Starlink Internet

Just checked - I am outside the current service area for Pocketinet.

They were/are a pretty local regional provider so I would have been surprised :). The terrestrial wireless providers also generally work "best" when there are tall mountains they can be on with a lot of flat(ter) covered land around them as far as coverage goes. The wide river valleys around some of these parts are kind of ideal for it. Not sure of the terrain in MI where you are, looks fairly flat, although you might be able get something from those bluffs above the river to provide adequate coverage.

I've also had decidedly mixed luck with local wireless providers. There are two locally in our town and while we used one for a while at this point I would be challenged to recommend either. Internet providers are decidedly as good as the people running them which, as most things, varies wildly.

There are a handful of (ok maybe more than a handfull looking around) of providers piggy backing off the the cellular networks to provide cellular internet, I'm seeing prices in the $100/mo range for mostly reasonable bandwidth and unlimited usage (within the bandwidth cap, definition of "unlimited" may vary) which isn't crazy.
 
For the farm we've not found a terrestrial wireless provider that has any better speeds than we can get with cellular LTE and prices are higher. Currently we're paying for a pay as you go hotspot plan with AT&T and have it setup on a Netgear Broadband Cellular LTE modem I bought on amazon. I have that ran into my old wifi router to allow our computers and phones to use it. The AT&T plan is $75 a month for 18GB of bandwidth. Speeds have been about 20mbps down and as fast as 10mbps up. Technically I should be able to get faster, but we're also using the cellular booster I installed to get the signal. I may try hooking up an external antenna for the modem at some point to see if speeds improve.

The modem should support most GSM carriers, I went with AT&T since my work phone works very well down there with the cell booster, so do some research of what's available for your area if you go this route.
 
My carrier (T Mobile) is starting to provide internet service via their 5G network just north of here in Grand Rapids. I'm watching to see if they move south.
 
Well I made an equipment deposit tonight. If anyone else is interested, I'd act fast. I'm not sure if it's just for my area or all of the US though.

The deposit is $99, they charge you for the full $499 when they ship you the equipment. The monthly service is supposed to be $99 a month once we are on it. They are estimating mid to late 2021 for us to get on it, tonight was just the deposit for the equipment and to be on the list. We already pay $75 monthly for a hotspot service at the farm, but its limited to 15mbps downloads and a 25GB cap, $10 per gb over that. My wife's work alone will eat up that in a week, so another $25 for way faster service without data caps is going to be a game changer for being able to work from there.
 
Well I made an equipment deposit tonight

Another friend is just past the end of the wire and in a deep enough hollow he has an 800' cat 6 cable (yeah we all know the distance limits haha) running up the hill with POE to tag the nearest wireless tower. He also signed up today and is pretty stoked about the opportunity. Initial reports from the early testers are 50ms pings and 150Mbps.. which is not bad at all (assuming it scales with load..)!.
 
I have a co-worker that lives in the sticks far from cable, fios or anything fast. He is definitely looking forward to see if this pans out. If it does he can shift from going into the office to working from home.
Luckily, I am able to get high speed fiber to the house that lets me work from home.
 
Buddy just got his and installed it. Looks pretty awesome. Said total setup was 20m, although the instructions don't say to tie the base down, we're thinking it would be a good idea with the near-hurricane force winds we get locally on a weekly basis lol. About 80Mbs before it's fully "tuned" itself (and I guess only part of the array is up).

Uses a custom POE cable (100W) so just one cable.

The dish itself is kind of a miracle of modern electronics. I worked on some design and theoretical implementation (basically got to almost working proof-of-concept haha) an auto-steering dish back in the early 2000's and this is like vastly more advanced (completely different frequency range though so also a completely different set of problems.. we were doing very narrow beam stuff at the time). Technology like this would have been a huge game changer!

 
I've seen those breakdowns, crazy high tech for the cost.

There was a good review I saw recently that the said the were getting 15 second drops, which they corresponded to the satellite tracking maps. The maps showed the drops were happening when there wasn't a satellite constellation passing by, but as they get more and more satellites up those drops will subside.
 
Awesome. I've not heard anything on my pre-order, just that it will be mid to late 2021. I ordered it for the farm's address, so may be the later part of it since it's southern MO. I know a couple of folks close to me that have gotten it and are pretty impressed with it. They were each on cellular prior and stuck with data caps, so they feel like the chains came off. ;)

For the RV I think we'll be stuck with Cellular and wifi at the parks. It doesn't sound like they've worked it out where one can easily update the location of the Starlink system. From what I understand the satellites themselves know the location of your dish and check in with it as they pass over, but if you've moved locations, then it won't know to check in with you. It does sound like that may change in the future, but during the beta, this is how they are keeping the satellites from getting over used in any one area. :dunno:
 
I was ready to jump in on Starlink but then our IP provider managed some kind of magic that was a fair upgrade....our service in now at least acceptable, but still not up to land line speeds. So for the moment I'm watching to see how this Starlink thing works out, I may still jump but the urgency has been blunted a little.
 
I was ready to jump in on Starlink but then our IP provider managed some kind of magic that was a fair upgrade....our service in now at least acceptable, but still not up to land line speeds. So for the moment I'm watching to see how this Starlink thing works out, I may still jump but the urgency has been blunted a little.
Yeah, I noticed our 25GB data capped AT&T plan has jumped to 40 GB for the same price this last month.

It's no where enough for us to work full time, but for weekends at the farm and a week or so of work for my wife it will help. Her remote desktop setup for her office just eats up what-ever bandwidth is thrown at it. I may have to limit her connection in my routers software to get it to choke the connection down. Basically force it to look like a 2 Mbps line vs 20 - 40 Mbps, as her work setup will adjust refreshes based on speed.
 
I've worked on computers since my TWA days in 1974, but never really bothered to learn anything about how the networks actually work. I'm on a DSL line at my house and only a casual used of the internet... mostly forums, email and reading news on the internet... my son is the genius in the family, certainly not me... but wondering how the Starlink Internet will work in a heavy cloud cover... I know with heavy rain and sometimes a heavy fog, my satellite TV will drop and my wife has a pacemaker that she reports every 3 months via a wireless phone link and if we have a cloud cover over the mountain near us, she has trouble getting a phone link... Is Starlink just going to be a satellite network sorta like the Hughes Net??
My phone company is supposed to be putting in the fibre optic lines out this way and should help the DSL gain a little speed.
 
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