Starlink

[NoTrespassing]

Email received yesterday evening;


Due to excessive levels of inflation, the price of the Starlink kit is increasing from $499 to $549 for deposit holders, and $599 for all new orders, effective today. In addition, the Starlink monthly service price will increase from $99 to $110 .

The sole purpose of these adjustments is to keep pace with rising inflation. As Starlink expands service in your area, you will be emailed when your Starlink is ready and you will have 7 days to finalize your order. You can cancel your deposit for a full refund at any time in your account page .

Since launching our public beta service in October 2020, the Starlink team has tripled the number of satellites in orbit, quadrupled the number of ground stations and made continuous improvements to our network. Going forward, users can expect Starlink to maintain its cadence of continuous network improvements as well as new feature additions.

Thank you for being a Starlink customer and your continued support!

The Starlink Team

 

[dmccarty]

We had been using UbiFi for a couple of years and it was $90 a month, if I remember right, then they upped the price to $120 a month and the service would not work. THAT was a price increase. But we would have paid it to have the service. They did cancel our service without playing games that other companies play. Thankfully, we were able to get on Verizon for much less money due to a new data plan and our current plan. However, Verizon is unlimited until one hits 150GB which we would hit from time to time. Verizon, at least at our tower, has been very problematic for the last month or two even though we are about a mile from the tower. Friends of ours are having the same issues and go to the same tower so we know it is not our hardware.

For decent Internet, Starlink is really all we have at he moment and nothing is really on the horizon.

Later,
Dan

 

[Gale Hawkins]

I would hate to the price of Starlink today if had not been a DoD project and thankfully the proof of concept was successful. When Starship rolls out I think they can launch like 250 at a time so that may help manage inflation costs.

 

[mrmikey]

..... increasing from $499 to $549 for deposit holders

Although I've got no horse in this race, this rubs me the wrong way. I thought the purpose of a deposit was to hold the price and hold delivery when it becomes available. I would imagine they wouldn't refund a portion of the deposit if the price dropped.
When things started going bad when covid started, contractors did a similar thing. 'Oops, materials went up, you owe us another $50K on a $200K house that you put a deposit on last year". Not gonna pay, oooh well, contract cancelled. Again, if prices went down, I'm sure they'd pass savings on to their customers.......not...Mike

 

[dmccarty]

I would hate to the price of Starlink today if had not been a DoD project and thankfully the proof of concept was successful. When Starship rolls out I think they can launch like 250 at a time so that may help manage inflation costs.

Starlink has some DOD contracts, has gotten some subsidies for providing rural Internet access, and has at least one contract with NASA but I have never read the Starlink was a DOD project.

Starship will launch up to 400 satellites compared to the Falcon which puts up 60 of the older satellite version. Falcon is launching 50ish of the new generation Starlink satellites but I have not heard how many of those can be launched by Starship. Even if it is a bit less than 400, the danged thing will be launching hundreds of satellites at a time.

I have seen Apollo/Saturn and Space Shuttle launches. I was on the way to work when Challenger was launched and I was watching it climb higher when "something" happened. I knew what I saw was not right, and when I got to work, we started looking for a TV to turn on to get the news.

Starship is larger than the Saturn rocket that was part of the Apollo missions. The Apollo launch I saw was when I was in the middle of Florida, but even at that distance, the Saturn was HUGE. Can't imagine what a Starship launch will look like. Dang thing looks like a "spaceship" from a bad SciFi movie from the 1930's or 1950's. The Saturn looks better but it could not launch, slow down, hang in the sky, rotate 90 degrees, fall close to earth, rotate back 90 degrees, and then land.

Later,
Dan

 

[Gale Hawkins]

Starlink has some DOD contracts, has gotten some subsidies for providing rural Internet access, and has at least one contract with NASA but I have never read the Starlink was a DOD project.

Starship will launch up to 400 satellites compared to the Falcon which puts up 60 of the older satellite version. Falcon is launching 50ish of the new generation Starlink satellites but I have not heard how many of those can be launched by Starship. Even if it is a bit less than 400, the danged thing will be launching hundreds of satellites at a time.

I have seen Apollo/Saturn and Space Shuttle launches. I was on the way to work when Challenger was launched and I was watching it climb higher when "something" happened. I knew what I saw was not right, and when I got to work, we started looking for a TV to turn on to get the news.

Starship is larger than the Saturn rocket that was part of the Apollo missions. The Apollo launch I saw was when I was in the middle of Florida, but even at that distance, the Saturn was HUGE. Can't imagine what a Starship launch will look like. Dang thing looks like a "spaceship" from a bad SciFi movie from the 1930's or 1950's. The Saturn looks better but it could not launch, slow down, hang in the sky, rotate 90 degrees, fall close to earth, rotate back 90 degrees, and then land.

Later,
Dan

You may be correct on no DoD. That was a long time before the stress of a pandemic and war deaths.

 

[rekees4300]

Email received yesterday evening;


Due to excessive levels of inflation, the price of the Starlink kit is increasing from $499 to $549 for deposit holders, and $599 for all new orders, effective today. In addition, the Starlink monthly service price will increase from $99 to $110 .

The Starlink Team

Disappointing news. One would think their prices would decrease as their customer base increases.

 

[Gale Hawkins]

Disappointing news. One would think their prices would decrease as their customer base increases.

It takes a lot of nickel to get to Mars.

 

[bdhsfz6]

Up until now, I've been happy with my Verizon 4G LTE home internet plan with it's 50 down & 8 up speeds. So far, my Starlink equipment has been running for two days and is only yielding 51 down & 10 up. I was thinking of returning it for the full 30 day refund they offered in their recent email and keeping the 4G LTE.

Today however, I noticed my 4G LTE speeds dropped to 8 down and 5 up. the speeds do vary but never this low and they have remained constant at this level for the last 24 hours. I checked my router statistics and I reached 150 GB of downloaded data yesterday for the month and I still have a week to go in the billing cycle. It appears Verizon is throttling their speeds. They claim unlimited data in their ads but make no mention of throttling.

Has anyone else with Verizon 4G LTE noticed this?

More importantly, has anyone with Starlink noticed any throttling?

 

[BigBlue1]

Disappointing news. One would think their prices would decrease as their customer base increases.

They are only at about 15% build-out of their overall infrastructure. Costs aren't likely to go down until that build completes. Costs of everything are going up, as we can all see around us, so all their hardware, labor and launch expenses are rising. As much as I don't like to see it, this price increase makes a lot of sense to me from their business perspective. This increase is also roughly the same as the current inflation rate. Surprise, printing money has consequences...