in a few years, who will be responsible for the huge chain of useless satellites orbiting the earth?

Gravity and Drag Inc.