StarLink - pretty awesome tbh

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PhillM

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After the ARC and using a boat mounted starlink system I borght the mini for a recent trip (for work) to the caribean. I have ben seriously impressed with the performance and affordability. Not that I am a fan of Mr Musk but his product does excatly what it says on the tin.

I have since 'aquiried' the system from work and plan to use it this summer so I can 'work from home' with home being onboard swift. AT £4.99/mpnth to keep the system current and less than £50/month for what is in reality almost unlimited use, its a great add-on to have onboard.
 
I'm just hoping that AWS LEO forces the costs down. If the promise of Sat to AWS Cloud works as suggested, they could take quite a bit of business from Starlink. Also need to see what Starlink Mobile does to Starlink - some of the speed and capacity increases they've given recently are riding on the capacity they've launched for the DtC mobile service - if that takes off they could have a bottleneck.
 
Likewise, not a big fan of Musk (he needs to stay out of UK politics) but I can't fault the product at all.
The only thing for a smaller boat would be the 23w power consumption. Fine for us with our 1300w of solar, but on a typical small UK based boat it could become an issue.
 
Agree with power for the Starlink and a laptop it can be a challenge keeping up with power, but that first day working on board is magical. The moment your colleagues see a sunny backdrop of the water on cam is a close second.
st599 said:
I'm just hoping that AWS LEO forces the costs down
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Unlikely since they have to pay SpaceX commercial launch rates and it looks like they’ll miss their window for the licence so may not even come to market. Even if they do, Musk is the beneficiary.
Starlink is incredibly cheap for what it is, if anything price will go up from here. I’ve no idea why they offer £5/month for 0.5Mbps connection, that’s absurdly cheap.
 
lustyd said:
they have to pay SpaceX commercial launch rates
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I think the whole thing might be a vanity project that Bezos is willing to subsidise. They've got contracts with Arianespace and ULA, both of which are extremely expensive, and should be starting to launch with Blue Origin very soon too. BO is effectively in-house.

I agree that Starlink has an enormous advantage over the other systems, it's years ahead and so has an established constellation plus cost-price access to the world's most reliable and low cost rocket. That would ordinarily make the competitors pack up and go home, but don't write off that this is partially a big will-waving competition between two billionaires and an authoritarian regime. I don't see anybody backing out any time soon.
 
Sea Change said:
and should be starting to launch with Blue Origin very soon too. BO is effectively in-house.
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Lol yes coming any year now 😂 Even if Bezos can get it up, I doubt they’ll be close to SpaceX on pricing even with discount.

Then there’s the privacy issue, I wouldn’t trust Amazon not to use any and all data for advertising. Selling data is the whole reason they got into drone deliveries, and those drones have a LOT of cameras! Not saying I trust Elon, but even X doesn’t snoop too much, it just piles on disinformation regardless.
 
lustyd said:
Lol yes coming any year now 😂 Even if Bezos can get it up, I doubt they’ll be close to SpaceX on pricing even with discount.

Then there’s the privacy issue, I wouldn’t trust Amazon not to use any and all data for advertising. Selling data is the whole reason they got into drone deliveries, and those drones have a LOT of cameras! Not saying I trust Elon, but even X doesn’t snoop too much, it just piles on disinformation regardless.
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Well there's always the Chinese government then... 🤣
 
lustyd said:
... I’ve no idea why they offer £5/month for 0.5Mbps connection, that’s absurdly cheap.
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I would have thought that was blindingly obvious. It's to suck in customers who, for the most part having become dependent (I would suggest addicted in some cases) on the tech, continue to pay progressively more and more for as long as they can cough up the money. Periodically a new "feature" will be introduced rendering the previous product obsolete unless it is upgraded at some expense to the user. Adobe did it with Photoshop and its other products and there are many other examples in the consumer world.

Fortunately there are alternatives from companies whose corporate executives don't have a Ketamine addiction and a lust to meddle with world politics.

Starlink on our boat... not a chance even at absurdly cheap prices.
 
question for the Starlink users - under the £5pcm / 5kbps standby arrangement, does this work anywhere, ie outside of the 12mile territorial limit?
I'm looking at it as a marginally faster/cheaper alternative to Iridium Go! as a means for downloading weather gribs when offshore.
 
Ed Sned said:
question for the Starlink users - under the £5pcm / 5kbps standby arrangement, does this work anywhere, ie outside of the 12mile territorial limit?
I'm looking at it as a marginally faster/cheaper alternative to Iridium Go! as a means for downloading weather gribs when offshore.
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Yes it does, the purpose is to allow upgrading while out of service as previously two factor authentication made this impossible.
It’s 500Kbps by the way, not 5. That’s 0.5Mbps.
 
perfect, thanks very much.
Sorry yes, 500 kbps. over-hasty typing by me.

As per another recent thread on Starlink, other than the objectionable Musk, it's really hard to make a technical case for Iridium Go! at all now, isn't it? (apart from power usage perhaps)
 
Ed Sned said:
perfect, thanks very much.
Sorry yes, 500 kbps. over-hasty typing by me.

As per another recent thread on Starlink, other than the objectionable Musk, it's really hard to make a technical case for Iridium Go! at all now, isn't it? (apart from power usage perhaps)
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In 7 minutes Starlink standby mode can download the same as Iridium in 24 hours. Starlink still wins on power, but possibly not portability.
 
Ed Sned said:
perfect, thanks very much.
Sorry yes, 500 kbps. over-hasty typing by me.

As per another recent thread on Starlink, other than the objectionable Musk, it's really hard to make a technical case for Iridium Go! at all now, isn't it? (apart from power usage perhaps)
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I would agree, with the current prices and plans.
However standby mode appeared out of the blue and they could change it again very easily. E.g. they could allow you to use it only for accessing the Starlink website in order to upgrade. Or they could ramp up the price, or reduce the bandwidth. So I wouldn't get too comfortable with it.

The good thing is that 90% of the time, as a liveaboard, you're fine with a cheap local SIM.
 
Sea Change said:
I would agree, with the current prices and plans.
However standby mode appeared out of the blue and they could change it again very easily. E.g. they could allow you to use it only for accessing the Starlink website in order to upgrade. Or they could ramp up the price, or reduce the bandwidth. So I wouldn't get too comfortable with it.

The good thing is that 90% of the time, as a liveaboard, you're fine with a cheap local SIM.
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This had occurred to me too. I don't need it until the summer, and so maybe I'll leave it until closer to the time and make the call then.
 
Ed Sned said:
perfect, thanks very much.
Sorry yes, 500 kbps. over-hasty typing by me.

As per another recent thread on Starlink, other than the objectionable Musk, it's really hard to make a technical case for Iridium Go! at all now, isn't it? (apart from power usage perhaps)
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Starlink haven't managed to get downlink approval in quite a few countries yet, so it may depend on where you plan to use it.
 
Ed Sned said:
question for the Starlink users - under the £5pcm / 5kbps standby arrangement, does this work anywhere, ie outside of the 12mile territorial limit?
I'm looking at it as a marginally faster/cheaper alternative to Iridium Go! as a means for downloading weather gribs when offshore.
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I doubt it, but I don’t know. I’ve used it at a coastal location and it’s fine. It would clash with their ocean roaming service and they are not fools, so unlikely. You could send their AI robot an email 🤣
 
Zing said:
I doubt it, but I don’t know. I’ve used it at a coastal location and it’s fine. It would clash with their ocean roaming service and they are not fools, so unlikely. You could send their AI robot an email 🤣
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It’s well documented that it works globally.
 
1767946582449.png

Starlink's coverage map - Green are countries that Starlink have a licence to operate in and blue is where they are operating without a licence.
 
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