2mo ago

Let them eat starlink!

stolen from https://old.reddit.com/r/EnoughMuskSpam/comments/1kmadyp/musk_is_hiking_starlink_costs/

260 comments

The former $240/mo was not outrageous to begin with?…
These Elon fanboys just love getting scammed by him. I can almost hear the little pay piggies squealing now.
- I looked into Starlink years ago when I was RVing. It came out to over $600 up front in equipment costs, THEN $240 a month or w/e. And it's not like Elon wasn't a piece of shit back then, either. $50 a month for T-Mobile "5G at home" with no upfront or hidden costs did the trick nicely and bridged the gap until I found a place with cheap fiber. Now I have 2.5Gbps up and down and it's still less than half the price of Starlink before this price hike.
  
  It's worth it.
  If you're in the middle of the Pacific often.
  
  Starlink makes sense for the scenario it was designed fill the gap for. A lack of any other terrestrial options.
  Legacy satellite has always been terrible, but the only option in many rural areas, and obviously the middle of nowhere. Starlink is an insanely reliable and decent deal in most of those circumstances. That's it's bread and butter.
  But if you have literally any other option, it's usually not the best choice, it's not meant to be the best choice, it's intended for use where it's likely the only choice.
- I know one guy where he's just on a damn mountain. Not many other options.
  Not saying it's the option I'd take, just saying. If you're in the sticks in a red state...
  
  Yeah there are always exceptions of course. I’ve seen some in that position able to get away with direct line-of-sight connections for a reasonable rate, but it depends heavily on the layout of the surrounding mountains and location of the service provider plus you have to shell out for an antennae or dish. For any wondering, that’s almost always cheaper than the Starlink sign up costs.
  Then again, if internet is important to someone, gotta consider if mountain-side living is the right choice to begin with. I’m sure your acquaintance has his reasons though!
- Like it or not, it's the only option for high speed internet for large swaths of the world. ViaSat is the only competitor and they're even worse: slower, unusably high latency and ridiculously low data caps.
  
  I cant speak for other countries, but in the US, we are spending hundreds of dollars a month per household in these areas to the richest man in the world for shitty internet service instead of EITHER holding ISPs to the contracts they agreed to when municipalities gave then the right to build without competition from public services for which they were meant to supply high speed wired services to everyone, OR throw those contracts away and build reliable and profitable public services anyway and fuck the useless ISPs over. Instead we are just inviting in another ISP to fill the gap, this one also a racist fascist who is littering space with unregulated junk.
  
  But for those large parts of the world, 240 USD per month is even more ridiculous

Damn, maybe you should move to a radical leftist city where fiber internet is $50 a month.
- Try 10€.
  
  Where?
  
  Flat fee of ~€70 to connect and then free for as long as I live in this apartment. 1000/1000 speeds as well, pretty sick honestly
- 13-18€ for 1gig/1gig in Copenhagen is the going rate
  
  Sad German noises :/
  40€ for 250M over cable here. At least I don't have issues with congestion/slowdown in the evening, which is a common downside of cable.
- Us lucky fiber users, I can get 8gig symmetrical for $300 and 2 gig for $75 a month. Still nothing like other non American countries but damn do I have it good for living here.

I only have this to say: Fuck the sky pollution. Starlink has been ruining stargazing and star photography and Elon lied about its impact. He claimed they would be invisible with his amazing paint but they're still visible and fuck it up for people who enjoy watching the stars.
- I see them all the time without a camera. They are bright as the stars when they pass over.
- If you think ruining stargazing is the biggest problem, don't look up Satellite Collision Cascades
  The fucking muskrat is going to lock us down to Earth and make launches too dangerous due to debris fields
  And all of you are just complaining about artificial light
  
  Well I don't see myself going to space any time soon. But I do see myself watching the nightsky a lot.
  You're right though. It's another thing he doesn't care about.
  
  Starlink satellites are in low earth orbit and deorbit naturally after a few years because of the small amounts of escaping atmosphere slowing them down. A collision cascade can't really happen because it's a fundamentally decaying orbit.
  At least, there's no risk of lasting orbital debris, at the cost of the satellites having a much shorter lifespan.

Ah, so this is why Elon wanted the rural broadband bill killed.
- Why provide a public service when some capitalist can squeeze every penny from that same service?
  
  Well, we'll provide the service once we buy it from them because they ran it into the ground as a vulture capital operation, and then once we've invested a trillion taxpayer dollars into fixing it up, we'll sell it back to them for pennies.

Strange, I've downloaded almost 6TiB over the last month so far and my bill is still $120/mo.
EDIT: This appears to be for global priority customers (movable dish between addresses, on boats, etc) and seems to be because he's increasing his data cap by choice, not because rates are actually getting hiked. Us normal residential customers are the same as always. Fuck Musk anyway, but this one seems to be a non-issue.
- global priority customers (movable dish between addresses, on boats, etc)
  Because of-fucking-course anybody who wants to buy and live aboard a cheap (easily $50k or less) old sailboat instead of paying rent forever or grinding for a $500K house is a "rich yacht owner" who can obviously afford $1000/month Internet. And have their home sunk by orcas while we're at it, because why not?
  Just when I thought I had a viable plan to escape this shithole consumer trap of a country, the Internet service I would need to do it not only ends up being run by a goddamn Nazi, but they also jack up the price on that use-case.
  
  Look into Eutelsat. I've heard mention recently that they're expanding as a viable starlink competitor. I have no direct knowledge, but maybe they'd cover your needs cheaper.
  
  First, screw Musk. Second, you would only need this level of satellite internet service for your boat if you want to be able to use full broadband speed with over 1TB of transfer in the middle of the ocean far away from terrestrial cellular networks. If you really need full broadband speeds in the middle of the ocean and you only need 50GB of it a month its only $250/month.
  If you're at a boat dock you likely have wifi available or even just anchored close to land you can likely just tether your mobile phone.
- exactly, this post is ragebait

I thought starlink was just an alibi company to buy rocket launches from SpaceX, and make SpaceX appear profitable on paper?
- Starlink is owned by spaceX so they've never purchased a rocket, they just launch
  And because of starlink SpaceX will be an insanely profitable company. Starlink is already bankrolling the very expensive starship development.
  
  Who's bankrolling starlink?
  With xAI buying twitter and Tesla buying solarcity, Musk seems like he's playing the walnut/pea game.
- Then what, are you going to tell us next that going to Mars also was? Come on! /s
- Leopards ate his.. internet?

I live in a rural area. We were thinking about starlink a few years ago, then fiber came to our area. Thank goodness. We've literally had no issues, speeds are amazing, and no price hikes.
- Fibre is racist and woke, that's what tramp said at least.
  
  Given his steady diet of hamberders, I'm sure he does think fiber is woke
  
  He love the uneducated.
- I'm super jealous. I'm out here in Western Maryland and I'd be happy to see us get plain old telephone service.

Oh, now it's worse than every satellite internet company I know. Shame I recommended it to someone because I thought it would be reliable and remain cheap.

I am unsurprised. I thought it would take longer for it to become outrageously priced, but here we are. this specific pricing is extra crazy IMO.
In any case, I scoffed at the pricing when it was almost reasonable during their trial phases.... Back then IIRC it was like $100-150 usd/mo. or something.... That's too much for me already. Seems like they've previously increased it to around $200-300 and now they've lost their damn minds.
Star link was never economically sensible, price hikes were inevitable. There's just too few people in their target audience and too many satellites that are simply too costly to maintain at the levels they previously had. I hoped, for the sake of anyone who required starlink for a reasonable Internet connection speed, that the business plans and corporate users would shoulder most of the cost, but here we are.
- I think it’s between $120 a month for home use and $165 a month for RV / travel use.
  
  If I go to the website right now, I see $189 for the "roam" plan.
  Your numbers seem off.
  Regardless, my comments are based on the image in the OP

Amazon is launching a competing service on its own satelites.
- Maybe they'll collide with each other.
  
  Probably, and well be forever imprisoned on the planet in that scenario because we won't be able to launch anything for a long long time again.
  Kessler Syndrome
  
  That would be marvelous
- Ooh, I love rushing towards Kessler Syndrome.
  
  We're trying to speed run it, any%.
  
  These satellites are generally in a pretty low orbit to keep latency down. They'll all eventually reenter once they run out of fuel.
- If you're sick of funding billionaire douchebags, Telsat (formerly Telsat Canada, a Canadian crown corporation and responsible for the first communications satellite Anik-A1 in 1972) will be live with Telsat Lightspeed in 2026. Faster, better, and far more ethical.

And this is why capitalism utterly sucks at providing public services.
- It's not really capitalism anymore if the CEO runs the government too.
  Idk what else the USA has to do to show the obvious oligarchy y'all have.
  
  Even if the politicos unironically started referring to themselves as oligarchs, a significant population of US citizens would likely either take it as a joke and hand-wave it away, or take it as further proof that that's just what you do to get ahead.
  
  CEO running the government is late stage capitalism.
- Capitalism is antithetical to public services, at least according to Milton Friedman.
- monopolism* utterly sucks at providing public services (except for some governmental monopolies because those can be democratically controlled)
  once the starlink monopoly is broken this will happen less and less because if they raise prices the customers can switch to a different system from another company and spacex will lose money.

I wouldn't use this service unless I literally had no other option. But sadly "no other option" is why they are able to jack up the prices and change the terms and conditions as they feel like with impunity.
- What's worse is, because it's an option. The work that was being done for other reliable works will be put on indefinite hold. Musk monopolized our orbit. He needs to be brought before an effective tribunal and have his decision scrutinized harshly. I know, I know. "But he won't". If everyone had that attitude we would still be riding horses so help or shut up.
- Yup, were i live it's not even that rural but I only have 1 option and it's basically double the price it should be if I was in a competitive market... 300 down 30 up for $100.
- Yep. Got one for my mother who lives in remote Jamaica so we could check on her after hurricanes.

Slide to switch plan
Ooooh, that's cutesy.
How about "Point a firearm at the screen and scowl menacingly to cancel the service"
- this slide to switch sums up Elon's perspective on tech, he will want something super impractical and unnecessary implemented as long as he thinks it is cool

He sees you when you're sleeping. He knows when you're awake....
- 🎼 He sees you when you're pooping.
  He knows when you're online...
  He knows when you've been fash or woke
  So be fash for tesla's sake 🎶

Just in time for https://lemmy.world/post/29463383
Any future where these fuckers don't end up in jail is going to become hell.

I'm one of those people for who Starlink very much is the only option. I moved from Northern Virginia to Western Maryland. This land used to be state park and all it has is electricity and mail delivery. No water, no sewage, no telephone, no internet other than cell hotspot or Starlink. It sucks but I have to try and separate my distaste for Musk with the engineers and people who actually run Starlink day to day, because at the end of the day the service is pretty damn good. The only issue I have (besides the price) is with VoIP traffic; but SIP acts fucky even with Cat5/6 sometimes so idk. I looked up the current policy and at least in the US they do not have a soft data cap. They did when the service initially launched AFAIK but that's been replaced with a more general "network management" policy (throttling, etc) . https://www.starlink.com/legal/documents/DOC-1470-99699-90?regionCode=US
- Just gonna let you know, if ya have 5g available more specifically T-Mobile then ya can get an at home 5g router. It is most definitely cheaper and may have lower latency, though I don't know how their network is on the East coast furthest east I've gone is Utah.
  
  Unfortunately we only get AT&T and maybe a whiff of T-Mobile once in a blue moon. Gotta go a few miles into town to get reliable service, especially if you want 5G. Thanks though.
  
  T Mobile is amazing on the east coast.
  I often find situations where I have service when my partner in Verizon does not.
- Yep, Starlink is the only internet that works out here. In WV, can confirm.
- We're having a pretty nasty thunderstorm right now and it barely misses a beat. I swear I'm not a musk shill lol, I just remember 3G hotspots and how much worse this would have been.
  
  Also don't hack me plz
  
  I like a little bit of chaos and uncertainty, rather than allowing a billionaire to price gouge me. To each their own though, I suppose. But the problem is, if one guy does something, then that means the other guy down the street's gonna have to do it or go out of business. I need the herd to pay attention.

Oof, my current data consumption for the past 30 days is 1.2 TB on buttery smooth 1Gb fiber. I can't imagine being bound to 500 GB like is the 2007 dark ages.
- I haven't thought about a data cap in years once I was lucky enough to get fiber in my house.
  Same as you: symmetrical 1gbps up and down, baby.
- What I think is crazy: at your 1 gigabit per second speed, if you use your full speed for only 3 hours you will go over your data limit. For the month.
- You only get capped if you on one of the lite or priority tariffs.
  Lite is fair, you paying less so you get less, not everybody needs a huge data allowance especially if its a backup or other infrequently used service.
  Priority is where it gets squirrelly. You only really need priority if you in a high density area for starlink as you will get throttled, but you don't really need priority if you aren't unless you absolutely need to rinse the performance all the time. I typically get about 200mb down and 25mb up, but this can drop to 80mb and 10mb during peak times.
  This isn't the end of the world for me as being able to access high speed internet anywhere, even on a boat is the most important thing. Sure I would like the sync 1gb I have at home while out, but its more than enough when I am away from home in the middle of nowhere.
  Obviously I would rather not use starlink at all because fuck Musk and fuck the way the starlink sats are in low orbit for star gazing, but I do not have anything remotely comparable for even his inflated prices.
  People always say use 4G or 5G, when I often dont even get 2G and I am reliant on wifi calling via the starlink. I have a proper external 4G antenna and its still shit when properly in the middle of nowhere.

Not even a flat rate for that money

good ol' bait and switch

Starlink is out again. I figured this is how it would end up.

Imagine paying for data caps for home internet.
No thank you. I'd take DSL over that if I was rural

This doesn't make sense to me. Don't Starlink plans offer unlimited data?
https://www.starlink.com/us/service-plans
- Sales and marketing documentation/websites are always bullshit.
  All it ever takes is a tiny stipulation in terms+conditions to overrule ANY advertising or claims you've ever seen.
  Any company at any time: "I have altered the deal. Pray I do not alter it further."
  
  Ok that's nice generic language. But that still doesn't explain the context here at all.
- Some of the boat plans are limited data. It's a completely arbitrary and bullshit restriction (and expensive) since boats can be held to ransom because the alternatives are even worse - sat phones and suchlike.
- I did some digging and think I found the answer (more details in my comment here). The pricing in the screenshot is for business customers, not residential users.

These are the prices and data I see. I currently have the $10 plan.
- I think I found the answer. When I checked Starlink's site, those prices plans match up with the personal plans, but it appears that the user in the screenshot has a business plan.
  
  Screenshots should be the Business Local Priority & Global Priority pricing respectively. My prices might be different than the original screenshot (I'm in Canada and I'm not sure how they localize pricing), but the data amounts seems to line up with the selections in the screenshot.

WOMP ∞/GB PRICELESS x2

This kind of shit would have been surprising to me 15 years ago, but today it's just, how it fucking is, and I hate it.

im not gonna lie. I halluecenated. and thought the title said "let them eat shit"
seems appropriate, still

Grifter gonna grift...

You get what you fucking deserve when you lie down with vermin like Musk. Fuck this space-based nazi isp.

Rage bait. It doesn't show his data consumption. How much data did he consume that month and what plan does he have?
- Bro, a thousand dollars a month for consumer internet? This ain't 2007 anymore, these days you can absolutely demolish 100 GB like nothing with a family using a streaming service.
  
  My Skyrim data file alone is like 120 GB.
  
  I do that by myself in like 2-3 days of light torrenting. I got a TB in a weekend more than once.
  
  exactly. But one thing is using fiber, other thing is using satellite - that's why knowing the data consumption matters.
- Not sure why his current consumption matters. Those prices are worse than 2010 3G.
  Not sure how star link is going to stay in business if this is what they're going to start doing....
  
  Of course it matters, it's satellite internet! It's not fiber! Satellite internet is a premium service!
- You know, I might give you a little bit of leeway there, but don't you think the price increase is substantial?

260 comments