How Starlink compares with fibre and 5G

[Jamie McKane]

How Starlink compares with fibre and 5G

Elon Musk's Starlink satellite broadband service is now available for pre-order in South Africa, providing users around the country with affordable high-speed broadband.

Starlink uses a constellation of lower-earth orbit (LEO) satellites to offer fast Internet connectivity to its users.

 

[essie24]

Latency measurement must have a start and end point. Tell us from where to where the reported latency is. I am on Level-7 Fibre and latency to Amazon in the USA is 250ms. Give us meaningful stats please.

 

[Ragnarök]

The sad part is you paying in US dollar , a guaranteed price increase every month with this government

 

[Herr der Verboten]

How Starlink compares with fibre and 5G

Elon Musk's Starlink satellite broadband service is now available for pre-order in South Africa, providing users around the country with affordable high-speed broadband.

Starlink uses a constellation of lower-earth orbit (LEO) satellites to offer fast Internet connectivity to its users.

paper comparison

 

[system32]

Many South Africans may be interested in adopting this service, especially if they live in areas without fibre or affordable wireless broadband solutions.

COVERAGE
This is the reason to get Starlink.
Once complete, Starlink should have 100% coverage in Africa and with good speeds, good latency, good price.

Doesn't matter that 5G/LTE/FTTH is cheaper if there's no coverage.

 

[RR17]

Unaffordable

 

[Apogee]

YahClick's top-tier 20Mb/s 'Unlimited' link gets throttled back to 10Mb/s at 200GB, 5Mb/s at 350GB, and 2Mb/s at 400GB of usage.

https://www.vox.co.za/wp-content/up...hclick-Product-Sheet-RGB-V4-21092020-FA-1.pdf

"Latency is approximately 700ms thus will limit latency sensitive software and service as well as virtual private network (VPN) and online gaming."

 

[Nod]

Unaffordable

It is priced well for what it is.
If you have no, or few options for connectivity, then this is not badly priced.
Comparisons should only be done with other satellite or WISP services.

 

[cr@zydude]

The sad part is you paying in US dollar , a guaranteed price increase every month with this government

It's not true that the rand weakens against the dollar each month (or even each year), you should expect the rand to weaken over time, but with a volatile trend.

 

[Ipwn 4]

Quality journalism right here.

 

[KleinBoontjie]

How does this work : they say the satellites takes about 90minutes to orbit the earth. So does your dish switch between satellites? Without dropping connection? Are you always guaranteed to be connected?

 

[system32]

This means inclement weather and other visual interference may result in your connection being unreliable or interrupted.

A quick check of YouTube shows that weather does not seem to affect Starlink. There are videos of people testing Starlink during snow, rain, clouds with minimal (no) impact. Snow directly on the dish does slow it down. We don't have much snow in ZA.

 

[system32]

How does this work : they say the satellites takes about 90minutes to orbit the earth. So does your dish switch between satellites? Without dropping connection? Are you always guaranteed to be connected?

Yes, it switches satellites. Dishy is a phase array antenna - very high tech for consumer electronics - previously only available in military systems.

The constellation is not complete, so there are occasional disconnect. Once more satellites are in place, this will fix the disconnects. I suspect Starlink will be usable by end 2021 before they start delivery to ZA.

 

[Apogee]

How does this work : they say the satellites takes about 90minutes to orbit the earth. So does your dish switch between satellites? Without dropping connection? Are you always guaranteed to be connected?

At the moment there are gaps in the coverage for the USA subscribers already connected to it, but this will improve as more satellites are deployed.

The dish has a motorized antenna inside to track the sattelites to minimize interruptions.

 

[SirFooK'nG]

How does this work : they say the satellites takes about 90minutes to orbit the earth. So does your dish switch between satellites? Without dropping connection? Are you always guaranteed to be connected?

They overlap, so its a seamless handover


They are putting up 60 sats every two weeks, so by next year coverage should be way better.

 

[KleinBoontjie]

Yes, it switches satellites. Dishy is a phase array antenna - very high tech for consumer electronics - previously only available in military systems.

The constellation is not complete, so there are occasional disconnect. Once more satellites are in place, this will fix the disconnects. I suspect Starlink will be usable by end 2021 before they start delivery to ZA.

Thx. According to wikipedia (don't know how current the info), but they say there is less than 1000 satellites deployed. Phase one seems to be +/- 4000, when complete. Phase two +/- 7500, when complete.
Less than 1k is already causing controversy with the astronomy crowd. With satellites obstructing their telescopes etc. Wonder what 10k + will do yo the light pollution.

 

[SirFooK'nG]

Thx. According to wikipedia (don't know how current the info), but they say there is less than 1000 satellites deployed. Phase one seems to be +/- 4000, when complete. Phase two +/- 7500, when complete.
Less than 1k is already causing controversy with the astronomy crowd. With satellites obstructing their telescopes etc. Wonder what 10k + will do yo the light pollution.

if you are in orbit and look down on earth ... you couldn't see 1 building let alone an object the size if a satellite, so switch the view from earth back out to orbit ... get the picture ...

 

[KleinBoontjie]

if you are in orbit and look down on earth ... you couldn't see 1 building let alone an object the size if a satellite, so switch the view from earth back out to orbit ... get the picture ...

Ok, so you're a fan....
When last did you watch the sky for a while, at night? Quite a lot of movement these days.
Anyway, I was talking about the astronomers with the long exposure lenses and telescopes. There is already some controversy about this......not me complaining.

 

[tjma2001]

Latency measurement must have a start and end point. Tell us from where to where the reported latency is. I am on Level-7 Fibre and latency to Amazon in the USA is 250ms. Give us meaningful stats please.

I am pretty sure that is it the highest latency to any point on earth. as far as I remember, According to their advertisements and promotional material, they are aiming to get it to something like sub 25ms to any point on earth.

 

[Messugga]

How does this work : they say the satellites takes about 90minutes to orbit the earth. So does your dish switch between satellites? Without dropping connection? Are you always guaranteed to be connected?

Yes