Rural Internet? Starlink is great!

[Medic1957]

Was just on the website. $400.00 to start and $120.00 a month starting in January. Free until then.

 

[OldIron22]

We've had Starlink for about six months, and so far it's been fantastic. Anyone who says this is excessive is likely unaware of how much rural residents used to pay and how bad the service was.

 

[l33571]

Which package did you go with? Looking to get Starlink as well. Thanks

Just the residential package for $120 month and I was one of the first to get the gen3 standard dishy so I got a discount off regular price of like $100.

 

[l33571]

Plus Starlink does stuff like give you free service if you are in an area affected by a natural disaster. Initial offer I got for being in the path of Helene was 30 days free. It's now changed to this and is on the home page:

For those impacted by Hurricanes Helene or Milton, Starlink is available in affected areas with free service through the end of the year.
Enter an address in the affected areas to qualify.

 

[rbstern]

We've had 1Gbps fiber for nearly two years now, and it's incredible. Before that, we had very balky 25mbps ISDN, and were right at the edge of reliable distance from the nearest telco switch. The local phone company couldn't install fiber to our street fast enough, for them or for us: They wore out field techs, sending them to customers with ISDN problems on our street

I'd be on Starlink in a heartbeat if we hadn't gotten fiber. In fact, I've considered using it as a backup, since my business is all Internet based. The fiber has proved pretty resilient, so hard to justify.

I'm really glad people who were locked out of quality broadband now have Starlink as an alternative.

 

[CAMSDADDY]

Oddly I contacted windstream today and they without question reduced our bill from $90 to $55 just for asking. Guess I’ll deal with the speed and service for a little longer for the savings

 

[l33571]

Guess I’ll deal with the speed and service for a little longer for the savings

I hate windstream. Bunch of lying no good thieving bastards.

 

[rbstern]

Oddly I contacted windstream today and they without question reduced our bill from $90 to $55 just for asking. Guess I’ll deal with the speed and service for a little longer for the savings

That's a good sign. It means their formerly captive customer base has choices. Maybe they'll wake up to the fact that quality matters and if they want to keep customers, they have to invest in making you happy.

 

[Gingerbeard Man]

In the spirit of complete transparency, my wife and I had calls all day yesterday and had to switch to our back up WiFi because the calls would suddenly drop and reconnect about every 5 minutes. My son came home from school and was playing Modern Warfare and told me he kept getting dropped from the online game.

Reading on this a little more, I found that if you have ANY obstructions in view of the satellite installed, the hand off is not as seamless. I used the existing Dish pole that was on our roof, unfortunately the alignment for Starlink pointed directly at my chimney.

Off to Home Depot I went to put together an extension that will raise it above the chimney. Installed it this morning and checking the obstruction map again after it has time to calibrate.

The good news is the speed has improved even more.

I will report back in a few days after we've had a chance to retest these calls, providing we are obstruction free.

 

[Gingerbeard Man]

On a 4 hour conference call today. Just shy of 2 hours in and have not experienced the drops I did yesterday.

My takeaway is that when you install this, make sure you have a clear view and no obstructions.

Here is the before. You can see my chimney and a little roof line in the red.

And here it is after pushing it up just slightly higher than the chimney.