SpaceX President says Starlink won't offer tiered pricing

Hanno Labuschagne

Hanno Labuschagne

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SpaceX President says Starlink won't offer tiered pricing

South Africans should not expect that SpaceX will have cheaper Starlink packages available once the service is launched in the country in 2022.

The high-speed, low-latency satellite Internet service is currently priced at a monthly fee of $99 (R1,441) in the US, £89 (R1,782) in the UK, and C$129 (R1,488) in Canada.

This provides the user with download speeds of between 80Mbps to 150Mbps, upload speeds of about 30Mbps, and latency of around 30ms.
 
WISPs will be the hardest hit, slow speeds, expensive installs, they literally must up their game or cease to exist. The game changer might be when starlink's entire constellation is in operation and latency drops to 50ms for international links. Maybe with economies of scale, their prices will drop?
 
Kawak said:
WISPs will be the hardest hit, slow speeds, expensive installs, they literally must up their game or cease to exist. The game changer might be when starlink's entire constellation is in operation and latency drops to 50ms for international links. Maybe with economies of scale, their prices will drop?
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Starlinks latency for international links will never be 50ms, it is quite literally physically impossible.

It may provide a slightly better latency experience than a decent fibre connection now, but it won't be 50ms.
 
ToxicBunny said:
Starlinks latency for international links will never be 50ms, it is quite literally physically impossible.

It may provide a slightly better latency experience than a decent fibre connection now, but it won't be 50ms.
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It's 30ms. The satellites are low orbit.
So it's possible.
 
ToxicBunny said:
Starlinks latency for international links will never be 50ms, it is quite literally physically impossible.

It may provide a slightly better latency experience than a decent fibre connection now, but it won't be 50ms.
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I remember back when they were promoting their idea, this was one of their biggest draw cards, to be able to settle international trades a few ms faster than fibre. It all depends on the amount of land based stations they have, if the amount of hops can drastically reduce it might just be possible. Many are seeing 20ms latencies right now.
 
ToxicBunny said:
Its 30ms to the satellite. Not 30ms international link latency.
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Starlink
High-speed, low latency broadband internet. 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.
Click to expand...
 
Kawak said:
I remember back when they were promoting their idea, this was one of their biggest draw cards, to be able to settle international trades a few ms faster than fibre. It all depends on the amount of land based stations they have, if the amount of hops can drastically reduce it might just be possible. Many are seeing 20ms latencies right now.
Click to expand...

That is the latency to the satellite, not full link latency.

Its literally physically impossible to have a 50ms latency to the EU from SA.

Straight line from SA to the EU is around 9000kms, speed of light would put that at 30ms one way. So assume a 20ms trip up to the satellite, you're looking at around 100ms latency to an EU system and that is assuming absolutely zero overhead or hop loss or anything of the sort.
 
ToxicBunny said:
That is the latency to the satellite, not full link latency.

Its literally physically impossible to have a 50ms latency to the EU from SA.
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I'm not intending to argue for the sake of it.

According to my understanding, because there's hundreds of these starlinks and more to come, the latency will be improved and it will be possible.
 
|tera| said:
I'm not intending to argue for the sake of it.

According to my understanding, because there's hundreds of these starlinks and more to come, the latency will be improved and it will be possible.
Click to expand...

Latency will possibly be improved yes, but it won't magically bend the laws of physics. Light can only travel so fast.
 
|tera| said:
I'm not intending to argue for the sake of it.

According to my understanding, because there's hundreds of these starlinks and more to come, the latency will be improved and it will be possible.
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Only once satellite to satellite links are operational, which according to my knowledge it is not in the v1 satellite. So yes - better latency possible in future. But still would be >100ms to Europe.
 
ToxicBunny said:
That is the latency to the satellite, not full link latency.

Its literally physically impossible to have a 50ms latency to the EU from SA.

Straight line from SA to the EU is around 9000kms, speed of light would put that at 30ms one way. So assume a 20ms trip up to the satellite, you're looking at around 100ms latency to an EU system and that is assuming absolutely zero overhead or hop loss or anything of the sort.
Click to expand...
The satellites are 550km above the earth which is 1.8 seconds to the satellite, isn't it?
 
C4Cat said:
The satellites are 550km above the earth which is 1.8 seconds to the satellite, isn't it?
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Nah, starlink is in the ms range... I might be over estimating it at 20ms actually but still.
 
Best possible for max distance.
About 20 000km to opposite side of Earth, if ignoring any curvature and routing obstacles.
20 000 / 300 000 = 67 ms

Add real world issues, much higher, but that's the theoretical minimum.
 
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