Yeah, this reads like clickbait. The Verge has really gone down the tubes, I never go there anymore - too consumed with political causes. My guess is that some boss ordered the writer to make the review as negative as possible, probably because they have a bone to pick with Elon Musk.
It’s a very common writing style that many people use even when their business doesn’t depend on page views. No need to look further than that, people need to make a living and are rewarded for doing what they do naturally.
I mean, your guess is plausible but also kind of clickbaity speculation. We all do it.
Cities see Starlink as a reason they shouldn't invest in conduit and fiber, in case wireline proves to be an obsolete technology. None of the legislation currently on offer achieves what we need as a country, which is to collectively tear up our streets and connect every home and business with gig fiber as a utility. We'll never get there. This country will always have shitty internet.
Starlink will not have enough aggregate bandwidth, even when the full constellation is deployed, to be a factor when it comes to city planning for broadband.
People keep peddling this "LTE/5G/Starlink will replace fiber" but its all shale oil salesmen and politicans unwilling to byte the bullet. RF physics prevents it
It’s The Verge, which is part of Vox Media - they aren’t exactly objective, and are one of the most left biased publications out there. In recent times there’s been an ecosystem of hate coming from the left (in news, social media) towards Elon Musk for his quirks, success, and libertarian comments. In my mind it explains these cheap articles trying to diminish efforts like Starlink.
Comments like yours are exactly what I am referring to. They constitute a purity test used to attempt a character assassination of one of the most successful and impactful humans of all time. It's tired, it's unproductive, and it is entirely bereft of any sense of balance against all that he's done.
Ofcourse not, I am just responding to the bloke who seems to think Musk is hated by leftist jealous of his success, when in reality you could get in serious legal trouble behaving the way he does
> But The Verge has long had a hard rule against reviewing products based on potential because the sad truth is that most tech products never, ever live up to their potential. And Starlink, judged on its capabilities right now, is simply not a real competitor to the long, long coax wire running from my house to the local cable company fiber plant.
The article seems okay, the only thing I really take issue with is the title. None of the "dreams" have "fallen to earth" yet -- SpaceX has launched ~15% of their constellation and are extremely clear about what limitations users should expect during the beta.
I don't think it's really supposed to ever compete with a good wired connection. As someone with a crap wired connection, Starlink is a godsend improving my ability to work significantly.
This. We wish to someday live veeeery far away from anything more than a grocery store. Of course, we still need the internet to work and whatnot. Starlink is part of those plans as it has made the dream a lot more realistic.
As someone who has driven around the world, and lived in a ton of remote places in Australia, the Yukon, etc. I hate to dash your dreams, but I can tell you from experience that if you're near(ish) a grocery store, you're near to everything you want to avoid.
Plenty of people in the North use proximity to a grocery store for the indicator that's exactly where you don't want to live!
They mounted the dish as provided in the instructions. It wasn't the optimal location for long-term use, but if Starlink is that dependent on optimal placement for claimed performance, that's fair game for a review to point out, since not everyone is going to set up their dish that way.
I assure you, anyone that is currently getting by on geostationary satellite internet is more than happy to grab the ladder and get on the roof in order to have the opportunity to tell HughesNet to F-off.
I have had Starlink for about 4 months now. I live in Washington and have a lot of trees on my property. Most are about 40 feet tall. The firs are around 80 feet tall. There's damn near nowhere to put the dish for me. It took me weeks to get an optimal setup, have an arborist come and top the trees that I "think" were blocking the signal, figure out how to mount a pole on my house, guess for the best placement...
That's the real problem, you really have no way to know what's going to make the signal better until you try it. All you get is an app that uses your camera to show you possible obstructions. The app also says "No Obstructions" constantly, but the debug data that you can get from the app shows obstructions all the time.
And you can't use the app to check for obstructions for where you "might" place the dish. I put mine up on a pole 10 feet above my roof. How am I supposed to stand 10 feet above my roof and use the camera app to check for obstructions in mid air?
It's a huge guessing game, and a real shit show to get a proper mount working. If your property is flat, and you have no trees, it's probably easy. But trees 40-80 feet away from your house will block the signal. So be prepared for a lot of work to get it set up.
They are _selling_ it, though. I think that’s the point where a company can no longer use the beta tag to hide their blushes; if you’re reviewing a product that people are considering paying money for, you should review as-is, not as-one-day-might-be.
But the connectivity issues are of his own doing, namely putting it where obstructions are, against what the manual says, with the app telling him he's doing it wrong, but instead continues on with his review despite the obvious problems with his setup.
He's not reviewing it as it's meant to be used. Of course he had poor connectivity.
I use starlink to work remotely, and it's a massive improvement from my DSL. Even with beta downtime, I am more reliably connecting to video calls, and remote desktop. I wish the verge would come and review my DSL connection for fair comparison.
Really? My DSL line is the only thing that works for Zoom meetings without dropping. Starlink still has tons of hiccups, drops and stutters. Even RDP and SSH works better over the DSL line for me. My DSL line is only 1.5Mb/768Kb. So downloads are slow. I have even done 2 simultaneous Zoom meetings on that DSL line without any problems.
That said, the Starlink connection has gotten better even since I started using it. If it's still like this when it's out of Beta though, I'll be hugely disappointed.
I'm enjoying my experience, but I anticipated the problems and kept my other ISPs. I've seen pings around 55ms at lowest. My other LTE providers are 70 to 95ms, and there is a difference.
I'm in rural NW Arkansas and I have two LTE providers plus Starlink. I'm not even using bonding - tons of things support multiple tcp streams, and those that don't it's worthwhile to have each ISP be fairly strong.
Worst case my speed tests will show 150mbit / 20mbit. Best case it's 300mbit / 90mbit. I do have the Starlink connection on a 5 second watchdog, so I will see 5 seconds of nothing when things aren't ideal, before the connection is retried over one of the other ISPs.
Huh. That’s quite high for LTE, more what you’d expect of HSDPA. Are they definitely LTE? Just did a speed test on my phone’s LTE; 15ms, which is about what I’d expect.
Hey, sorry, missed this. Yes, it's LTE. One is T-Mobile's home internet product. The other is in a device I assembled myself, using an EM160G modem. ATT service.
My ping is high due to my location. I "hit the internet" in typically Dallas, TX, ~300 miles away. Sometimes it shows me in Colorado, Minnesota, Kansas, and Tennessee. It depends on what the LTE providers want to do with me!
Was chatting to a friend last night who lives in Canada just North of the border, about 20 minutes from a decent sized town. He's been using different sat providers for 5+ years, has never been able to watch a single show on Netflix, can't watch YouTube, etc. etc.
He's had Starlink for about a month now. yesterday he was in a conference all day, sharing his screen, etc. and it was flawless then entire day.
Absolutely game changing, and we both agreed all the existing sat providers (Hughesnet, Xplorenet, etc.) are all utterly doomed.
>> 'Using Starlink “in a manner that is obscene, sexually explicit, ...'
What possible reason could they have for banning this? They put "sexually explicit" in with a list of things that are completely different, morally speaking. I know what's moral and what's not is up for argument but, despite all the other negative things I could say about Elon Musk, prude is not among them.
Believe I'm supposed to get it in October (maybe September?). We'll see. The reported speeds here are more than I'm getting from Spectrum, where I pay for 400 down and consistently can't get any better than 80. And hopefully Starlink won't make it possible for prospective neighbors to DOS me by accidentally typoing their move-in address and Spectrum shutting down my account without asking because they just assume that must mean I'm moving out. Lost a full day of work thanks to that one. I am more than willing to accept a beta product just to stick it to existing ISPs. If it gets better, great. If it doesn't, it's still better than Spectrum.
I do have an unobstructured view and have the tallest building in my neighborhood, so that shouldn't be a problem.
Guess I'm done reading the verge. I've watched many, many Starlink reviews out of curiosity and this is the only one so tinged by the author's mood.
It's clearly written as a kind of hit-piece. While other reviewers mention that the software specifically does not allow a device to be used outside of the area it is registered at (for FCC reasons), this piece mentions "The dish is small and light enough that you can easily move it to different locations, but you’re not guaranteed service anywhere but the address where you signed up." As if it's a coverage issue, and not the software blocking it from being used - which Starlink is very clear about.
How is this a hit piece? The quote is an objective statement of fact, and most of the review has objectively positive things to say about Starlink, especially considering that the author lives in rural America.
Starlink made bold claims. And in its present state, does not live up to them. Starlink doesn't get to excuse the bold claims it is making right now on the basis that it might one day live up to them. If they want to be judged on their performance today they need to stop basing their marketing around the version of Starlink 5 years from now.
They sort of made bold claims but they also called it their “better than nothing beta” to lower expectations. From starlink.com:
> During beta, users can expect to see data speeds vary from 50Mb/s to 150Mb/s and latency from 20ms to 40ms in most locations over the next several months as we enhance the Starlink system. There will also be brief periods of no connectivity at all.
(The trick is getting other people to do the marketing for you.)
I found Nilay's to be the most useful review I have encountered. It pulled-no-punches, as any good review must. I know from this review that Starlink, as it is now, would not be usable at my house in New York, nor at my house in California.
The California house depends on local microwave, which works pretty well in dry weather, but is not broadband by any modern standard. Years ago, ATT laid fiber to within, literally, yards of the house–just across the street–and collected a half $billion federal subsidy (paid by taxing old-fashioned, wired phone subscribers) for that, but never lit it. I was stuck on ATT 3Mb DSL for years, and dropped it the moment there was a viable alternative at twice the price. (I could have switched to Comcast, lately. But that would be Comcast.)
Starlink might be usable, in time. When it is, Verge most likely will publish another review. I expect it will also pull no punches, and I await it as eagerly as I await Starlink to leave Beta status. But my seething hatred for ATT will not fade in this lifetime. (Doubtless I would feel the same about Comcast, given any contact.)
You seem to have poor service that Starlink would greatly improve. I think you took the wrong message from the verge article that is exactly what everyone is complaining about.
Starlink, as it is now, would leave me wholly disconnected for at least half of any hour. The service I have is not fast, but it moves all the packets I send in any minute I send them (except during rainstorms) ...and gives me two static public IP addresses.
> Starlink, as it is now, would leave me wholly disconnected for at least half of any hour.
I don't know what you're talking about here. Starlink doesn't act that way at all. The uptime is very high in many cases. A lot of people have zero downtime on most days.
Starlink's own user manual says that even a single tree can block service, when the satellite needed is on the other side of it. The review usefully relays this essential information. Any review that does not reveal this has failed.
Only people who are not surrounded by 100 ft trees may be getting tolerable service. That would not include me.
I think the comments are a bit harsh. The reviewer did what I would consider a reasonable job testing the device, did mention that had he placed the dish higher up it would've helped with the various issues he encountered. He also explains that he is judging the device based on its current status because even though it is still in beta, people are signing up because there is an absolute lack of alternatives.
Not saying that his is a high-quality article, but most of the comments implied that this was an unfair/biased review and I don't see it.
The article was doing the wrong value comparison. Nilay claims he has "rural" internet, but he gets 325/25 from his ISP. I don't know many people outside of major metros with that kind of speed, he has a great connection. Starlink isn't valuable for people in his situation, and he shouldn't have implied he has typical rural problems. Starlink is a gamechanger for most rural people (less than 25/5). I technically had a 45/5 connection but it was so unreliable that Starlink has beaten it on reliability and speed.
I completely agree that the device is not for him and that this is far from a high quality review.
My point is more that I read the comments on HN before the article and there were almost accusing him of being voluntarily badmouthing starlink and the product, whereas the article still has some nuance.
Had Starlink for about a month now. It's fantastic.
Setup was beautiful. Automatic. No phone app needed. Took about ten minutes to warm up and automatically find satellite.
Since then it's snowed 4-5 times, rained hard 7-8 times, 2 - 100 mph windstorms. Keeps working.
It's beta. There are interruptions. But can watch anything, zoom, stream, internet in high definition. Upload and download speeds excellent.
Dish is sitting on the lawn as it has been from beginning.
Nothing to complain about.
Obviously we live in the country-side. LTE in our area is available, but more sporadic than this. And limited. Both up and down.
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[ 1.8 ms ] story [ 107 ms ] threadI mean, your guess is plausible but also kind of clickbaity speculation. We all do it.
At least they actually tested the product a bit.
This point isn't widely understood, but it's absolutely true. Anyone interested in learning more can start at Shannon-Hartley:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon%E2%80%93Hartley_theore...
Seriously, half the article deals with connectivity issues caused by the satellite constellation being only partially complete.
The article seems okay, the only thing I really take issue with is the title. None of the "dreams" have "fallen to earth" yet -- SpaceX has launched ~15% of their constellation and are extremely clear about what limitations users should expect during the beta.
Plenty of people in the North use proximity to a grocery store for the indicator that's exactly where you don't want to live!
This is less of an editorial piece and looks to be written as an opinion piece.
> If this wasn’t a short-term review, I would certainly have it mounted on a pole on top of the structure.
That's the real problem, you really have no way to know what's going to make the signal better until you try it. All you get is an app that uses your camera to show you possible obstructions. The app also says "No Obstructions" constantly, but the debug data that you can get from the app shows obstructions all the time.
And you can't use the app to check for obstructions for where you "might" place the dish. I put mine up on a pole 10 feet above my roof. How am I supposed to stand 10 feet above my roof and use the camera app to check for obstructions in mid air?
It's a huge guessing game, and a real shit show to get a proper mount working. If your property is flat, and you have no trees, it's probably easy. But trees 40-80 feet away from your house will block the signal. So be prepared for a lot of work to get it set up.
He's not reviewing it as it's meant to be used. Of course he had poor connectivity.
That said, the Starlink connection has gotten better even since I started using it. If it's still like this when it's out of Beta though, I'll be hugely disappointed.
I'm in rural NW Arkansas and I have two LTE providers plus Starlink. I'm not even using bonding - tons of things support multiple tcp streams, and those that don't it's worthwhile to have each ISP be fairly strong.
Worst case my speed tests will show 150mbit / 20mbit. Best case it's 300mbit / 90mbit. I do have the Starlink connection on a 5 second watchdog, so I will see 5 seconds of nothing when things aren't ideal, before the connection is retried over one of the other ISPs.
My ping is high due to my location. I "hit the internet" in typically Dallas, TX, ~300 miles away. Sometimes it shows me in Colorado, Minnesota, Kansas, and Tennessee. It depends on what the LTE providers want to do with me!
https://www.openmptcprouter.com/
He's had Starlink for about a month now. yesterday he was in a conference all day, sharing his screen, etc. and it was flawless then entire day.
Absolutely game changing, and we both agreed all the existing sat providers (Hughesnet, Xplorenet, etc.) are all utterly doomed.
What possible reason could they have for banning this? They put "sexually explicit" in with a list of things that are completely different, morally speaking. I know what's moral and what's not is up for argument but, despite all the other negative things I could say about Elon Musk, prude is not among them.
I do have an unobstructured view and have the tallest building in my neighborhood, so that shouldn't be a problem.
It's clearly written as a kind of hit-piece. While other reviewers mention that the software specifically does not allow a device to be used outside of the area it is registered at (for FCC reasons), this piece mentions "The dish is small and light enough that you can easily move it to different locations, but you’re not guaranteed service anywhere but the address where you signed up." As if it's a coverage issue, and not the software blocking it from being used - which Starlink is very clear about.
This was bad.
Starlink made bold claims. And in its present state, does not live up to them. Starlink doesn't get to excuse the bold claims it is making right now on the basis that it might one day live up to them. If they want to be judged on their performance today they need to stop basing their marketing around the version of Starlink 5 years from now.
> During beta, users can expect to see data speeds vary from 50Mb/s to 150Mb/s and latency from 20ms to 40ms in most locations over the next several months as we enhance the Starlink system. There will also be brief periods of no connectivity at all.
(The trick is getting other people to do the marketing for you.)
The California house depends on local microwave, which works pretty well in dry weather, but is not broadband by any modern standard. Years ago, ATT laid fiber to within, literally, yards of the house–just across the street–and collected a half $billion federal subsidy (paid by taxing old-fashioned, wired phone subscribers) for that, but never lit it. I was stuck on ATT 3Mb DSL for years, and dropped it the moment there was a viable alternative at twice the price. (I could have switched to Comcast, lately. But that would be Comcast.)
Starlink might be usable, in time. When it is, Verge most likely will publish another review. I expect it will also pull no punches, and I await it as eagerly as I await Starlink to leave Beta status. But my seething hatred for ATT will not fade in this lifetime. (Doubtless I would feel the same about Comcast, given any contact.)
So, no, Starlink would not improve my service.
I don't know what you're talking about here. Starlink doesn't act that way at all. The uptime is very high in many cases. A lot of people have zero downtime on most days.
Starlink's own user manual says that even a single tree can block service, when the satellite needed is on the other side of it. The review usefully relays this essential information. Any review that does not reveal this has failed.
Only people who are not surrounded by 100 ft trees may be getting tolerable service. That would not include me.
Many is not all.
> A lot of people have zero downtime on most days
Zero downtime on > 50% of days is a pretty low bar, and a lot of people have unobstructed line of sight to virtually all of the sky.
A lot of other people, however, don’t.
Not saying that his is a high-quality article, but most of the comments implied that this was an unfair/biased review and I don't see it.
My point is more that I read the comments on HN before the article and there were almost accusing him of being voluntarily badmouthing starlink and the product, whereas the article still has some nuance.
Dish is sitting on the lawn as it has been from beginning. Nothing to complain about. Obviously we live in the country-side. LTE in our area is available, but more sporadic than this. And limited. Both up and down.