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[–] 245 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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.

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  • [–] 88 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 29 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 20 points 1 year ago*

    One of my brothers is in Alaska right now. It’s wild to me that he even gets internet where he’s at. Where he’s at they don’t even have mailboxes just PO Boxes.

    He is sharing 1TB a month among ~60 people tho

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  • [–] 34 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    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...

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  • [–] 20 points 1 year ago

    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!

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  • [–] 161 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Damn, maybe you should move to a radical leftist city where fiber internet is $50 a month.

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  • [–] 44 points 1 year ago (2 children)
  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago (4 children)
  • [–] 57 points 1 year ago (13 children)

    Romania probably.

    They went hard on fiber investments a decade or two ago and now they have some of the world's best internet.

    Last I checked you could get 10 Gbit for around 12€

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    [–] 132 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (29 children)

    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.

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    [–] 92 points 1 year ago* (3 children)

    Ah, so this is why Elon wanted the rural Internet bill killed.

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    [+] 79 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)
  • [+] 23 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)
  • [–] 22 points 1 year ago (11 children)

    perpetually burning up satellites in the atmosphere is a pretty shitty business though.

    Exactly. The business isn't remotely sustainable. All that money being invested into new satellites will, by next year, need to be invested constantly to keep the network at the same size.

    Starlink needs run as fast as it can, just to stay in the same place, and the investment money is finite when people see it's not going to grow.

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  • [–] 20 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    I just generally doubt anything Musk does because of his track record. However, is there a particular reason why Starlink is inherently not viable? Could a competent person do it or it is fundamentally flawed? To put it another way is it cybertruck bad (yes people want electric cars but not a barely driveable dumpster held together with glue) or hyperloop bad (physics said no)?

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  • [–] 25 points 1 year ago (18 children)

    It is closer to a hyper loop system. For the internet to have low enough latency it has to be put in quite a low earth orbit. That means we need more satlights to make coverage, ballooning costs. However that is not the part that kills it, it is that it is in such low orbit we can expect air resistance to significantly degrade orbits. There are too many satilights to reasonably boost them all, and when they start to degrade it will be too fast to reasonably replace them all.

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    [–] 56 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 18 points 1 year ago* (10 children)

    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.

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    [–] 54 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    I thought starlink was just an alibi company to buy rocket launches from SpaceX, and make SpaceX appear profitable on paper?

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    [–] 52 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    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.

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    [–] 38 points 1 year ago

    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.

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  • [–] 35 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Amazon is launching a competing service on its own satelites.

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  • [–] 36 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    Maybe they'll collide with each other.

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    [–] 35 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    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.

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    [–] 29 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    And this is why capitalism utterly sucks at providing public services.

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    [–] 27 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    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.

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    [–] 21 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Slide to switch plan

    Ooooh, that's cutesy.

    How about "Point a firearm at the screen and scowl menacingly to cancel the service"

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    [–] 20 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    He sees you when you're sleeping. He knows when you're awake....

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