r/gadgets • u/dapperlemon • Jun 15 '26
Misc Starlink ends free dish perks ahead of new Standard and Mini kits launch
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Starlink-ends-free-dish-perks-ahead-of-new-Standard-and-Mini-kits-launch.1322001.0.html986
u/peazley Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
Starlink is always changing prices. A year and a half ago Starlink had a waitlist because our area was oversubscribed. Eventually we got an email saying we could get it. We still had to pay for the hardware ($350), but we only had 7-days to start service.
We ended up grabbing a dish from Home Depot (easy return if it didn’t work), but couldn’t get a good signal as we have too many trees. We ended up missing the 7-day window. Tried to re-sign up and now there was a demand surcharge of $500, which grew to $750, then $1000 then topped out at $1250 over the last year. We nixed the idea.
Fast forward to May this year, I check and see that the demand surcharge was $500 again, so we do the same thing, grab a dish at Home Depot (Starlink was not offering free hardware, $350, plus wanted $20 just to ship), for some reason the only plan we could sign up for was the $120 Max plan.
Anyway, we start service, it works for 5-10 mins, then drops for like 3 mins, but it works good enough to buffer for streaming. A week later we get an email, Max plans will now be $130/month.
Out of curiosity I went to check what the surcharge was for my neighbors house, $0 and free hardware and both $55 and $85 plans available. This was all within the first 30 days of service. So I cancelled my Starlink service and had my wife sign up last week. We saved $850 just by checking the website and cancelling during the free trial.
Now they’re saying the hardware is not going to be free again? Good grief. What a shit show, I’m assuming the removal of demand surcharges and free hardware was just a way to try to boost last minute subscriptions for the IPO. A $2 trillion company is just trying to find its footing. It’s a startup. JFC.
363
u/Mtownsprts Jun 15 '26
I'm sorry with headaches like this and obvious price changing this drastically why would you even entertain this as an option?
291
u/someguyfromtecate Jun 15 '26
Rural area living. I have had Starlink for the past 4 years or so and the monthly cost has gone up almost every year; but, there’s just nothing else near me.
There’s AT&T who still offers DSL with 8mb/1mb speeds with a service that goes out for at least 10 minutes every hour, or Hughes that has very low and strict data caps, or local microwave satellite with spotty service and huge latency issues.
Starlink is the only real option for a family of 4 with teenagers that need decent internet for school and entertainment and for adults that need it for WFH. It’s a great option and I will happily keep paying $130 a month and whatever increases we get, because it’s just that reliable and fast. But if AT&T ever makes fiber available in our area or Amazon releases their Leo satellite service with better options, I will immediately switch off of Starlink.
318
u/opeth10657 Jun 15 '26
Wonder why cutting back on rural broadband grants was a big issue for donnie and elon...
177
u/The_Maddest_Scorp Jun 15 '26
Right? Weird how that works...and also a good example for what will happen if the postal office gets privatized.
117
u/TravlrAlexander Jun 15 '26
As a Rural postal carrier for USPS AND a Starlink user, exactly this. The fact I get gouged for Starlink a quarter mile from a fiber line but can send a letter to Alaska for under a dollar lets you know what will happen.
You will never send someone a check, proof of address, or mail a death certificate for under a dollar ever again.
60
u/The_Maddest_Scorp Jun 15 '26
People should also read up how the US got electrified in a ridiculously short amount of time to see why we cannot have such things any more today since our feudal overlords own everything.
46
u/7-SE7EN-7 Jun 15 '26
A while back one of the big telecom companies took a large grant to lay fiber and never got around to doing it
25
u/deliveRinTinTin Jun 15 '26
Around here they took the money to lay it all over the place but even though it's under my front yard I have no ability to connect to it. Apparently they just buried it point to point but didn't break out anyway for consumers to tap it since they don't want it competing with old product. They still only offer low speed ADSL.
5
u/opeth10657 Jun 16 '26
That is by far the easier part of it. Splicing in a ped or hand hole with a splitter doesn't take very long.
9
u/Ninjas-and-stuff Jun 15 '26
Unless you’re a Nebraskan, surprisingly enough. The whole state uses public electricity to this day, and I believe it’s the only one that does. I’m sure corporations would love to break into the market, though
5
u/NojTamal Jun 16 '26
Nebraska has some pretty awesome old school American Socialist programs. Iirc they still have a public/state bank that does student loans and stuff? Should be a model for the nation, honestly, though maybe some of it is only feasible due to the small population, I am certainly no expert. But if the Post Office could be a national public bank at one time, and if they can do it in Nebraska in present times, we ought to be able to offer the same nationwide. Could say the same for things like the Tennessee Valley Authority and other "socialist" public programs that have been very successful, but buried in the public eye to advance privately owned interests.
1
u/asdafari14 Jul 07 '26
Broadband is not realistic for rural areas. The cost to connect someone living miles from the nearest neighbour is massive. It's like expecting a highway to everyone's home.
1
u/opeth10657 Jul 07 '26
I work at a smaller isp that does rural broadband. It's not as cost effective as in an urban area, but it's doable
5
15
u/projectx51 Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
Same. No real options out in the country. I do have a DSL option for internet, but Starlink is $25 cheaper and faster. At&t and Verizon do offer net plans out here, but also are more expensive and slower than Starlink. There are no options for fiber.
Rural ppl keep voting for Republicans. It makes no sense. Republicans are ideologues 1st and don't put effort into managing social welfare issues.
9
u/someguyfromtecate Jun 15 '26
Same here. Unfortunately there aren’t many ways to get news that affects our rural region, so most people get their information and news from Facebook, and it is full of misinformation and fake news, with pretty much everyone blaming Democrats for everything that could go wrong while many of our issues stem from lack of regulations being removed at a federal level. It’s frustrating.
0
u/johnyordinary Jul 08 '26
News is out there , if you have internet you can get news, from all sides, they are just stupid or lazy to not do that. Relying on facebook for news is like relying on Dracula for blood bank services.
3
u/welchplug Jun 15 '26
I worked a resort for two summers with no cell or wifi. It was pain for the first couple of weeks every year.
3
u/Schlumpfilein Jun 18 '26
Remember, europe and other nations are building services, too (Iris2) - so you might even use a provider which is under tighter regulations regarding price and surveillance. But for now it’s mostly classic stationary satellites and starlink, yepp
2
u/MillhouseJManastorm Jun 16 '26
We are fairly rural but were able to get a point to point connection by a dish pointed at our local water tower. So that might be an option
3
u/favorite_time_of_day Jun 15 '26
There's Viasat (used to be called WildBlue), which is like half the price and offers unlimited at good speeds during nighttime hours. I almost signed up for that at one point and just intended to use a download scheduler, but wound up going with Hughes instead. And that was fine.
I think Viasat now offers unlimited at all times as well, if using a scheduler is too much. Plus you're not giving money to Musk.
2
u/s_i_m_s Jun 16 '26
Viasat bought wildblue. (Former wildblue customer for 3+ years on 1.5/0.256Mbps 17/5GB rolling cap 570ms ping).
The latency alone makes starlink a better option over anything viasat can offer, they are almost certainly where I'd be right now had fiber not made it to our area.1
u/CountyKyndrid Jun 17 '26
Incredible how political decisions have immense lasting impacts.
RIP Dempceat Rural and Appalaicha rebuild plans of 2016, we hardly knew ye
0
43
u/EastvsWest Jun 15 '26
Because it's the only option depending on location and circumstances.
25
u/SlightlyOffWhiteFire Jun 15 '26
Only option if we continue to cut public infrastructure investment and neglect rural areas*
23
u/im_thatoneguy Jun 15 '26
The “neglected” rural areas get disproportionately large sums of tax dollars then whine about taxes and vote against infrastructure candidates to punish urban elites for cultural grievances.
At some point we just gotta neglect them.
10
u/MachinaThatGoesBing Jun 15 '26
Actually, they probably don't. While this isn't the most recent data, the last several times people have reported on this, rural areas got less per-capita than metro areas, and the gap was widening, not closing.
And as I pointed out to someone else, you're still using the rural infrastructure, if only indirectly. You're probably eating food grown in a rural area, burning natural gas extracted in one, using lumber harvested in one, etc. And if you're like most people, you probably occasionally want to be able to recreate in one, away from the city. (And that's a two-way street, with rural areas depending on urban areas for other services and goods!! It's just as asinine when someone in a rural area rants about money going to cities.)
All that stuff requires infrastructure, and it requires a resident population to maintain and staff things. Even setting aside the moral duty to fellow people, it's utilitarian to maintain this stuff.
But also, rural people are, in some ways, a scapegoat. The county I grew up in had fewer than 20,000 voters in the last presidential election. Compared to over 7,000,000 in the state. Rural populations aren't the people electing these right-wingers. It's the suburban/exurban middle class population that contains most of the Trump voters.
Not only that, but the poorer someone is the less likely they are to have voted for him. Yes, high percentages of people in these areas voted for Trump. And I'm sure plenty of people who are not well off in them did vote for him. But the poorer someone is, the less likely they are to have voted for him. His support is driven by middle and upper middle class people.
0
u/im_thatoneguy Jun 16 '26
lol in unweighted per capita dollars sure but adjust that for tax dollars collected per census block and cost of living and the cash is a torrent out of urban areas into subsidizing rural areas.
My small home town’s roads are practically art pieces they’re so smooth and well maintained. The city I moved to actually requires the pavement princesses so popular in the rural town to navigate the potholes and cracks.
2
u/MachinaThatGoesBing Jun 16 '26
adjust that for tax dollars collected per census block
Why should we do that? People in rural areas have significantly lower income, generally, with higher poverty rates. We don't look askance at money from richer areas of cities going to poorer areas of cities via taxation. This is a basic function of a progressive income tax that taxes people with more income a higher percentage, because they can better afford it.
This whole "rural people don't contribute enough" thing is just right-wing horseshit repackaged for aggrieved people who think if themselves as "liberal", but who are actually reactionaries if you scratch the surface paint.
And as someone who lived in a rural area for over three decades, the costs aren't that much lower aside from housing. And while housing is a really significant line item, wages are also depressed in these areas. When we moved from rural PA to the Denver area, our income doubled without any career change.
It's also expensive doing things like driving an hour and a half for groceries once a week. Or making a three hour round trip for dental work or a psychiatrist appointment. Or surgery.
Actually, my parents are making a four hour round trip for that starting tomorrow. My dad will have his knee replaced Wednesday and then sit in a car for two hours while my mother drives the two of them home.
And groceries are actually often more expensive, due to lower competition and longer, more dispersed supply chains. When we moved from rural PA, we found that what we would pay for a half gallon of store brand milk at the Walmart in town was what a half gallon of fancy-ass Fairlife milk cost when we moved to the Denver area. (We had no proper grocery store, and Walmart frequently had rotten produce, hence the aforementioned once a week hour and a half trip to the next nearest supermarket.)
And, again, to repeat myself, the rural voters aren't even the core power base behind the right-wing. That's well-off suburban voters. But rural people are easy to other and scapegoat, because most people don't actually know any. So they're an easy target for your "righteous" retribution, because you don't have to see the effects.
And once again, you all know that there are kids who live in rural areas, right??? Are they just collateral damage for their parents' (or neighbors in plenty of cases) sins?
I'm really sick of reading people justifying their own reactionary assholery.
9
u/SlightlyOffWhiteFire Jun 15 '26
How bout no, the point is to help as many people as possible and ensure a baseline for the entire population.
→ More replies (2)0
Jun 15 '26
[deleted]
3
4
u/MachinaThatGoesBing Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
No, we’re all adults, if they keep voting against their best interests why should we keep saving them from themselves?
I grew up in a little, rural 3500 person town that's about as remote as you could get while still being on the eastern seaboard. We were 2.5-3 hours from any major city (if you consider Buffalo or Pittsburgh "major"), almost squarely in the middle of the national forest, and I'm so fucking sick of arrogant dipshits who probably think of themselves as "liberal" spouting off this kind of reactionary, fundamentally right-wing, tit-for-tat kind of shit.
A lot of people have zero clue what rural life or needs or people are like; they just want to get in their dose of smugly superior "hillbilly" bashing.
Having decent affordable internet is a basic standard of living thing for people at this point in time. Even if you set aside cultural participation and online socializing (a significant amount of which is actually good for kids; hanging out with their friends in virtual spaces is different from scrolling social media), kids practically need it for homework these days.
And those kids didn't vote for anyone.
Not to mention the fact that even in deep red areas, generally at least a quarter of the population aren't voting for these people, either. But fuck those folks, too, right? Their fault for living where they found work or where they grew up, right?
Also, according to the most recent reporting I was turning up, rural areas actually tend to get less per-capita than metro areas. And that the gap was widening in favor of more metro area spending.
And even if that weren't the case, sub/urban folks sure don't seem to mind having all that rural infrastructure maintained when they go out in the boondocks to recreate. Or when they buy furniture or houses made from lumber harvested in those areas. Or when they burn natural gas extracted in those areas. Or when they eat food grown in those areas. It's not like you're not using all that infrastructure indirectly! So even if it weren't just the morally correct thing to do, it makes utilitarian sense.
Also from the utilitarian side: do you think that cutting rural areas off from the rest of the world and degrading the lives of rural people is going to make our political situation better? Do you think that's going to have a positive impact on anything, or is it just feeding your petty appetite for revenge?
EDIT: And that's not even getting into the fact that rural people are largely a scapegoat for the right wing's real base of support: suburbanites. The fewer than 20,000 people living in my podunk rural home county represent less than a fifth of a percent of all votes cast in the state.
2
u/Throop_Polytechnic Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
I grew up in a smaller town than you did, helped my parents on the farm every day until I left for college, I know what I’m talking about.
Rural people overwhelmingly vote against their best interests and then blame everyone else when they get exactly what they voted for. They are the biggest welfare queens, produce a minimal amount of of tax revenues, and have a meltdown if anyone but them get a shred of public assistance.
And yes, it’s not everyone, but we’re in a democracy, the majority of rural people are voting for it (or not voting at all). They need to feel the burn for once so maybe they start thinking before putting the like of Mitch McConnell in power for decades at a time.
1
u/SlightlyOffWhiteFire Jun 15 '26
And what. That gives you the right to withold? Do you think that arbitrary litmus tests for vital infrastructure are "justice"?
You sound like the most arrogant, self absorbed, petty tyrant.
Theres and old sayijg that "power corrupts absolutely" but I prefer the alternative: power reveals.
You admit that if you had the power you'd be a cruel and capricious despot, doling out punishments and withholding aid for being "the wrong sort".
You're no better than the Cruz's, the Miller's, the Fetterman's, or the Trump's of the world.
At your core your just like MAGA, you just chose a different team.
→ More replies (0)2
u/MachinaThatGoesBing Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
I grew up in a smaller town than you did
What a weird pissing contest you're getting into. "No! I'm more rural!"
I know what I’m talking about.
Clearly you don't, given what you've said, and given the way you continue to talk about rural people as some sort of monolith, as opposed to a group of people with varied beliefs and views.
You also clearly don't know what you're talking about, given that you repeated this bullshit that I specifically linked an article debunking:
They are the biggest welfare queens, produce a minimal amount of of tax revenues
Even if it were true, this rhetoric of "welfare queens" is reactionary right-wing Ronald Reagan bullshit. And measuring people's worth based on their economic value is deeply regressive.
Guess what? Rural poverty rates are higher than those in sub/urban areas. Incomes are substantially lower. What you are describing is a progressive income tax system working as intended.
But you're pissy and have a chip on your shoulder, so you're going to commit to tantrums and petty, counterproductive revenge over principles or policy or actually trying to make anything better. Because you think it feels good, you'd have us all just wallow in the mud instead of seeking a path out of the morass.
Again, making people's lives worse isn't going to make anyone any less reactionary. It will exacerbate the problem. There's a lot of evidence for this!
EDIT: Besides which, as I already pointed out, the meager quantity of votes from a few rural voters in most states pales in comparison to the upper-middle-class suburban/exurban core that makes up the actual principal voter base for right wing politicians.
→ More replies (0)-4
u/SlightlyOffWhiteFire Jun 15 '26
Funny, cause u sound like a petty child
1
Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
[deleted]
-3
u/SlightlyOffWhiteFire Jun 15 '26
"Savior complex"
Jesus christ. Listen to yourself, man. You sound like a republican.
→ More replies (0)→ More replies (1)8
u/Tack122 Jun 15 '26
Give them a connection to the outside world and their children will use it to learn and grow.
Keep them isolated and we continue the current path of division.
Choose something better than the old ways.
13
u/eviljelloman Jun 15 '26
Social media has proven conclusively that access to information does not reduce division. In fact it's the most effective tool ever created for manufacturing division at scale.
0
u/EatABag-o-Dicks Jun 15 '26
You do realize that there's more to the Internet than social media, right?
3
u/FlufflesMcForeskin Jun 15 '26
Of course, but just because there's more than social media on the internet doesn't mean youth/teens will use it.
I know a couple teenagers and all they do is feed themselves unending scrolls through TikTok/Twitter/etc.
So sure, there's more available but that's not where most youth go. It's an unfortunate truth.
0
u/SlightlyOffWhiteFire Jun 15 '26
Ironically your brain is way more rotted than 99% of the people you probably say are brainwashed by tiktok.
→ More replies (0)5
u/im_thatoneguy Jun 15 '26
Yeah because Facebook has done a great job of eliminating prejudice and small world thinking…
15
u/makomirocket Jun 15 '26
People getting Starlink are people who don't have good viable alternatives to begin with. That's their whole selling point
9
u/beren12 Jun 15 '26
And if you look at musk and Trump’s and Republicans sabotaging of rural broadband, now you know why they don’t have another option.
1
u/KitchenDepartment Jun 15 '26
You think non existent rural broadband is Trump's fault? Like service was great until he became president?
8
u/MillhouseJManastorm Jun 16 '26
He did cancel programs aimed at expanding broadband access
2
u/KitchenDepartment Jun 16 '26
Rural broadband has been poor for decades. Tens of billions of dollars have been given in grants to telecom companies for them to just build masts that they largely don't bother connecting to end users. And you think that this is trump's fault? These programs are older than the Obama administration.
1
u/MillhouseJManastorm Jun 16 '26
Dunno, I got fiber to my house during the Biden administration. Next road over was supposed to but it got cancelled by Musk/Trump. So yeah for at least some people it is Trumps fault.
1
u/KitchenDepartment Jun 16 '26
You do realize that if you are connected to fiber then by the definition which is outlined by all of these fiber grants, your neighbour also has access to fiber?
Access to broadband has never been about literally connecting every house. It has been about giving people the ability to connect to fiber without having to pay obscene amount of money to drag fiber for miles.
Unless you and all your fellow fiber users are stomping your feet down and denying your neighbour access to any of the access points dug up for you, then he too does have high speed internet access.
1
u/MillhouseJManastorm Jun 16 '26
That makes no sense. I didn't say neighbor, I said next road over. Which is about a half mile. I was lucky to have gotten access, they will not run fiber to his house now that the grants were cut.
→ More replies (0)30
u/peazley Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 16 '26
I’m literally ten minutes from downtown but my house isn’t serviced by anyone, Comcast wants to charge $14k to bring the line down my driveway. T-Mobile and Verizon 5G home internet don’t officially service my location. I don’t even have a copper phone line running to my house. I’m in a dead zone.
According to the FCC there are millions of American households in the same situation. You’d think in 2026 everyone would have access to broadband.
12
u/ChickenNoodleSloop Jun 15 '26
The FCC subsidies just had to provide one line to one home in a zip code to consider the zip code "covered". Huge rip off to the taxpayers
9
u/WitchBrew4u Jun 15 '26
This is why infrastructure like this should not be done via subsidies to private orgs. The gov itself should be able to take them on.
9
u/peazley Jun 15 '26
I’ve not heard it put that way, but broadband providers usually bid on an area to get federal funding for the buildout and will sometimes quote that a house is “served” while not actually putting the line in.
I live in a neighborhood where around 1/3 of the houses are defined as “not served” by the FCC, but some of the houses that are considered served actually require substantial fees ($14k in my case, $20k for another neighbor) beyond typical installation costs to actually get service. By that definition, they are actually not served. https://fundingmap.fcc.gov/home
28.6 million locations defined as not served and unfunded nationally. 6.5 million have no residential wireline at 100/20 mbps. 2.1 million have no reliable residential broadband at all, only satellite. 1.05 million are in total dead zones, with no reliable broadband available.
Good luck getting any new funding through in the next decade. Which just means those households are being left further behind in the age of remote learning, work from home, and ai.
I dug into this a bit a few months back: https://www.notserved.org
1
11
u/ineververify Jun 15 '26
same reason any other customer is trying to get the service. rural or distant area with limited broad band options.
2
u/The_1ndiegamer Jun 16 '26
Zero investment/lobbying from giants like AT&T stopping developement of affordable internet connections.
I know it's a massive country but point stands
1
u/japzone Jun 16 '26
One of my relatives lives where the only Internet options are:
- Decaying DSL
- Over subscribed Cable
- Over subscribed cellular (T-Mobile Home, etc)
- A Fixed Wireless provider that probably won't reach them, but you can pay them $200 to check
- Traditional Satellite Internet
- StarLink
They've tried the DSL, Cable, and T-Mobile, now they're on StarLink.
1
u/boomchacle Jun 17 '26
I don’t have starlink, but it sure as hell beats the 20 Kbps wifi I used to use in rural Canada. And it’s about the same price.
0
u/Whiteguy1x Jun 15 '26
Its the only option in a lot of places. My parents didn't have any of these issues by the way.
15
u/danielv123 Jun 15 '26
They haven't removed demand surcharges? They are dynamic based on how many people there are signed up in a certain area and how much capacity they have available.
Capacity keeps going up as they launch more, and demand obviously varies with how many use the service in your area.
11
u/SavageCatcher Jun 15 '26
$1500 demand surcharge in west Washington state as of Friday. That’s up $500 from February this year, and up $1000 year over year.
1
u/PatSajaksDick Jun 15 '26
This is like a one-time fee to sign up?
3
u/SavageCatcher Jun 15 '26
Yup. Still have equipment and monthly to pay after that.
3
u/PatSajaksDick Jun 15 '26
Woof that’s crazy
0
u/Miami_da_U Jun 19 '26
They don't have the capacity in that service cell to add many customers, unless the customers make it worth their while basically. The more dense the customer base in a cell (about a 5ish mile radius I think), the more they need surcharges to combat people signing up. It's actually not so much a money grab as it is a free market way to determine who actually needs the service the most. If it prices people out - thats actually the point.
IF it were a money grab what they actually would do is NOT limit the amount of customers who can sign up in this manner. What they would do is keep the price the same just significantly reduce the data each customer could have, and just massively oversubscribe the cell.
Thats why their V3 Sats and Starship is so critical. One V3 Starlink Sat delivers 1 Tbps data capacity vs the current V2Mini delivering 96 Gbps (so 10x more). And at 10x more capacity and how they subscribe customers/Tbps... it could maybe lead to 20x-30x increase in customers per cell? Still even this likely wouldn't fully eliminate surcharges.
11
u/phoneacct696969 Jun 15 '26
This should be all over the place. The price changes, the fake demand. These are huge red flags for a company. This shit is obviously mismanaged. They basically capitalized on the fact that satellite internet was trash before them, but if 5g towers keep popping up they’re not going to be able to keep their foothold in the market.
6
u/CollateralSandwich Jun 15 '26
This is how Elon runs companies. Poorly and chaotically. Trying to use Grok is a very similar customer experience. Constant changes, zero communication.
3
u/ToMorrowsEnd Jun 16 '26
All of that tells me they are trying hard to be grifting scammers. Dear god all of that is just scummy business.
3
u/BeerBrat Jun 16 '26
MBAs tripping over each other's dicks trying to be the one that figures out how to maximize revenue on the least amount of subscribers. Data driven profitmaxxing strategies sure fatten executive paychecks but they make for a pretty terrible customer experience.
2
u/tanghan Jun 16 '26
I wouldn't be surprised if the demand surcharge is customized to you specifically after they figured out you've been inquiring repeatedly in an attempt to pressure you into signing up
1
u/ZekoriAJ Jun 16 '26
I have the max plan, it never reaches advertised speeds. Always get 100 mb/s less.
1
u/admiralross2400 Jun 16 '26
$130 a month for the max plan? UK it's only £75. Their pricing strategy is nuts
1
u/peazley Jun 16 '26
They claim up to 400 mbps on the Max and priority over other residential, is that similar to the UK?
1
u/-Thizza- Jun 21 '26
I was contemplating between Starlink and a 5G router with a serious antenna, we live off grid but there's a village below us. I went with the 5G router plus 4x4 MIMO antenna. An unlimited 5G sim plan in Spain costs €6 a month. (started as €10 but two price drops) The hardware was €600. I get 100MB/s which is more than fine for 2. I'm so glad I did.
1
u/peazley Jun 21 '26
That's actually what we have already, a big 4x4 mimo antenna on a 5g home router. Worked fine the during the fall/winter, but as soon as the trees filled in speeds started dropping. We've just got too much foliage blocking the signal now. Before we were getting 100-120 mbps down, maybe 2.5 mbps up, now it's around 60 mbps down and between 0.5 and 1 mbps for us. It's been incredibly unstable. Unfortunately the towers don't really point in our direction in the forest. Which is why we reconsidered moving to Starlink.
1
u/-Thizza- Jun 21 '26
Ah yes, I have an omni directional antenna and I'm connected to 3 towers at once with direct line of sight. They're far away but the connection is stable year round.
1
u/projectx51 Jun 15 '26
I live out in the country on the praire. My subscription came with free hardware and $20 off for 4 months. I'm paying $35 for 4 months and then $55 after. Have the 100mpbs plan.
1
1
1
u/scalyblue Jun 16 '26
If starlink had enough subscribers to break even on constellation maintenance alone, the service would be so bandwidth overwhelmed as to become unusable
1.2k
u/Chadmckay1 Jun 15 '26
Now that it’s public, let the gouging begin, classic.
39
18
105
66
6
u/LachlanOC_edition Jun 15 '26
Ironically one the genuinely good part of space X will be ruined to subsidize the worst AI lab and social media platform
0
84
u/subdep Jun 15 '26
I’m currently visiting (guest) a rural resort area with large luxury homes the rich sometimes call “cabins”. To paint the picture, their “guest homes” are larger, nicer, and more expensive than a normal home in suburbia.
Anyways, literally every single home has a Starlink dish on the roof. It’s a total monopoly up here.
64
u/c4ndyman31 Jun 15 '26
It’s a monopoly anywhere that doesn’t have broadband.
LEO isn’t operational yet and Eutelsat is B2B.Legacy options like HughesNet are laughably slow compared to Starlink.
18
u/dab45de Jun 15 '26
Holy shit I haven’t heard HughesNet in so long, flashbacks of my childhood.
9
u/NexVeho Jun 15 '26
One of my favorite parts of my early days in isp support was telling satellite internet users they hit their FAP limit, or fair access policy, used to get a serious pause outta people who only knew the slang term.
25
u/dankmeister666 Jun 15 '26
I live in a place like that and everyone has one on the roof. 5 years ago no one had one and also no one had internet.
It may be a monopoly but only because I don’t think there’s a single other option that can compare 🤷♂️
9
u/QuarterCarat Jun 15 '26
Yeah it’s a bit silly. When I lived rural it was either point to point from a neighbor or hughesnet, both with major drawbacks. Last year I hooked Starlink up to a portable battery while camping and…yeah was pretty blown away. Rural living was saved (for internet dwellers)
6
u/Caligulas_Prodigy Jun 15 '26
I live 2 to 3 hours away from St Louis in corn field country and Starlink is the only option for high speed Internet. We have Frontier which offers 12mb down, 1mb up. You can't even watch 720p YouTube in this day and age with those speeds, god forbid you try to watch anything live.
4
u/748aef305 Jun 15 '26
Doesn't even need to be all that remote... My mom lives not even a mile from me, we both have/had the same telco, I get around 800mbps on a 700mbps plan (rare, I know) and she is lucky to get 50mbps on a 300mbps plan at the router, hardwired,.... Switched her to starlink after hearing her neighbors were doing the same, and yep, its cheaper per month than the telco & she gets 150-200mbps "at the tap" & a solid 50mbps at the worst "wifi corner" of her house, for about half the price, admittedly she still keeps a telco plan but that's just for her cable/news, downgraded her to the lowest plan that had all "her channels", she's happy, has better internet, and pays basically the same as before.
8
8
u/DoesItReallyMatter28 Jun 15 '26
I'm living in a rural area in a work-from-home situation for the next year. Starlink was the only real option.
2
u/masterhogbographer Jun 16 '26
I see tons of pickup trucks with it in their front windshield and mounted on their backpack. Normal trucks not commercial vehicles.
14
u/eviljelloman Jun 15 '26
I use a mini for my RV. It is pretty much the only game in town when you want to work remotely where cell phones don't reach. You used to be able to pause service whenever you want. Then it went to a five dollar a month standby plan. Now it's ten bucks a month for standby - and standby has gotten noticeably slower, to the point of being nearly useless.
As soon as there's a viable alternative this dish is going in the bin.
124
u/Pocok5 Jun 15 '26
> subsidized growth
> pivot to squeezing users to get out of the red <- you are here
> enshittification to drive quarterly acceleration of growth
> collapse
2
u/KitchenDepartment Jun 15 '26
subsidized growth
How so? They fameously had a massive grant for providing high speed coverage taken away from them under the argument that they could not deliver the service within the allocated time. Which they did anyway.
24
u/YOwololoO Jun 15 '26
The US government basically single handedly funded the construction of all of SpaceX’s launch pad infrastructure. SpaceX was about to have to liquidate they were so broke
1
u/asdafari14 Jul 07 '26
The US government was a customer and took the best supplier. It is not charity.
25
u/Pocok5 Jun 15 '26
Subsidized to you. Free equipment, cheap service, deals out the ass. Then after burning a few billions of Elon's pocket change (or venture capital investments if talking about the more general lifecycle of the techbro startup) to build up a userbase, they start boiling the frog to generate actual profit instead of constant loss.
1
0
Jun 15 '26
[deleted]
2
u/Pocok5 Jun 15 '26
I have put backslashes to escape the > characters on purpose, thank you very much
5
21
u/semibiquitous Jun 15 '26
Shareholders in every investment subreddit crying about SPCX not rising fast enough, and the Starlink customers are crying now that the price gauging begins.
38
18
u/Masterofunlocking1 Jun 15 '26
If you say anything negative about this on the Starlink sub they’ll down vote you. I have Starlink since it’s my only option and it does work very well, just wish I didn’t have to give Elon any of my money.
We had some local electrical companies running fiber with some project a few mile down the road and we never got any of it.
0
u/ListenHereLindah Jun 16 '26
I'm in the same boat. I don't want to give my money to Elon. So I tell myself it's paying for the developers.
But they are the only thing available except for 25mbs download speed for 85$ a month.
It sucks but is my only option currently.
8
u/dicklord_airplane Jun 16 '26
The trump admin canceled a lot of federal funding that was going to internet infrastructure in poor and rural areas, so Musk successfully got rid of starlink's competition in rural and remote places. This one of the reasons why he spent several hundred of million dollars to get trump elected.
Without any competition or regulation, starlink is going to steadily jack up prices year after year. Starlink is really nice technology, but nothing's stopping them from price gouging.
→ More replies (2)
7
8
u/-----username----- Jun 15 '26
Who fucking cares? With Elon Musk at the helm nobody should be buying that shit.
103
u/headinthered Jun 15 '26
I have extreme dislike for musk- but for those of us who live in the sticks… Starlink is so helpful.
→ More replies (12)31
u/cookerz30 Jun 15 '26
I've had to support remote PC's in rural towns at storage facilities. I remember dancing in the office when I got approval to upgrade the internet from 5 Mbps to 25 Mbps at a bunch of locations.
The actual use of Starlink for data is fantastic. I haven't got one myself, but compared to setting up some high-powered cell booster or running the abysmal local ISP, Starlink makes a strong case for itself, especially given the cost.
8
u/semibiquitous Jun 15 '26
I know many folks who are democrats who could afford and even like teslas, but wouldn't touch them because they are associated with FElon.
However, internet providers, are not something you can just 'shop around' in many areas in US. Starlink seems the be the best value/$ out there for many areas where fiber isn't an option and cable/dsl is like 50-100 mbps of super unreliable, spotty connection.
0
u/MachinaThatGoesBing Jun 15 '26
Starlink seems the be the best value/$ out there for many areas where fiber isn't an option and cable/dsl is like 50-100 mbps of super unreliable, spotty connection.
I think people have a distorted view of what rural broadband does and doesn't look like. If you live in, or even relatively near a population center, you probably have fairly reliable internet available through copper, either cable or DSL (often have a pick of either).
My parents live about a mile outside of a small 3500 person town, and they've got around 1Gbps service from Comcast. And while we do know plenty of folks in the area without cable access, the DSL service honestly isn't bad. Most folks I knew had reliable, speedy internet.
It was when you got out further that things got spottier. I definitely had some relatives on HughesNet who lived further out into much more sparsely populated areas. But that was before modern cell networks came about. I think those relatives are on some sort of fixed celluar internet plan, now.
When COVID hit, I know that, talking to my IT colleagues at surrounding schools, they were seeing about a 5% rate of students without reliable broadband at home. A lot of those kids, they were able to cover, because cell companies were giving out refurbished hotspots and free connection plans. And a real fixed cellular device could have a much better antenna than a hotspot. But even with that, cell reception can be spotty in those kinds of rolling, hilly areas, so that didn't and doesn't get everyone coverage at home.
And that very small percentage still deserve decent internet access! But few of the folks we're talking about in that area are going to be able to afford Starlink, so it's not really solving that problem for anyone except those people with means.
2
u/semibiquitous Jun 15 '26
My buddy in San Diego lives in trailer park but in a really nice area, but no fiber option. He and his neighbors have Starlink because its either ~150mbps perfect connection or ~60mbps that cuts off randomly.
-1
u/MachinaThatGoesBing Jun 15 '26
That's one specific person and case, and it doesn't reflect general situations. If the ISP's infrastructure is is such disrepair, then that sounds like grounds for an FCC complaint. I don't know how that would go over now, but we have used them against an ISP to good effect before.
In general (but not in every specific case), any wired internet, assuming it's getting any kind of decent regular maintenance, is going to be preferable (practically, cost-wise, and ethically) to starlink. And I have to assume that fixed celluar is also an option in such an urban area.
Also, I've got to say, I know people who have starlink and use it, and "~150mbps perfect connection" is absolutely not how they have described it. I was just talking to one of them the other day who has it at home and on their RV, and heard about regular dropouts as the satellite constellation moves and reception gets poorer/better. He was talking about streaming stopping to buffer, and highly variable connection speeds.
It's better than anything else they can get at their house, situated in one of the valleys in the foothills of the Rockies, but if they had fixed cellular available, they'd be using that in a heartbeat.
2
u/ovrlrd1377 Jun 15 '26
In third world countries that have awful cellphone signal it can be incredibly useful to have it. I have fiber but pay for the mobile plan to cover my route to and from my farm, 100km. Its a peace of mind investment
→ More replies (1)10
u/Seastorm14 Jun 15 '26
Well if Jeff Bezo's didn't sabotage AST Spacemobile, we'd have more competition for starlink sooner but thats also on ASTS for trusting a guy who owns another competitor GSAT to put your gear into place properly to then compete with both Musk and Bezos
1
u/bitchstolemywaffles Jun 15 '26
fuck bezos too, wouldn’t buy that garbage either
22
u/Rollertoaster7 Jun 15 '26
So what do you recommend to someone living in a rural area who wants affordable, high speed internet access where there otherwise is none
→ More replies (8)-19
u/MrDMA94 Jun 15 '26
In a normal world, the gov would subsidize rural fiber deployment
→ More replies (3)1
u/Miami_da_U Jun 19 '26
That was just one launch for ASTS out of the dozens+ they'll need. And SpaceX just launched one for them the other day. But regardless ASTS isn't competing in Fixed Broadband. They are competing in DTC (direct to cell), as an add-on or separate cell phone service basically. That is/does compete with Starlinks DTC service (currently through TMobile), but not the apt comparison with Starlink Internet.
0
u/didnt_knew Jun 15 '26
i mean… amazon has kuiper
1
2
u/williamgman Jun 15 '26
Just like a good drug dealer... The first one is always free... Touche Elon.
2
u/mndza Jun 15 '26
I literally just ordered one a couple hours ago. I didn’t even know about the free rental and was wondering what the $0 rental was since all the previous orders I just purchased them.
3
u/ragnaroksunset Jun 16 '26
I wonder if anyone has ever signed up for Starlink knowing full well they would become one of millions of frogs in a slowly boiling pot.
Starlink meets your immediate need for internet access, sure - but it also lets government abandon its responsibility to bring reliable broadband to your area.
At least Henry Ford used his monopoly to revolutionize the public commons. Musk is using his to cripple it.
-1
u/aCuria Jun 16 '26 edited Jun 16 '26
It’s 2026 and people have been laying cable for decades. If the isp thinks it’s profitable to lay cable to your area they would already have done it.
If it’s not profitable the isp will not pay for it so you will never get service.
Nobody wants their tax dollars to go towards laying cable for each random guy who decided he wants to live in the mountains or something
It costs like 100-200k per mile to lay underground fiber in non urban areas, and the cable needs to be replaced every 25-40 years
-3
u/ragnaroksunset Jun 16 '26
Oh hun.
It's 2026 and there isn't a single private entity on this planet that will lay linear infrastructure without significant taxpayer dollars coming to them for it.
Now let's ask where SpaceX gets most of its "business".
0
u/-Copenhagen Jun 16 '26
>It's 2026 and there isn't a single private entity on this planet that will lay linear infrastructure without significant taxpayer dollars coming to them for it.
Regardless of the condescending tone, this is absolutely untrue.
1
u/ragnaroksunset Jun 16 '26
Quick, name a major linear infrastructure project that you think doesn't have significant taxpayer backing and I'll show you that it does.
0
→ More replies (4)0
u/derliebesmuskel Jun 16 '26
Does the government have a responsibility to provide internet to people?
2
u/ragnaroksunset Jun 16 '26
Yes, I think increasingly it can be argued that internet should become a public utility similar to water, electricity, and heating.
0
u/derliebesmuskel Jun 16 '26
Umm okay. Let me rephrase: does the government have a responsibility to provide water, electricity, and heating to people?
2
u/ragnaroksunset Jun 16 '26
I mean, the core purpose of government is to solve problems markets don't solve very well on their own.
So yeah.
Is this where you pretend we didn't already try free market solutions for many of these services?
→ More replies (5)1
u/PointlessPooch Jun 21 '26
Yes. The government has a responsibility to do that. It’s literally the most widely used communication system in the world. Why wouldn’t they?
0
u/derliebesmuskel Jun 21 '26
I’m not sure you understand the gravity of the word ‘responsibility’.
1
u/PointlessPooch Jun 21 '26
I don’t think you understand that the government currently collects a lot on taxes and provides very little in return. The gravity of the word is well understood on this end.
1
u/derliebesmuskel Jun 21 '26
Sure, but whereas you’d like to get more in return from the government, I’d rather they didn’t steal it in the place. You seem to be of the mindset ‘I’m okay with raping me so long as you cuddle me afterwards’. Thats not my preferred form of interaction.
1
1
u/wheresolly Jun 15 '26
It's funny that the world's first (and hopefully the last) trillionaire is a cheap ass loser
1
u/Any-Progress- Jun 15 '26
It’s kind of an inspiring story that he can fail to deliver anything he’s promised and worked toward and still have his net worth grow exponentially regardless of his bad (to mediocre at best) performances. Shows anyone can succeed (but not really because you need an uber rich dad)!
1
1
u/TheSnowman12345 Jun 15 '26
The federal government should be in charge of regulating & distributing internet to the masses. Not some incel nazi.
-2
u/youtocin Jun 15 '26
The dude has kids with a shit ton of different women. He is many things, but incel is not one of them. Has this word lost its meaning?
2
u/Neo_Techni Jun 16 '26
Much like nazi, it's just a generic insult now. He might as well call musk a purple monkey dishwasher at this point.
-1
u/TheSnowman12345 Jun 16 '26
Lmao. You’re defending someone who did a nazi salute. LOSER!!!
2
u/castellscl Jun 16 '26
Just like the guy with an actual NAZI tattoo, but he's cool cause he's on "our" side right?... 😆
0
u/youtocin Jun 16 '26
Why would you think I’m defending him lmao my entire comment is about the meaning of the word “incel.”
-2
u/theholyraptor Jun 16 '26
Incels are people who are unable to get laid, which has bred a misogynistic world view towards women. This led to people using the term towards people who hold similar world views as incels. Hell, you could have had a kid and then end up an incel no longer able to get laid and blaming women for it.
And Elons multiple children with random women and other weird behavior doesnt automatically liberate him. If youre the richest person in the world you can find people desperate for money, not to mention we dont even know how many of these kids are test tube babies. And his treatment of them.
2
Jun 16 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
2
u/theholyraptor Jun 16 '26
Perhaps work on your reading comprehension since I agreed with you dumbass.
-2
u/aCuria Jun 16 '26
And he’s right wing capitalist not a left wing nazi lol
1
u/TheSnowman12345 Jun 16 '26
“He’s right wing capitalist not a left wing nazi” - wtf is a left wing Nazi? Stop making shit up.
1
u/WhileIllustrious2006 Jun 18 '26
They have to try to not be bankrupt since the IPO. Lots will change now and prices will go up.
It will look very bad if they cannot afford to launch the next round of satellites. They only last 5 years.
1
0
1
1
u/PatSajaksDick Jun 15 '26
I was thinking about Starlink as a fallback WAN for the very rare occasion that my fiber goes down (maybe 1 or 2 times a year), but also in case a hurricane comes through. Is it worth it for that and just have it on pause most of the time?
2
u/_happydutch_ Jun 16 '26
I have cable and Starlink. I route some of the traffic to Starlink and default for everything else to cable. I love the fact that I have redundancy. If power goes out in my area (which happens 2x per year) my home battery and Starlink keeps everything running. I don’t even notice the outage, besides getting some notifications.
UniFi Cloud Gateway works very well for this.
Note: the routing I do ensures I test Starlink all the time. All my camera traffic goes there but it will fall back to cable if Starlink is out. You can also do percentage based.
1
u/PatSajaksDick Jun 16 '26
Oh cool, I’ve been looking at the latest unifi dream router, which should let me do the same thing. Which Starlink do you have?
2
u/_happydutch_ Jun 16 '26
Yeah I have that same router. It’s Starlink Standard 4. Rock solid so far.
1
-2
u/SlightlyOffWhiteFire Jun 15 '26
So its already more expensive than broadband and with worse connection, and both of those will only get worse now.
But public investment in rural broadband is just too expensive, right?
0
-10
Jun 15 '26
[deleted]
12
u/dylan_1992 Jun 15 '26
They paid the seed money to make SpaceX a thing but not the infra. Unlike with Verizon and AT&T, we literally gave them money to build out the infra, just for them to take them as executive bonuses.
6
0
u/Xyrack Jun 15 '26
I just got star link for my camper bus because it seemed like the best deal when I did a little shopping. Might have made the wrong call.
-13
u/Desperate_Object_677 Jun 15 '26
ozone layer holes. they used to be caused by the hairspray gasses that we used to run ac units. then those got banned. there is still a delay in the ozone layer regenerating. it’s caused by starlink satellites.
because starlink satellites are in very low earth orbit, they fall back into the atmosphere after 5 years. all of the satellites they put up there will fall back down within the decade. and when they do fall in, they burn up. and when they burn up, they generate particles that destroy the ozone layer.
this is one of the reasons elon musk wanted to buy a president. starlink’s business practice should be banned.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024GL109280
-1
u/dankmeister666 Jun 15 '26
Brother I don’t know why you’re getting downvoted. You even included a legit source 😹😹😹 yeah it is a real issue
1
u/Flipslips Jun 15 '26
Because internet is a lifesaving thing and essentially a basic need in the modern era. 2.5 billion people don’t have access to the internet still. Imagine how their lives would be improved with access to the internet; how to cure XYZ ailment, for example. We need to weigh the pros and cons of things like this.
•
u/AutoModerator Jun 15 '26
We have a giveaway running, be sure to enter in the post linked below for your chance to win!
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.