Starlink

riptides · Oct 22, 2020

They launched more satellites this week.

ernemats said:
Nothing new on Starlink???

/

ponytug · Oct 22, 2020

ernemats said:
Nothing new on Starlink???

/

Well, they have been releasing more private beta units that have been seen in Oregon, and Washington. A recent article hinted at 30ms latency, and 100Mbit/s/s bandwidth, with 2.5x higher potential speeds to come. Twitter post here But 100Mbit/s seems to be on the high end, as speeds as low as 30 down / 10 up have been reported.

Basically, public beta not here yet. Reports are continuing to say northern US.

While they did just launch, and are planning more launches, it is taking about four months post launch for the satellites to reach their working altitude, and not every satellite makes it. (Look up the altitude plots of the launches, and there are some really odd behaviors of some of the satellites. e.g. rapid descents below the injection orbit, before stair stepping back up. It looks very much like a work in active progress, and revision.

But we are on AT&T DSL, which they have told us they are discontinuing, and their inability to restore/maintain service bears that out. So we are exploring all options, as they really are having trouble keeping the dial tone up, much less DSL:

Starlink ($?, TBD speeds and latency)
traditional satellite services, (which pretty much everyone is telling us is overloaded these days)
microwave (60Mbit/s, $350/mo, & $9k installation),
even a dedicated AT&T fiber pull (Enterprise level Tier 1 service: $500/mo for 10Mbit/s, $900/mo for 100Mbit/s)

It is good to have options, right? Even if you can't afford them...

Sorry, just venting-it has been a rough eight weeks with AT&T, and like most organizations, not everyone is an angel. Personally, I don't respond well to the mushroom treatment.

All the best,

Peter

newbury · Oct 22, 2020

/pine said:
It's not economically feasible to even build towers where the critical mass of paying customers can't support the expense...<snip>

But pour some politics in and stuff happens.

I'm in the NE region of Mississippi. It seems every time we have an internet problem I have to train the tech support. I was getting 5 to 6.6 down and about .75 up for YEARS, until school restarted this last Sept. Now they bumped that to about 12 down.

But the entire county is being wired for Fiber, both by the telephone company AND the power company. In many cases the telephone company is burying fiber in the same places the power company is stringing fiber.

Someplace someone found the golden goose and I'm supposed to be offered fiber from both. The phone company is doing about 22 miles a week and has about 500 miles to go. The phone company has a $4.2M grant for a population of 24,000 or about a free $175 PER RESIDENT. Meanwhile my BIL has both offered because he lives in town (population about 4,000).

Economics can be overcome by politics.

lman · Oct 23, 2020

newbury said:
But pour some politics in and stuff happens.

I'm in the NE region of Mississippi. It seems every time we have an internet problem I have to train the tech support. I was getting 5 to 6.6 down and about .75 up for YEARS, until school restarted this last Sept. Now they bumped that to about 12 down.

But the entire county is being wired for Fiber, both by the telephone company AND the power company. In many cases the telephone company is burying fiber in the same places the power company is stringing fiber.

Someplace someone found the golden goose and I'm supposed to be offered fiber from both. The phone company is doing about 22 miles a week and has about 500 miles to go. The phone company has a $4.2M grant for a population of 24,000 or about a free $175 PER RESIDENT. Meanwhile my BIL has both offered because he lives in town (population about 4,000).

Economics can be overcome by politics.

Which phone company is that? The phone company(Centurylink) here does very little to maintain their line, even after they got CAF money, there were no improvements. The power company is running fiber.

kcflhrc · Oct 23, 2020

lman said:
Which phone company is that? The phone company(Centurylink) here does very little to maintain their line, even after they got CAF money, there were no improvements.

I hear this a lot from people. Not just about CenturyLink but AT&T as well as other's. You have no idea how or if the money was even spent in your area. The CAF mandate depending on area is 10 meg. Performance results to get the CAF money is 80% of that. Those test results have to be turned in to satisfy the Fed's and get the money. So there you have it. Do a little research before slamming the Telco's. Lot's of information out there in regards to this. Why in the **** people think they are going to bring fiber to rural America is beyond me. For an example. I live on a rural stretch of state highway with only 3 houses even in close proximity to me. It would cost thousands of dollars to get fiber to these 3 homes. Not profitable to do this in any way. AT&T is my local provider. They don't offer any wired option for me. So I use their 4G LTE internet and it works fantastic. But they got CAF money also. They just decided to deliver their internet wirelessly which makes a whole lot more sense than putting cable in the ground.

riptides · Oct 23, 2020

The government and the telco's brought copper to US households at one time.

I'll leave it at that.

kcflhrc said:
I hear this a lot from people. Not just about CenturyLink but AT&T as well as other's. You have no idea how or if the money was even spent in your area. The CAF mandate depending on area is 10 meg. Performance results to get the CAF money is 80% of that. Those test results have to be turned in to satisfy the Fed's and get the money. So there you have it. Do a little research before slamming the Telco's. Lot's of information out there in regards to this. Why in the **** people think they are going to bring fiber to rural America is beyond me. For an example. I live on a rural stretch of state highway with only 3 houses even in close proximity to me. It would cost thousands of dollars to get fiber to these 3 homes. Not profitable to do this in any way. AT&T is my local provider. They don't offer any wired option for me. So I use their 4G LTE internet and it works fantastic. But they got CAF money also. They just decided to deliver their internet wirelessly which makes a whole lot more sense than putting cable in the ground.

/pine · Oct 23, 2020

...But pour some politics in and stuff happens....

All the politics in the world won't get them to build and maintain a cell tower to service half a dozen customers...

To service some rural mountain areas they would have to have as many towers as there are customers...

simply not economically feasible...

lman · Oct 23, 2020

kcflhrc said:
I hear this a lot from people. Not just about CenturyLink but AT&T as well as other's. You have no idea how or if the money was even spent in your area. The CAF mandate depending on area is 10 meg. Performance results to get the CAF money is 80% of that. Those test results have to be turned in to satisfy the Fed's and get the money. So there you have it. Do a little research before slamming the Telco's. Lot's of information out there in regards to this. Why in the **** people think they are going to bring fiber to rural America is beyond me. For an example. I live on a rural stretch of state highway with only 3 houses even in close proximity to me. It would cost thousands of dollars to get fiber to these 3 homes. Not profitable to do this in any way. AT&T is my local provider. They don't offer any wired option for me. So I use their 4G LTE internet and it works fantastic. But they got CAF money also. They just decided to deliver their internet wirelessly which makes a whole lot more sense than putting cable in the ground.

You apparently didn't follow what newbury and I posted. Fiber is being run in our rural areas. My local rural power co-op is running fiber after they received financial assistance. They are able to do what the big companies refuse to do. Many places that fiber is being run are the same places that Centurylink was supposed to improve. It seems that are local organizations want to make some actual improvements to our area while Centurylink just wanted some money.
CenturyLink, Frontier took FCC cash, failed to deploy all required broadband | Ars Technica

kcflhrc · Oct 23, 2020

That article is full of apparently, possibly, seemingly and a host of other unsubstantiated accusations. I hope you get your fiber. I wish we all had it.