Starlink Public Beta About to Happen?!?!

stinger608

stinger608

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Many people that live in remote areas have been keeping up with the news on Elon Musk's Starlink internet service. It would seem that the public beta may be just a few weeks away.

A recent article from ARStechnica shows some details on the upcoming public beta.

You can sign up on Starlinks site to get news updates and forms for the public beta testing.

However, if you live in an area that has good high speed internet you will most likely not be picked for the beta. It is going to be mainly reserved for folks in remote areas that have little to no decent internet.

Thanks to Ready4Dis , we have a link that talks about the bandwidth and what to expect for up and down speeds with Starlink.
https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-starlink-satellite-upgrade-more-bandwidth-more-beams/
 
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Yeah, they sent an email a while back asking for my address so they can notify me of beta access in my area. Nothing yet, but I'm hoping...
 
That's awesome Nobu !!!! Hopefully you get the chance to beta test this system. I'd be interested in seeing beta test results as I'm sure a lot of people would that don't have access to a good high speed internet service.
 
Nobu said:
Yeah, they sent an email a while back asking for my address so they can notify me of beta access in my area. Nothing yet, but I'm hoping...
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Same for me, nothing as of yet.

I live out in the country, but i'm lucky and have cable internet, not the greatest but better than nothing no doubt.
 
Nobu said:
Yeah, they sent an email a while back asking for my address so they can notify me of beta access in my area. Nothing yet, but I'm hoping...
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Same here, they are starting in the north though, and will slowly work their way south. So those in Canada and northern US will be getting beta first.
 
Ready4Dis said:
they are starting in the north though, and will slowly work their way south. So those in Canada and northern US will be getting beta first.
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Yeppers. And I forgot to mention that in the original post. Thanks for bringing that fact up.
 
If you're south of about Chicago, you won't be getting anything for a couple years. Pretty much the norther tier of the US and Canada are the first customers.
 
SunnyD said:
If you're south of about Chicago, you won't be getting anything for a couple years. Pretty much the norther tier of the US and Canada are the first customers.
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Let's hope it doesn't take that long!

If SpaceX kept up their every 2 week launch schedule that would be about 1560 Sats per year, maybe they can toss in a few Falcon Heavy's in the mix also.
 
I'm too far south for this public beta from the look of things but it would be nice to have other options around here. I'm literally maxed out with a 5/2 connection with a local WISP and that's the best I can get.
 
strokes beard in a curious motion

edit: apparently I need a clear view of the sky. that's a big nope.
 
odditory said:
Are the Musk haters hiding today? I'm so disappointed.

Anyhoo this seems like potentially a boon for remote/rural locations that have crappy DSL, are relying on expensive 4G tethering or are still on dialup/smoke signal/300 baud.
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This will be big with Twitch streamers who wish to play Escape From Tarkov with other fellow streamers who are otherwise in geographically distant locations that prohibit things due to ping limit.
 
Absalom said:
This will be big with Twitch streamers who wish to play Escape From Tarkov with other fellow streamers who are otherwise in geographically distant locations that prohibit things due to ping limit.
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369662_421343214.png

That's from last night. But I think its an issue with a dead router.
 
SmokeRngs said:
I'm too far south for this public beta from the look of things but it would be nice to have other options around here. I'm literally maxed out with a 5/2 connection with a local WISP and that's the best I can get.
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Lucky, I don't even have access to a wisp, lol. Im happy when I break 1mbps on a download.
 
SunnyD said:
If you're south of about Chicago, you won't be getting anything for a couple years.
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Oh man, hopefully that isn't the case!!! I believe that Musk wants the system to be fully operational by sometime in 2021.

I'm not sure if there has been anything released as to the price of the complete service. Only thing I've seen so far is "it will be affordable." LOL what ever that means.
 
sfsuphysics said:
far be it for me to say "hey that's enough speed" but if you're truly in a rural area where 1.5MBps DSL is all you got, this is a god send. I remember finally ditching DSL for cable going from 6 to 300 Mbps.
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Dsl, your funny... I wish they ran dsl to my house :(.
 
longblock454 said:
That's better than my cable during peak hours, and I have frequent outages. Looking forward to a second option soon.
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Peak hours I can't even load a page. If the speed test doesn't timeout it's normally about 10kb/s with a 6+ second ping time. I can get like 2-3mbit/s during off peak though with a 1 second ping, yay. Yes, starlink is for me. I'd take 10mbit/s consistent with 50ms ping with no rediculously low cap/throttle and gladly pay $100 a month for it.
 
Liftoff! Another 58 satellites launched today, which brings the total to ~658 (announcer said about).

Two additional launches are scheduled for September.
 
Derangel said:
So they shouldn't find solutions for people that don't have internet access?
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Nope let them suffer. *eye roll*

Maybe we should try finding a solution that doesnt involve putting up thousands of satellites? That could, oh I dont know, cause all sorts of issues in the long run. 500lbs of junk the size of a kitchen table. Id rather subsidize the running of lines or have more local coops formed to provide internet service to rural areas.
 
kju1 said:
Nope let them suffer. *eye roll*

Maybe we should try finding a solution that doesnt involve putting up thousands of satellites? That could, oh I dont know, cause all sorts of issues in the long run. 500lbs of junk the size of a kitchen table. Id rather subsidize the running of lines or have more local coops formed to provide internet service to rural areas.
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They're designed to fall into the atmosphere and burn up when they're not longer usable. So no space junk left behind.
 
The speeds aren't too bad, good enough for video streaming and Steam downloads (not super fast, but still better than rural internet)

Per tests conducted using Ookla's speedtest.net tool:
Downoad from 11Mbps to 60Mbps
Upload from 5Mbps to 18Mbps
Latencies for Starlink don't hit Musk's target of below 20ms, they are below the FCC's 100ms threshold.
 
Derangel said:
They're designed to fall into the atmosphere and burn up when they're not longer usable. So no space junk left behind.
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After 5 years. And thats deorbit.

You probably didn't even think of the light pollution...nobody ever does.
 
Westwood Arrakis said:
What's the fun in that? No longer relevant, just crash them into each other. XD
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Now that's a challenge - actually succeeding at this entirely theoretical self-sustaining debris cloud :D

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome

With currrent density Satellites are more likely to die form micrometorite impacts than other satellites. There is currently only four recorded satellite to satellite impact (and about that many that have impacted previous space mission debris.)

Even with 100x as many Satellites in orbit (with zero change in how these things are managed), you're talking about at-most 5 impacts a year.

SpaceX will want to avoid losses, so they will do everything in their power to space these satellites as far from each other as possible (reducing the probability of impacts). With that in-mind, I will be amazed if we get more than 2 per-year.
 
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kju1 said:
Nope let them suffer. *eye roll*

Maybe we should try finding a solution that doesnt involve putting up thousands of satellites? That could, oh I dont know, cause all sorts of issues in the long run. 500lbs of junk the size of a kitchen table. Id rather subsidize the running of lines or have more local coops formed to provide internet service to rural areas.
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So you're a multi billionaire?

Running wires to rural locations isn't cost effective.

This is an amazing solution. If you're worried about space junk, it's the geosynchronous stuff that's a real problem. These leo bits will fall by themselves, in short order. Those GPS SATs will be there for millennia.
 
travm said:
More likely that China will smash them into thousands of tiny pieces
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It's an anime reference (one called Planetes); beyond that, I wonder what geolocation services are on tap with Starlink. Should be able to do something similar to GPS, but perhaps in a faster, more reliable fashion for end users?
 
IdiotInCharge said:
It's an anime reference (one called Planetes); beyond that, I wonder what geolocation services are on tap with Starlink. Should be able to do something similar to GPS, but perhaps in a faster, more reliable fashion for end users?
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Well that went right over my head. Clearly.

Geolocation with starlink, I hope not. It's bad enough just having Google know everything. We don't need two internet super spies.
 
travm said:
Geolocation with starlink, I hope not.
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To me it seems like they'd have something built-in that's similar to how cell towers do it now; generally cell phones don't use actual GPS and so on, but rather know cell tower locations and even known WiFi and Bluetooth access points. Starlink would be somewhere between that and current GPS, and probably as good as you'd get so long as you had a signal.
 
IdiotInCharge said:
To me it seems like they'd have something built-in that's similar to how cell towers do it now; generally cell phones don't use actual GPS and so on, but rather know cell tower locations and even known WiFi and Bluetooth access points. Starlink would be somewhere between that and current GPS, and probably as good as you'd get so long as you had a signal.
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I'm afraid you're likely correct.
I will happily surrender all my privacy and data for 10mbps....
 
My mom will like this. She lives in a very small town in a trailer park....err modular home park (sorry mom).

Problem is the company that owns the property signed a deal to have a small company provide internet. They never kept up on maintenance and now it barely works. I remember one day the clown that runs this train wreck was stringing some lines up in trees to try and get water out....and his deal is a little monopoly. It keeps the big telecoms out.

Here's to hoping.
 
travm said:
I'm afraid you're likely correct.
I will happily surrender all my privacy and data for 10mbps....
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If you have data, you don't have privacy. -The Internet, circa 1999
THRESHIN said:
My mom will like this. She lives in a very small town in a trailer park....err modular home park (sorry mom).
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My mother and her husband bought a trailer, but they actually move it every year or so... and this would actually be pretty good for her remote work.

Honestly the consumer-side implications are near limitless. I'm kind of torn between the charictarization of Starlink being the right solution for the right people at the right time (we're not the 'right' people), or Musk just seeing a problem he could solve and solving it.
 
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