I’ve had FIOS gigabit internet for many years. They’ve acted the monopolist when it came to pricing and earned my anger. Recently, they spontaneously dropped their rate by $5/month as a “loyalty” reward. When I saw Starlink’s new offer of free Gen3 receiver and $39/month for six months (followed by $50/mo thereafter for 100Mbps), I understood Verizon’s largesse.
Ever the monopolist, Verizon required that I bundle their VOIP phone in order to have internet. The price for the combo has ranged between $99 and $112/ month. Having decided to go with Starlink, I bought Ooma phone hardware and requested Verizon port my existing number. This took two weeks. At the very moment, the number moved to Ooma, I received an email from Verizon, threatening to cut off my internet in 30 days if I didn’t call them immediately. BTW, the Ooma hardware was $90, porting cost $35 and service is free; all I must pay are monthly 911 and regulatory taxes, about $9/month.
I did a fair amount of checking about service reliability, since despite FIOS obnoxious billing habits, the service was reliable. Starlink has very good reviews in regards to downtime - it is reported as minimal by Grok and other AI’s. The connection has been flawless in the first 72 hours, including hours of wind gusts to 25mph and several direct hit thunderstorms yesterday afternoon. BTW, software downloads while watching a 4K large screen TV simultaneously (and running my many IoT devices in the background), were fast as ever.
I’m pleased to have been able to thwart one of the numerous tech companies which believe they can do as they please to customers. Part of my decision was to endorse Elon Musk. He is, IMO, a force for good in the world - both of tech and of politics. All the right people hate him. I’ll keep you posted.
I use Starlink full-time at the office, and occasionally on trips (Mini). Very happy. Speed doesn’t compare to fiber (I have fiber at home), but reliability is excellent. You do need to check and fix obstructions for best performance, and possibly also add the wired ethernet option. (The base station WiFi is not particularly impressive.)
My brother and my cousin both in Massachusetts have FIOS and like it.
Another cousin in upstate NY lives in a six-property gap between an area with cable and an area with FIOS. He suffered with geostationary satellite internet until Starlink. He got it pretty soon after it became available in his area and there were temporal coverage gaps until the constellation filled out a bit. There have been a couple of system-wide outages, but otherwise quite reliable until Iran and Russia start taking out the satellites.
I’m using Starlink router in bridge mode to my excellent Synology router, which was painstakingly set up with four segmented networks for security. It was plug & play.
The FCC asserted that Starlink could not achieve 20 ms latency when they cut off its rural broadband funding. IIRC, they put up an impossible standard that would have required SpaceX to show that another LEO satellite provider had already achieved 20ms latency.
That’s pretty good, I would not have thought that the UP would be more than 10Mb. In most cases what you have is well above what is needed in an average home.
I have fiber, but I was wondering what the competition has and because way back, for the government, I repaired satellite systems for the government. The systems in those days had a pretty poor rate compared to what you are getting. Remember they had a single satellite then and it shared quite a few ground terminals. Each at less than 2 Mbps.
Thinking back at my first connections with a computer at 300 Baud vs what I have today, it’s just plain crazy.
Victor Davis Hanson relies on Starlink, he lives in rural Selma, CA and did not have reliable high speed internet until Starlink, he is a big fan of Starlink and Musk
I’m pleasantly surprised at how well this is working. I was going to keep FIOS at its lowest speed for possible backup for a few months. Since FIOS began threatening me from the moment I ported out my existing phone number to Ooma, I’ve decided to cancel FIOS completely. It’s a small victory against the many monopolists upon which the average household is dependent. I avoid as many as I can and even discontinue some for two months (like Hulu), to offset rate hikes. The other sad realization is that I wasted a lot of money having gigabit speeds. With the Starlink speed, we can stream 4K video to our 65 inch OLED TV, simultaneously browse on two macbook airs (with me downloading various software updates). As well, I guess there are 25 or so wifi-connected devices on my IoT (separate VLAN) network. In this first week, not a wrinkle - even with winds and thunderstorms. God bless Elon Musk and his team (actually, I think that blessing is longstanding and ongoing).
Understandable. In the polydimensional relationship between employer and employee nowadays, it may be difficult to know a priori whether an employee will be a profit or a cost center. The large and ever-expanding dimension occupied by employment law (including an arcane component of Rococo administrative flourishes) is especially pernicious when a company is considering hiring. It reminds me of the power dimension when considering debt. Owe a little, the bank owns you; owe a lot, let’s say it increases the debtor’s bargaining power. As with debt for banks, so with employees of corporate entities (not even mentioning unions). (BTW, does it puzzle you - as it does me - why any public employee is unionized. After all, there is barely a millisecond when we’re not being regaled with the omniscience of the state. Given its purported infinite knowledge and understanding of all things down to the finest minutiae, why would any of the omniscient employer’s workers ever need a union? Does the state lack the ability to dispense a “fair” wage or “just” work rules? It relentlessly presumes to tell the rest of us precisely what is required of us to act fairly - in every breath we take…).
It puzzled FDR too. He could not see any reason for public employees to be unionized.
Still, FDR may be a hero to the Far Left … but not so much of a hero that Lefties would actually follow his advice.
There is obviously a different dynamic at work in union negotiations in the public & private sectors. In the private sector, the employee wants more while the employer wants suitable staff at the lowest cost. In the public sector, the employee wants more while the public employee bureaucrat/“employer” wants a bigger budget from the ever-generous taxpayer. Hence we get California beach lifeguards earning a quarter million dollars per year … and lifetime pensions.
