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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[blackhawk887]

Still underperforming here in NW Nevada, but I’m sure they’ll park a couple of birds over us for Elon’s annual trip to the desert.

I am currently getting 250+ Mbps from our rural ISP, which beats any result I ever got from Starlink. It’s good for camping; that’s why they only get a month of usage from me a year.

It's underperforming the 5-50 Mbps that SpaceX advertises for the roaming service?

 

[blackhawk887]

Last summer my top speeds were 50Mb; same for the hundreds-plus neighbors here with similar needs.

50 Mbps is the max speed that SpaceX advertises for a plan that works for camping, unless you pay for priority data.

 

[blackhawk887]

Been thinking about retiring to Samoa but their internet is a big roadblock. Watching Starlink availability but their service map said 2023, then 2024, then 2025, and now it says service date is unknown at this time. IDK, it feels like their plans are breaking down.

That's probably a regulatory issue. Bureaucracy is the same everywhere.

 

[blackhawk887]

I don't think it's absurd but it is somewhat fragile. Elon's companies are a bit like Google; products last only as long as they sustain his interest. Keeping Starlink going requires spending a lot of money constantly launching new satellites to replace the ones that fail and re-enter. It's like a juggling act that way; the balls stay in the air but only until the juggler gets distracted.

Starlink is SpaceX's main revenue source. It's not going anywhere.

 

[blackhawk887]

It’s been two years since I deployed the Starlink. It has decent performance, but no plans or hope of keeping up with terrestrial wireless.

Bigger satellites allow for a lot more throughput with the same spectrum and user terminals, and Starlink definitely has plans for bigger satellites. They will run a lot more spot beams, and probably also tighten the cell size a lot. The lower altitude satellites will also have more throughput. And ISLs and maybe optical uplinks will massively increase backhaul.

200 Mbps is enough for now, but it's nowhere near what the long term plans are for Starlink. I expect we will see gigabit offerings within a few years (they already do offer 10 Gbps links, but that's not really a consumer thing).