Starlink

Interested to hear if anyone has signed up to the "Better Than Nothing" beta program.

I signed up with Starlink a while ago but haven’t heard anything. I believe that they are going to trial in the UK some time this year.

(I have FTTP 900/100 in one house and due to sad personal circumstances, spend quite a lot fo time in a different house with 5mb/ADSL or 20mb/4G)

Hi there,

I have been following the satellite beam patterns and there are still a few holes over the UK so far.

https://satellitemap.space/

Regards

Paul

Linus Tech Tips did a review of Starlink Beta Kit https://youtu.be/Fh1a2K9ZgNA

I saw that, was good to see him mentioning OneWeb too.

So did I. I’ve read they have a UK based beta user. If I recall somewhere the south west. The initial class of service they offer will be ideal for rural locations with no other workable options.

Although it’s hard to distinguish if this is just Elon being Elon, but there are much higher bandwidths planned with polar satellites acting as backhaul....using satellite to satellite lasers.....

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2021/01/starli...

Just watched this review posted from Oregon.

https://youtu.be/Sjo4Y6YjCi8

Interesting video thank you. I presume that the dish is able to track a satellite in the sky until it gets to low and then move to another one. I wonder what the performance is like when it is raining.

I understand the antenna is a phased array and thus tracks the satellite electronically rather than mechanically - once of course it is moved into the optimal reception position. It may possibly need to realign itself from time to time, but I don’t think it’s moving around regularly (unless of course you move the antenna).

Yes you are quite right thank you. There is a teardown video here. Complex electronics which perhaps explains the price.

In reply to a post by paulatkinson100:

Hi there,

I have been following the satellite beam patterns and there are still a few holes over the UK so far.

https://satellitemap.space/

Regards

Paul

I’ve just be reading that they’ve launched something like 1035 satellites already, which is impressive in itself, but they’re adding to the constellation at a rate of 60 satellite per launch, with launches planned for every 2 weeks this year. Eventually getting to 12,000 satellites. With a possible later extension to 42,000 satellite. Good heavens above!!!

Cribbed from Wiki...

The initial 12,000 satellites are planned to orbit in three orbital shells:

First: 1,440 in a 550 km (340 mi) altitude shell,
Second: 2,825 Ku-band and Ka-band spectrum satellites at 1,110 km (690 mi),
Third: 7,500 V-band satellites at 340 km (210 mi).

Thats amazing, shame he wont be able to put it back together again !

In reply to a post by Michael_Chare:

Yes you are quite right thank you. There is a teardown video here. Complex electronics which perhaps explains the price.

Some really neat design ideas there. Just looking at the mechanicals alone; the pole azimuth/elevation motors alone have some very useful ideas such as the hollow shaft design so the network/power cable doesn’t snag / wrap itself around the pole. It also doesn’t use linear actuators, which as any farmer with a (modern) fertiliser spreader will tell you are the first (expensive) bits of electro-mechanics to disintegrate....

Quite Tesla-like in their vertical integration and design philosophy.

In reply to a post by boxst:

I signed up with Starlink a while ago but haven’t heard anything. I believe that they are going to trial in the UK some time this year.

(I have FTTP 900/100 in one house and due to sad personal circumstances, spend quite a lot fo time in a different house with 5mb/ADSL or 20mb/4G)

Taking (pre)orders now apparently for mid/late 2021. Just got an email...

Hardware £439
Shipping & Handling £54
Monthly charge £89

Up front charge £89

https://postimg.cc/4KZHwDBk

https://postimg.cc/xJn7f15x

Good luck!

Edited by Michael_Chare (Tue 23-Feb-21 17:01:33)

Got the same email, but the equipment costs and monthly fee are a bit steep for a beta product. I've left it for now, to let someone else have a chance.

In reply to a post by jpm:

Got the same email, but the equipment costs and monthly fee are a bit steep for a beta product. I've left it for now, to let someone else have a chance.

To be fair the constellation is rapidly getting denser, esp. if they follow through with their claims of fortnightly launches of 60 satellites per load. The Starlink proposition may have changed quite dramatically by the time dishy's land in blighty later this year.

There's a lot of farmers and country folks who can only realistically get quite patchy 4G or old fashioned satellite broadband - so even as a beta product they'd probably still be pretty keen.

Time will tell.

In the UK we have relatively cheap broadband which I think is partly due to the competitive nature of the market.

This website showa a world wide comparison FWIW.

Bit apples and oranges that though Michael. Whilst your data is interesting, I don't think it bears much relevance in this sense as it is a global cost comparison of fixed line broadband.

The point of Starlink (at least in my mind within the UK) is where there is no realistic availability of other broadband alternatives that can provide similar levels of throughput or response time.

So comparing it to fixed line is a bit pointless. A better fit is against traditional satellite broadband or possibly fixed wireless if that's available.

Got an email to order, entered my address and apparently it’ll be available in a couple of months. £89 fully refundable deposit.

Yup. The Tesla model. Guess we’ll see what happens.

Some interesting Starlink stories from across the pond.

PC Mag, Here's Where Americans Are Using Starlink's Satellite Internet Service
https://uk.pcmag.com/networking/131949/exclusive-her...

Unsurprisingly its the more sparsely populated areas getting in on the action first. You can bet the folks at Starlink are carefully choreographing this, to ensure that folks in rural locations get dibs over more densely populated areas.

PC Mag,More Americans Want Starlink Than 5G Home Internet
https://uk.pcmag.com/news/131702/surveys-more-americ...

Is that damnation of their domestic internet quality or just damning 5G with faint praise?

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Is that damnation of their domestic internet quality or just damning 5G with faint praise?

A lot of the US has no choice in ISP, and many cable cities have "slow" speeds.

Also US 5G isn't as fast as ours and their mmWave offerings are very rare (and incredibly position dependent).

Interesting details about Starlink, even for the Americans it is quite expensive. The BBC South East news showed a Starlink customer in the UK a few days ago. Apparently there are about 100 Beta customers in the UK.

Another successful Falcon-9 launch this morning....another 60 Starlink birds in the heavens....

https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-17-launch-succ...

You know you're in a new era when the landings are more exciting than the takeoffs!!

May be time to stop kicking our BB infrastructure providers quite so much. All is not greener on the other side.

In reply to a post by kitcat:

All is not greener on the other side.

Precisely; comparison with the USA is usually futile

Yes I have signed up for a dishy!

Being just outside the existing Gigaclear and Vodafone/Cityfibre footprints on the outskirts of Milton Keynes means that I am hungry for anything better than I get at the moment being 1 km from a FTTC cabinet.

I will report back of course...

Cool. Are you on the existing beta programme or did you just sign up from their email shot last Tuesday?

Signed up for the beta 2 or 3 weeks back - just had the email saying my order is ready...(I'm based in North Yorkshire).

Wasn't expecting anything until at least middle of the year...not complaining though. Anybody else in the UK on the beta got the same?

Shipping in three days apparently. Another email announcement this morning about expanded UK coverage.

https://postimg.cc/xqzRt7cR

Edited by Pheasant (Wed 10-Mar-21 12:34:42)

In reply to a post by alphapapa:

Anybody else in the UK on the beta got the same?

Yes, pretty much everyone who signed up.

Oh! My 'Escape to the Country' just got a lot more possible!

I signed up for the beta and was notified I could order, but I live in a flat and getting roof access and the cabling would be a pain -- also my Virgin Media is working great, so I didn't order it.

I watched a few videos. Apparently one can use their own router, the 'white' side of the PoE brick will give you a DHCP address. But they are using CGNat according to one of the videos I found. A bit of a drag there, if that can't change. Maybe a higher tier could offer a real IPv4 address in the future. And/or maybe they will get IPv6 happening.

I wouldn’t hold out any hope of fixed or public IPv4 with Starlink. It’s far more likely they jump directly to IPv6 which they have said as much “...is the future”.

Another 60 going up tomorrow...bring the running total to 1,200.

https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-21-internet-sa...

In reply to a post by alphapapa:

Signed up for the beta 2 or 3 weeks back - just had the email saying my order is ready...(I'm based in North Yorkshire).

Wasn't expecting anything until at least middle of the year...not complaining though. Anybody else in the UK on the beta got the same?

Payments processed today on beta orders. Orders actually arriving in 1-3 weeks now apparently. Quite a wide timescale.

In reply to a post by alphapapa:

Signed up for the beta 2 or 3 weeks back - just had the email saying my order is ready...(I'm based in North Yorkshire).

Wasn't expecting anything until at least middle of the year...not complaining though. Anybody else in the UK on the beta got the same?

Shipping from California. Delivery next Thursday.

My original delivery estimate was this Thursday, but then changed this morning to be today.

For now just set it up on the lawn outside, a few houses/trees/fence nearby, but speedtest app just gave me:

173Mbps down / 22.5Mbps up
(not sure how to post photos on here)

Forgot to add, ping time was 31ms.

Edited by deleted (Mon 15-Mar-21 15:52:45)

Good job alphapapa. That's pretty respectable results I think for something in beta. Hopefully the bandwidths will increase over time and the ping reduce. Did you get a jitter reading?

(Got my delivery today too. A rather large grey box. It's looking like a busy week ahead, so it may still stay in the box until Thursday actually when I can set it up).

Jitter was 1ms (according to the speedtest app) - what does this represent?

It’s the variation in latency. Lower jitter repress a more consistent connection. High jitter means the connection has stability or contention issues. 1 ms jitter is impressive on satellite.

The reduction of ping times will be dependent on whether there is any slack in the system - in the end the speed of light is a limiting factor as the radio waves have to get to/from a satellite that is in orbit. The only way to reduce that is to bring the satellite closer which is probably not going to be an option. Starlink is already much better latency than geostationary satellites because it is in low earth orbit.

They're not running the full complement of either constellation numbers (less than 10%) and crucially ground stations numbers. Then also the vaunted laser interconnects, which are not yet running.

As you point out these are non-geo birds, therefore the earth to bird distance is not the major factor, but rather network switching characteristics and hand-offs that are related to factors noted above.

I believe they are aiming for sub 20ms ping, but I have read predictions of ping times as low as 10ms (which is optimistic). But the proof will be in the pudding I suppose.

Ah, ok, I hadn't done the actual calculation. On doing so it appears that a round trip from ground to satellite to ground should take about 3ms (the satellites according to google are 340 miles up).

So the rest of the latency is down to ground station locations and other switching. Hadn't realised how little the latency would be impacted by the round trip. A quick comparison with geostationary shows how much difference there is as the round trip there is over 200ms.

Yes I think there is still a lot of possible optimisation up their sleeve....the flip side of course is that customer numbers will increase over time, so that twill be interesting to see how well it copes when there are several million subscribers.

I have taken a gamble with Starlink - they let you select a different shipping address to service address so I placed an order for an address currently serviced (which I don’t live at) to be delivered to my home address which is out of service area.

It’s around 12 miles straight line between the service address and my home.

This is a bit of an experiment. Starlink is meant to ONLY work at the service address however there are threads on Reddit where people have done this same thing and have some kind of service which is faster than standard or other broadband tech available.

Starlink do have a 30 day full refund as well so I figure I’ll try it and see if it works.

Apparently for others that have done this Starlink have offered a full refund or to suspend the service until that area is served. To be honest this might be the best option to keep hold of the dish until it is in a service area.

Quite honestly I’m fed up of the lack of clarity from openreach on my area for FTTP and for Cityfibre and Lightening fibre getting to my part of town this year. So I am willing to take a gamble on this.

It says 2-3 weeks for delivery so I will have to wait a little while.

Edited by Spinstorm (Fri 19-Mar-21 11:10:51)

My kit arrived within 48 hours of our getting the DHL despatch/tracking number. Pretty good service from the west coast. Actually a day ahead of their forecast!
I had it set up on a pole, to clear trees and neighbour's roof, before nightfall and all seems to be exactly as advertised. Easily does 100 Mb down and 30 Mb up...sometimes reaching almost twice those numbers. In the past 24 hours it has been down for 2 minutes for lack of satellites and 19 minutes for "beta downtime" - presumably this is network reconfigurations etc..
Very impressed!

Edited by deleted (Fri 19-Mar-21 16:23:39)

Mine arrived Monday. Still in the box. It’s a backup connection for rural Suffolk property (4G is now too slow). Need to sort a permanent chimney mount and route cabling. The roof is a bit treacherous at the moment...

Have you taken a power draw figure yet? They sound thirsty

I’m trying to find out how big the semi geo-fence cells are - any clues?