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Starlink Internet Service (2024 Review)

Starlink provides high-speed, low-latency satellite internet, making it ideal for rural and remote areas lacking traditional broadband. Installation is user-friendly, and coverage continues to expand globally. However, the service is relatively expensive, and performance can be impacted by adverse weather. Overall, Starlink is a reliable choice for those without access to conventional internet options.

What is Satellite Internet? (Complete Guide, Costs, Providers, and More)

Satellite internet is a broadband service that connects users via signals transmitted between orbiting satellites and a satellite dish at the user's location. Unlike fiber or cable, it doesn't require physical infrastructure, making it essential in rural and remote areas. Although historically slower with higher latency, advancements like Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites have improved speed and reduced delays, enhancing overall performance.

Affordable Starlink Prices Coming to Low and Middle-Income Countries

SpaceX first departed from its uniform Starlink pricing policy when it offered a reduced price for throttled service in France two years ago. Since then, many new, higher-capacity satellites have been launched, enabling SpaceX to reduce prices in low and middle-income countries like Kenya. Kenya had 405 geostationary satellite internet subscribers when Starlink became available in July 2023.

Will Starlink Harm the Ozone Layer?

There was a paper published in June in the peer-reviewed Geophysical Research Letters titled Potential Ozone Depletion from Satellite Demise During Atmospheric Reentry in the Era of Mega-Constellations. As can be deduced by the lengthy title, scientists have uncovered a new risk coming from the reentry of low-orbit satellites through the atmosphere.

Broadband Anywhere: The New Trend Bringing Connectivity to Campers and Remote Locations

A new broadband trend has quietly entered the market. Both Starlink and T-Mobile are advertising broadband that can be used practically anywhere and are aiming new products at campers, hikers, and others that go to remote locations. According to T-Mobile, this is a huge market, with 15 million households taking RV trips yearly and 59 million people camping.

Loving and Hating Starlink

I'm such an industry nerd that I sometimes read customer reviews of large ISPs just to see how the public perceives them. Most ISPs have more negative reviews than positive ones, and that's to be expected since people are more likely to complain when things go wrong than give praise when things are working as promised.

Two New Chinese Internet Service Constellations and Their Market

China’s plans for low-Earth orbit Internet service constellations began with two projects, Hongyun (156 satellites) and Hongyan (864 satellites). These were eventually sidelined for Guowang, an ambitious, 12,992 satellite constellation that is expected to begin launching satellites this year. But, that is old news. China’s five-year plan designates satellite Internet as a strategic emerging industry and two new constellations have emerged, G60 (12,000 satellites) and Honghu–3 (10,000 satellites).

Satellites Directly to Cellphones

AT&T and satellite company AST SpaceMobile announced a partnership to provide satellite cellular service directly from satellites to cellphones. This will provide a service that is much needed for the billions of remote users who are not in the range of a cell tower. This is an emerging industry that is still being referred to by different acronyms.

A Transport Protocol’s Perspective on Optimizing Starlink Performance

Digital communications systems always represent a collection of design trade-offs. Maximizing one characteristic of a system may impair others, and various communications services may choose to optimize different performance parameters based on the intersection of these design decisions with the physical characteristics of the communications medium.

Starlink Service Is Great on (Some) Cruise Ships

I recently used Starlink on a cruise along the coast of Northwest Africa, and I'll summarize my experience below, but first let me explain why I put some in the title of this post. I posted the following request on the Reddit Cruise group: "What has been your experience of Starlink Internet service on Seabourn or other cruise lines? How was latency? Do video chats work smoothly? Games? etc."

Starlink Has Begun Delivering Promised Latency Cuts

In his January 12 SpaceX update, Elon Musk said the biggest goal for Starlink from a technical standpoint is to get the mean latency below 20 ms. He expanded by saying that given the speed of light, 8 ms is the absolute minimum latency for a satellite at 550 km. He believes they can optimize terrestrial and inter-satellite links, and minimize queueing delays and dropped packets, to recude the the rest of the time to below 10 ms.

Civilian Tech Mobilization in Ukraine

As was the case in the US during World War II, civilian volunteers are making important contributions to the Ukrainian war effort. On February 8, 2022, the first truckload of Starlink terminals arrived in Kyiv. A week later they were being used. By April 2022, there were 5,000 terminals in Ukraine, and 42,000 as of April 2023. (At this point, SpaceX and Ukraine have gone silent. Neither ChatGPT4, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity, nor I could not find a current terminal count).

Amazon Project Kuiper vs SpaceX Starlink

In 2019, I wrote that Amazon would be a formidable satellite-ISP competitor. I still think so, but I didn't expect it would be over four years until they launched the first test satellites. In the meantime, SpaceX has put over 5,000 satellites in orbit and has over two million Starlink customers. Amazon has permission to launch 3,236 satellites.

An Update on Satellite Broadband

Ookla recently published a blog that looks at the speed performance of satellite broadband, focusing mostly on Starlink. I haven't looked at this broadband sector for a while and thought it was time for an update. Starlink has had a busy year. At the end of November, the company had 5,500 satellites in orbit, up from over 3,200 at the end of 2022. The first constellation is still slated to reach almost 12,000 satellites, and the company has tentative permission from the FCC to extend to 42,000.

The Trajectory of the Broadband Industry

For well over a decade, it was fairly easy to understand the trajectory of the broadband industry. In the residential market, cable companies snagged all the growth while telcos shrank as customers abandoned DSL. Other technologies like fiber or fixed wireless gained customers but were a blip on the national scale.

News Briefs

FCC Approves Starlink for Direct-to-Cell Service in Hurricane-Stricken North Carolina

Starlink Surpasses 4 Million Subscribers, Cementing Dominance in Satellite Internet

Hawaiian Airlines Introduces Free Starlink Satellite Internet on Entire Airbus Fleet

Chinese Company Launches First Satellites for Massive Network to Rival Starlink

Researchers Expose Privacy Risks in Apple and Starlink’s Geo-Location Data, Uncovering Military and Civilian Tracking

China’s Satellite Internet Ambitions: A Quest to Rival SpaceX

SpaceX Launches Starlink Satellites for Global Cellular Coverage

Amazon’s Project Kuiper Successfully Tests Laser-Based Satellite Communication

SpaceX Quietly Launches New Website for Cellular Starlink Service

Amazon Launched Its First Two Internet Satellites Into Orbit

Ukraine’s Increasing Dependence on Starlink Sparks Concern Over Musk’s Unilateral Control

Satellite Spectrum Showdown: Musk’s Starlink vs. Ambani’s Reliance Jio in the Race for India’s Broadband Future

Norwegian Cruise Line Joins the Fleet of Cruise Liners to Adopt Starlink Satellite Broadband Service

China Takes on SpaceX: 13,000 Satellites to Compete With and Monitor SpaceX’s Starlink Constellations

SpaceX and T-Mobile to Test Satellite-To-Cell Service This Year

China Developing Anti-Starlink Measures, Aims to Launch Nearly 13,000 Satellites

SpaceX Launches 1st Batch of New “V2 Mini” Starlink Satellites to Orbit With Four Times More Capacity

FAA Announces $175,000 Fine Against SpaceX for Failure to Submit Required Pre-Launch Information

SpaceX Restricts Ukraine’s Use of Its Satellite Internet for Drones

SpaceX’s Starlink Satellite Internet Service Has Received 500K Preorders, Says the Company

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