Starlink UK

[Mo City]

About $250-400m

Starlink will float in the billions.

Since Elon said it won't happen until revenues are predictable, wouldn't surprise me if it opens near $100B, maybe more.

Starlink will have the field to itself for quite a long time. Depending on the ramp of Starship and Super Heavy, they could complete their initial 12,000 satellite buildout before any legit competition emerges. That is amazing to think about.

 

[Zakalwe]

Speeds will double and latency will reduce further.

Elon Musk says Starlink internet speeds will double to 300 Mbps this year

They are also aiming to have most of the Earth covered sometime next year. I guess that will all depend on launch cadence. When they get Superheavy and Starship flying then coverage will increase massively as they will be lofting 200 sats per launch instead of the current 60.

 

[AnthonyLR]

I have just ordered Starlink. I feel a bit weird about it but it's a fully refundable £90 and it won't arrive for around 6 months anyway.

My logic (such as it is!) is that I live in London and because that is a dense urban area Starlink won't be offered to a high percentage of the surrounding population. BT is rubbish at 45Mbs and it's flaky. I have three teenagers that love gaming and streaming so having 120-300Mbs would come in handy. I currently pay BT around £30pm so £90pm is a steep uplift. Also my 2 year BT contract does not end until July 2022 so I will be paying both. I guess some of that is line rental which I won't save if I cancel BT.

No doubt the day after I pay the full monty to Starlink BT announces 1Gb in my area. Oh well.

 

[ACarneiro]

Don’t forget you’re ordering a Beta service.
I suspect your 45Mbit may currently be more reliable than Starlink’s offering for the next year or two...

 

[MrBadger]

Don’t forget you’re ordering a Beta service.
I suspect your 45Mbit may currently be more reliable than Starlink’s offering for the next year or two...

Yep. They warn you that there may be service outages.

During beta, users can expect to see data speeds vary from 50Mb/s to 150Mb/s and latency from 20ms to 40ms in most locations over the next several months as we enhance the Starlink system. There will also be brief periods of no connectivity at all.

 

[AnthonyLR]

Don’t forget you’re ordering a Beta service.
I suspect your 45Mbit may currently be more reliable than Starlink’s offering for the next year or two...

As my BT doesn’t end until July 2022 I have resilience

 

[ACarneiro]

Please do keep us updated on your experiences, I’m really curious about it.
And good luck with the CG-NAT, I hope it doesn’t break anything

 

[AnthonyLR]

Please do keep us updated on your experiences, I’m really curious about it.
And good luck with the CG-NAT, I hope it doesn’t break anything

Thanks. This video tells me it works.

 

[Sparkeur]

Don’t forget you’re ordering a Beta service.

Well, we took the risk with our cars...

 

[Dilly]

Well, we took the risk with our cars...

And they don’t suffer from underwhelming latency...

 

[KennethS]

Please do keep us updated on your experiences, I’m really curious about it.
And good luck with the CG-NAT, I hope it doesn’t break anything

IPv6 is in testing and should come by year end. Even if it misses that target date, my plan is to keep my current sluggish BT VDSL connection for the foreseeable future while I test the Starlink setup. It's anyone's guess when I might actually receive the Starlink setup.

 

[Adopado]

Don’t forget you’re ordering a Beta service.
I suspect your 45Mbit may currently be more reliable than Starlink’s offering for the next year or two...

... and I know plenty of people who would give anything for that existing 45Mbs !!!!

 

[Glan gluaisne]

... and I know plenty of people who would give anything for that existing 45Mbs !!!!

I would! It'd be around a 700% improvement for us . . .

 

[browellm]

I forwarded details of this on to my friend who lives on the Isle of Fetlar, but there's no projected availability there. Shame, this would have been perfect for him.

 

[drivingmrte5la]

Ordered the beta myself last week (on the business), then a few days later got an invite to order email (presumably the same invite anyone who registered for updates in applicable areas received as there were no special referral links in it).

I’m currently on FTTC and while my advertised speeds aren’t that bad I still have a hard time streaming, or holding video calls - especially when my wife is on a video call, and ESPECIALLY if my daughter is also using video for remote learning. It took ages to download a 36MB pdf today!

The game changer IMO is that eventually (very soon?) you aren’t going to be tied down to BigCorp’s plans for rolling out FTTP to receive a future facing internet connection.

My house lives in a dead spot for expansion. A large amount (>100) of houses above my street on our estate received Virgin’s FTTP service at the beginning of last year, while about double that below my street have FTTP for OpenReach. Nobody has any plans in the next 12 months to cable our street and I’ve been quoted at least £18k on a community fibre build even after assuming all houses had vouchers applied.

Even if I can get the low end of what Starlink’s UK speed tests are showing, I’ll be very happy. Their average latency is still a good bit faster than mine.

All that being said, I’d still be running it as a secondary line for a good while.

 

[rotor2k]

Ordered the beta myself last week (on the business), then a few days later got an invite to order email (presumably the same invite anyone who registered for updates in applicable areas received as there were no special referral links in it).

I’m currently on FTTC and while my advertised speeds aren’t that bad I still have a hard time streaming, or holding video calls - especially when my wife is on a video call, and ESPECIALLY if my daughter is also using video for remote learning. It took ages to download a 36MB pdf today!

The game changer IMO is that eventually (very soon?) you aren’t going to be tied down to BigCorp’s plans for rolling out FTTP to receive a future facing internet connection.

My house lives in a dead spot for expansion. A large amount (>100) of houses above my street on our estate received Virgin’s FTTP service at the beginning of last year, while about double that below my street have FTTP for OpenReach. Nobody has any plans in the next 12 months to cable our street and I’ve been quoted at least £18k on a community fibre build even after assuming all houses had vouchers applied.

Even if I can get the low end of what Starlink’s UK speed tests are showing, I’ll be very happy. Their average latency is still a good bit faster than mine.

All that being said, I’d still be running it as a secondary line for a good while.

My VDSL/FTTC gives me 5ms ping to bbc.co.uk, so it sounds like you have significant copper cabling issues, or are using a particularly rubbish ISP.

 

[drivingmrte5la]

My VDSL/FTTC gives me 5ms ping to bbc.co.uk, so it sounds like you have significant copper cabling issues, or are using a particularly rubbish ISP.

Agreed.

It’s an OR/Sky line, and I’ve had them both out to the house multiple times trying to fix dropouts, lower than promised line speeds, high latency.

I got an extra 8Mb out of OR the last time they were here but the nice guy who helped us said there was nothing else that could be done without significant work on the street.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a ping under 20ms at home.

I really miss the 1ms 1Gbps symmetric line at work

 

[Roy W.]

My VDSL/FTTC gives me 5ms ping to bbc.co.uk, so it sounds like you have significant copper cabling issues, or are using a particularly rubbish ISP.

I think you’re quite lucky to get such a low ping. My VDSL/FTTC gives me 19ms reliably, with 43 Mb/s down and around 16 Mb/s up. We’re less than a mile from the cabinet. ISP is Openreach/Plusnet, who I’ve found great. No Virgin locally. Once Starlink up the speed to, say 250-500 I’d certainly be interested!

 

[rotor2k]

I think you’re quite lucky to get such a low ping. My VDSL/FTTC gives me 19ms reliably, with 43 Mb/s down and around 16 Mb/s up. We’re less than a mile from the cabinet. ISP is Openreach/Plusnet, who I’ve found great. No Virgin locally. Once Starlink up the speed to, say 250-500 I’d certainly be interested!

When you try pinging, make sure you test it from something that is hard-wired into the router, not via wifi. Wifi introduces significant latency of its own.

From my MacBook (wifi):

~ % ping bbc.co.uk           
PING bbc.co.uk (151.101.192.81): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 151.101.192.81: icmp_seq=0 ttl=59 time=8.018 ms
64 bytes from 151.101.192.81: icmp_seq=1 ttl=59 time=17.820 ms
64 bytes from 151.101.192.81: icmp_seq=2 ttl=59 time=16.007 ms
64 bytes from 151.101.192.81: icmp_seq=3 ttl=59 time=14.707 ms
64 bytes from 151.101.192.81: icmp_seq=4 ttl=59 time=14.789 ms
64 bytes from 151.101.192.81: icmp_seq=5 ttl=59 time=16.602 ms
64 bytes from 151.101.192.81: icmp_seq=6 ttl=59 time=7.755 ms
64 bytes from 151.101.192.81: icmp_seq=7 ttl=59 time=16.182 ms
64 bytes from 151.101.192.81: icmp_seq=8 ttl=59 time=16.288 ms
^C
--- bbc.co.uk ping statistics ---
9 packets transmitted, 9 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 7.755/14.241/17.820/3.508 ms

From my TeslaMate VM:

root@teslamate [ ~ ]# ping bbc.co.uk
PING bbc.co.uk (151.101.64.81) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 151.101.64.81 (151.101.64.81): icmp_seq=1 ttl=59 time=4.78 ms
64 bytes from 151.101.64.81 (151.101.64.81): icmp_seq=2 ttl=59 time=4.94 ms
64 bytes from 151.101.64.81 (151.101.64.81): icmp_seq=3 ttl=59 time=5.12 ms
64 bytes from 151.101.64.81 (151.101.64.81): icmp_seq=4 ttl=59 time=4.86 ms
64 bytes from 151.101.64.81 (151.101.64.81): icmp_seq=5 ttl=59 time=5.00 ms
64 bytes from 151.101.64.81 (151.101.64.81): icmp_seq=6 ttl=59 time=5.14 ms
64 bytes from 151.101.64.81 (151.101.64.81): icmp_seq=7 ttl=59 time=5.16 ms
64 bytes from 151.101.64.81 (151.101.64.81): icmp_seq=8 ttl=59 time=5.14 ms
^C
--- bbc.co.uk ping statistics ---
8 packets transmitted, 8 received, 0% packet loss, time 16ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 4.776/5.015/5.157/0.161 ms

 

[rotor2k]

I'm also with Zen, which I consider to be a top-notch ISP.