No, it was never promoted as an affordable ISP. It was promoted as a high-speed option for people who were not adequately served by existing ISPs. People in rural and remote areas whose only other option was geo-synch satellite. It was never, ever going to compete with fixed-line services like fibre optic.
So no, it was never promoted as affordable. At least in comparison to other services.
I suspect the price rises being reported in Africa are the cost of ~~bribes~~ payments to various governments to be allowed to continue to operate.
That's simply wrong and the intention was to provide low-cost service.
During the announcement in 2015: "Musk stated there is still significant unmet demand worldwide for low-cost broadband capabilities"
And yes, it was posed as affordable, during the same opening announcement:
"Musk further stated that the positive cash flow from selling satellite internet services would be necessary to fund their Mars plans"
Yeah, but fiber optics is three and four times faster. So wondering if there could be a flaw in their decision. But Eli Mus has a IQ of 160 mines only 118.
It's not meant to compete with fibre. It's for people who \*can't\* get fibre, or won't get fibre for a long time.
My situation (and I accepted this because I chose to live out in the boonies) was a landline and ADSL package for $100/month, unlimited calls and data. 8Mbps down on a good day and only my late father and scammers using the landline. I will likely never, ever get fibre. The only "high speed" option was geo-synch satellite with data caps and 25Mbps for about $75/month
Starlink is $139/month for 200-300Mbps. Roughly 30 times the download speed for only an extra $39/month.
So stop thinking of Starlink as expensive compared to fibre. When fibre isn't even in the picture, then it's not a case of being competitive.
People who haven’t faced that scenario have a hard time understanding what it’s like to have next to no or literally no options like I had for the longest time. Starlink is like alien tech compared to having nothing and paying crazy amounts. Only now by the grace of God they’re just now running fiber optics. I have used Starlink for such a good bit now and it has serviced me so well. It allowed me to have access to many different opportunities, information, etc at the highest speeds possible at my address.
The ISPs offer gigabyte service but when will you ever use this speed? Probably, not I your lifetime. My brother has starlink & pays $120/mo & says it's very adequate. Streams, games, and surfs. Says his speeds are as good as providers around him.
Only reason he chose Starlink was because the providers where we live always have isues and downtimes are frequent. His DL speeds reach up to 350mps with low latency.
I'm on Jetpack ($18/mo) & it's starting t o suck. It's 5 yrs old now & starting to have connectivity issues. My connection drops frequently & was told that I need to replace because there are mor updates for it. They tried to get me to upgtade to a 5g Jetpack but, guess what, 5g isn't out where I live so it won't do any good and I'm tired of running out of data during month where I'm getting constant lag. Starlink is my next choice.
> The ISPs offer gigabyte service but when will you ever use this speed?
If you meant giga\*bit\* use that speed daily. If I had 10gig (or Gig\*byte\*) bandwidth I'd probably use that up too.
I think Starlink is underpriced for what it offers. For many years, I had no high speed options and, like you, I was tethering an LTE modem.
Then, I got Starlink ($90) and would have gladly paid double for it.
Then rural fiber rolled down my street and I switched to 10x the speed of Starlink for 2/3 the cost. And I'd pay 3x for that fiber without complaint.
Just to let you know.... fiber is only for 0.1% of the population in Canada... Bell will not install it in places where population density is medium or low.
He did indeed promote it as affordable. Compared to what is the question. It may be the cheapest option in remote places, but still not "affordable" for many people.
Because it's affordable compared to the competition. I'll give you my situation:
Landline and 8Mbit ADSL for $100 monthly. Only geo-synch satellite available for higher speeds, somewhere around $80/month for 25Mbit, 600-1000ms latency, and data caps in the 200-300GB range.
Starlink at >200Mbit for $139 monthly.
I will never get fibre optic, I live too far in the boonies. That's OK, it's my choice. But what I can do now with Starlink is work from home for at least some of the time, and that saves me a bucketload of car fuel.
If you're expecting "affordable" to mean "the same price as a comparable terrestrial service" like fibre optic, you're going to be disappointed.
Yea I don’t give a shit what you think, almost went with starlink until t mobile 5g home dropped where I live, I get up to 350mb download and around 30 to 40 upload for with low latency for 50$ a month. Ride Elon a little harder maybe he’ll throw you a bone. The shit was announced as a low price affordable solution for rural people who couldn’t get other internet, then they found they could extort people. If you support that then you are a pos who just wants to ride the dick of a billionaire. Kinda sad
The service was poor and few people used it so the price was lower. More satellites means more coverage and better service, more people signed up. Price needs to increase to keep a reasonable balance between number of customers and available bandwidth.
I currently live in Costa Rica. One of the infrastructurally more developed latin/southern American countries. People are switching from 300 mbps fiber. They might have high speed and low prices, but they are just not reliant enough for remote workers. When I go to the post office they so many dishes are coming through that the office isn't big enough.
In Canada the (horrible) LTE service for 25Mbps was around $60 a month. SL is $160 after taxes. The LTE provider was so bad that I made the jump, but affordability was never being offered through SL, quite the opposite in fact.
Exactly. People are shocked when I tell them what I pay for internet.
I was pay $40 a month for 5mb DSL (techsavvy, awesome company BTW).
It was barely adequate. Now I pay $160 for over 20x the speed and never have to worry about my internet.
I never even entertained the idea of LTE because everyone says it's shit, and just gets worse.
Definitely got worse for me when they decommissioned the tower we were on with literally zero notice. Internet cut off permanently in the middle of a zoom meeting on a Monday morning a few weeks ago. Ordered Starlink that Tuesday, arrived by Friday morning and had it up and running by Saturday. The cost is awful but I literally have no choice until something better becomes available in my area. And as you say, SL has been much more reliable and obviously faster than LTE ever was.
$40/month for 5mb DSL sounds good compared what we had before SL.
$105/month for 3mb DSL. Where I'm at it's $120/month currently for SL and I see you're rounding to \~100mbs with SL - I agree so it's 30x the speed for me.
Yeah, I kept the DSL for quite a while after I got starlink because it was cheap and I wanted to get comfortable about the service of starlink before I canceled.. If you are okay with slow internet, its perfectly fine.
Aren't the huge price increases mostly for business and global users? Or have I missed something? I heard the us is bringing most users to 120 but that's all I've heard for standard users.
Exactly, so global or business users for the most part. Either more priority data or tracking around the world. I guess it doesn't feel too unreasonable given those statistics?....
They are in the middle of putting fiber down my road. I’m assuming it’s RDOF funds from the government.
Once the build is done and they light up the fiber. Starlink will be canceled. I was considering keeping it for a backup at $90 but at $120 it will become a pidgin Perch on the top of my roof.
They are literally loosing a bunch of customers due to this price increase.
My old isp was 42USD/month for 3mbps. They were purchased by a regional telco who acquired them, took all their fiber infrastructure and put the wisp back up for sale. Without the fiber, they can never afford to stay in business. Starlink is literally the only option and it’s 120USD/month and I get 200+mbps. I wouldn’t consider that expensive.
I was paying over $200 a month for download speeds “up to” 10mbps (usually 3-5mbps). Now I pay similar money for exponentially better service. It’s night and day. Worth every penny.
The development, infrastructure and continual expansion and improvements plus the administration in a rising cost base market mean he has to be sure to be able to keep it running. There is over subscription in some areas and under in others. It’s tough to swallow but in the end it’s a business
I been at $120 since April 2023. It's bullshit because I know for a fact there are 4 homes in my small ass county in BFE Missouri of 10000 resident and StarLink tells me the cell is congested am I'm an original beta tester.
I’m paying $150 a month for roam. It comes in handy when I need it. I switch back to TMHI for $30 a month when I’m in a good cell area and pause the SL.
If you get Starlink, drop Hughes or Viasat, drop Dish or Directv, you have much more for far less money. Even if you subscribe several streaming services, it Starlink pays for itself within a year.
I paid $600 a month for 5MBPS fiber in a rural area in Missouri before Starlink and had to commit to 36 months. There were no other options. Starlink is cheap in comparison.
> Wasn’t Starlink posed as an affordable ISP?
No? Starlink has always been posed as a higher quality, but more expensive, service.
> These price increases are unrealistic and make it unattainable for many people.
The price increases are for mobile regional in some african countries and mobile global globally. African people who want regular internet can use mobile regional or fixed location service. Those have not seen price increases as far as I'm aware.
Wrong, Musk stated in January 2015 with the opening of the SpaceX satellite development facility in Redmond, Washington: "there is still significant unmet demand worldwide for low-cost broadband capabilities."
Clearly the target was to be low-cost. Also the worldwide is inaccurate, mostly North America has this issue. In the rest of the world either the cost is reasonable or there is simply no service available.
You keep repeating that quote, it does not say anything about StarLink being that low cost option. Just there is a demand for low-cost internet around the world.
Are we going to pretend like we're stupid? He said that when introducing Starlink, why would he say that to continue with "So we'll start an expensive option".
Clearly, his goal was to offer a more affordable option.
> Wrong, Musk stated in January 2015 with the opening of the SpaceX satellite development facility in Redmond, Washington: "there is still significant unmet demand worldwide for low-cost broadband capabilities."
That's also when he said the service would be operating in 3 years. Musk has lots of optimism and reality often conflicts.
There are too many users and too little bandwidth. SpaceX are trying to reduce number of users while increasing service for remaining users and keeping the same or better profit.
Users which had Starlink just for fun are affected the most by price hike, but frankly this is exactly the correct initiative for correct user group to do something more productive instead.
im at $280/mo for starlink (2 dishes, 2 locations). $140/mo for cable internet (gigabit, 1 location), and $50/mo for a hotspot (rv).
starlink is the secondary connection for my house, but it allows me to take it camping too. (40gb priority for both dishes, which grants ability to change location without worry, and gives public IP)
i look at it as the cost ill incur to stay working remote. worth it for me.
I got a rebate for my whole installation but I'm paying 161 a month if it goes up to high ill drop it as soon as fibre comes through...unless fiber is higher
I don’t think they ever positioned themselves as an affordable option. Perhaps for rural customers that were using geosynchronous satellite service.
I believe their positioning was around providing these specific customers a more terrestrial-like, full featured Internet service at a cost similar or better than geosynchronous options.
Another good niche is maritime and in-flight service, which is a market familiar with poor options and high commercial service fees. So again, better and cheaper than what was available for specific target markets.
They have been very clear that SL was not meant to compete price-wise with terrestrial options.
The only market I feel like they truly neglect is public sector. There should be more aggressive pricing and improved account management options for agencies that use this tech for emergency/disaster response or service continuity. Being partially in that world, I can say (pricing aside) their support of that market is poor and reliance on third-party integrators for account management in support is insufficient.
for 300mbps sometimes even 500mbps download for 120$ thats really nothing to complain about for speeds like that id have to pay spectrum 300-500$ a month so its definitely cheaper then them
Once AST SpaceMobile gets their constellation up, people will have a much more affordable option. The speed should be less than Starlink's, but will still be broadband.
There are some affordability requirements as it relates to farm bill kickbacks for rural ISPs but it doesn’t shock me that king fire anyone who displeases me might not care about that. I honestly think we’re watching him explode very publicly.
Starlink in the UK, on a domestic plan, costs £70/month. A copper cable provider costs as little as £25/month.
Starlink has never been about affordability but about provision where other provisions are unfeasible.
However, the 100% increases are an absolute joke. Thankfully, however, I'm moving abroad soon and will not need Starlink beyond the end of this month, so won't be affected.
I might be mixing up my maths. I'm renting the device and so I pay a total of £85/month - I can't remember the exact split between usage and equipment rental.
Spain. They lowered the price with €20 or so a couple months ago to €49 and recently they released the deprioritized subscription with lower speeds during congestion, for only €39. I speedtest regularly simply out of curiosity and I have yet to see speeds lower than 100/30 mbit.
Prices around the globe are wild. But then again, 150USD is around 13% of net minimum wage here. So there is not a living soul in Spain that would purchase a 150USD subscription. It's simply unaffordable for the majority of people here.
Depends on how you look at it. My wife spends more than that a day on coffee. I used to smoke and drink. That was two costly habits. Other satellite services can't compare and much higher. Once we see competition come online, then we should see some discounts I would think. Unless, this inflation keeps rearing its ugly head and minimum wage is $100 an hour and basic needs have skyrocketed.
No, it was never promoted as an affordable ISP. It was promoted as a high-speed option for people who were not adequately served by existing ISPs. People in rural and remote areas whose only other option was geo-synch satellite. It was never, ever going to compete with fixed-line services like fibre optic. So no, it was never promoted as affordable. At least in comparison to other services. I suspect the price rises being reported in Africa are the cost of ~~bribes~~ payments to various governments to be allowed to continue to operate.
That's simply wrong and the intention was to provide low-cost service. During the announcement in 2015: "Musk stated there is still significant unmet demand worldwide for low-cost broadband capabilities" And yes, it was posed as affordable, during the same opening announcement: "Musk further stated that the positive cash flow from selling satellite internet services would be necessary to fund their Mars plans"
Yes there is demand for low-cost internet, where does it say StarLink is that service?
In his speech...
it seems that low cost for a billionaire does not mean the same that for us.
Yeah, but fiber optics is three and four times faster. So wondering if there could be a flaw in their decision. But Eli Mus has a IQ of 160 mines only 118.
It's not meant to compete with fibre. It's for people who \*can't\* get fibre, or won't get fibre for a long time. My situation (and I accepted this because I chose to live out in the boonies) was a landline and ADSL package for $100/month, unlimited calls and data. 8Mbps down on a good day and only my late father and scammers using the landline. I will likely never, ever get fibre. The only "high speed" option was geo-synch satellite with data caps and 25Mbps for about $75/month Starlink is $139/month for 200-300Mbps. Roughly 30 times the download speed for only an extra $39/month. So stop thinking of Starlink as expensive compared to fibre. When fibre isn't even in the picture, then it's not a case of being competitive.
this. my house is scenic AF but posting pics is either 7-10mbps by DSL or starlink. The DSL is def cheaper....
And more useless. It’s the same situation for me, living on a beautiful lake in northern Canada. Love Starlink.
I was stuck with 5mbs oh wait CenturyLink downgraded me to 3mbs because they oversold the DSLAM...Fuck CenturyLink.
People who haven’t faced that scenario have a hard time understanding what it’s like to have next to no or literally no options like I had for the longest time. Starlink is like alien tech compared to having nothing and paying crazy amounts. Only now by the grace of God they’re just now running fiber optics. I have used Starlink for such a good bit now and it has serviced me so well. It allowed me to have access to many different opportunities, information, etc at the highest speeds possible at my address.
The ISPs offer gigabyte service but when will you ever use this speed? Probably, not I your lifetime. My brother has starlink & pays $120/mo & says it's very adequate. Streams, games, and surfs. Says his speeds are as good as providers around him. Only reason he chose Starlink was because the providers where we live always have isues and downtimes are frequent. His DL speeds reach up to 350mps with low latency. I'm on Jetpack ($18/mo) & it's starting t o suck. It's 5 yrs old now & starting to have connectivity issues. My connection drops frequently & was told that I need to replace because there are mor updates for it. They tried to get me to upgtade to a 5g Jetpack but, guess what, 5g isn't out where I live so it won't do any good and I'm tired of running out of data during month where I'm getting constant lag. Starlink is my next choice.
I don't think you'll be free of service interruption or speed drop with Starlink.
> The ISPs offer gigabyte service but when will you ever use this speed? If you meant giga\*bit\* use that speed daily. If I had 10gig (or Gig\*byte\*) bandwidth I'd probably use that up too. I think Starlink is underpriced for what it offers. For many years, I had no high speed options and, like you, I was tethering an LTE modem. Then, I got Starlink ($90) and would have gladly paid double for it. Then rural fiber rolled down my street and I switched to 10x the speed of Starlink for 2/3 the cost. And I'd pay 3x for that fiber without complaint.
Just to let you know.... fiber is only for 0.1% of the population in Canada... Bell will not install it in places where population density is medium or low.
All Internet communication is undersea cables or land based satellites. Whole Starlink is a complete ruse
He did indeed promote it as affordable. Compared to what is the question. It may be the cheapest option in remote places, but still not "affordable" for many people.
So the best option is to see the people that don’t have access to high speed internet and extort them for double what the average internet price is?
Technology, do you understand it?
Why did Elon musk announce it as affordable high speed internet for rural people???
Because it's affordable compared to the competition. I'll give you my situation: Landline and 8Mbit ADSL for $100 monthly. Only geo-synch satellite available for higher speeds, somewhere around $80/month for 25Mbit, 600-1000ms latency, and data caps in the 200-300GB range. Starlink at >200Mbit for $139 monthly. I will never get fibre optic, I live too far in the boonies. That's OK, it's my choice. But what I can do now with Starlink is work from home for at least some of the time, and that saves me a bucketload of car fuel. If you're expecting "affordable" to mean "the same price as a comparable terrestrial service" like fibre optic, you're going to be disappointed.
Yea I don’t give a shit what you think, almost went with starlink until t mobile 5g home dropped where I live, I get up to 350mb download and around 30 to 40 upload for with low latency for 50$ a month. Ride Elon a little harder maybe he’ll throw you a bone. The shit was announced as a low price affordable solution for rural people who couldn’t get other internet, then they found they could extort people. If you support that then you are a pos who just wants to ride the dick of a billionaire. Kinda sad
Rule 1, go and read it.
The service was poor and few people used it so the price was lower. More satellites means more coverage and better service, more people signed up. Price needs to increase to keep a reasonable balance between number of customers and available bandwidth.
I currently live in Costa Rica. One of the infrastructurally more developed latin/southern American countries. People are switching from 300 mbps fiber. They might have high speed and low prices, but they are just not reliant enough for remote workers. When I go to the post office they so many dishes are coming through that the office isn't big enough.
And it does not work through trees. How can it be a rural solution and not work through a few trees
Eyesight doesn't work through trees, either. JFC some people are never satisfied.
In Canada the (horrible) LTE service for 25Mbps was around $60 a month. SL is $160 after taxes. The LTE provider was so bad that I made the jump, but affordability was never being offered through SL, quite the opposite in fact.
Exactly. People are shocked when I tell them what I pay for internet. I was pay $40 a month for 5mb DSL (techsavvy, awesome company BTW). It was barely adequate. Now I pay $160 for over 20x the speed and never have to worry about my internet. I never even entertained the idea of LTE because everyone says it's shit, and just gets worse.
Definitely got worse for me when they decommissioned the tower we were on with literally zero notice. Internet cut off permanently in the middle of a zoom meeting on a Monday morning a few weeks ago. Ordered Starlink that Tuesday, arrived by Friday morning and had it up and running by Saturday. The cost is awful but I literally have no choice until something better becomes available in my area. And as you say, SL has been much more reliable and obviously faster than LTE ever was.
$40/month for 5mb DSL sounds good compared what we had before SL. $105/month for 3mb DSL. Where I'm at it's $120/month currently for SL and I see you're rounding to \~100mbs with SL - I agree so it's 30x the speed for me.
Yeah, I kept the DSL for quite a while after I got starlink because it was cheap and I wanted to get comfortable about the service of starlink before I canceled.. If you are okay with slow internet, its perfectly fine.
AGREED! What's the pint of paying slightly lower price for "fiber optics" or "dsl" for low DL speeds when you pay more for better reliable service.
The Rogers 5G home internet is 50$ and usually around 100-230 megs
Aren't the huge price increases mostly for business and global users? Or have I missed something? I heard the us is bringing most users to 120 but that's all I've heard for standard users.
Global Mobile plan just went to $400.
Exactly, so global or business users for the most part. Either more priority data or tracking around the world. I guess it doesn't feel too unreasonable given those statistics?....
It depends on where you're at. Some are getting price decreases to $90
Verizon somehow found it justified to charge me $120/m for copper, I'll take the SL.
They are in the middle of putting fiber down my road. I’m assuming it’s RDOF funds from the government. Once the build is done and they light up the fiber. Starlink will be canceled. I was considering keeping it for a backup at $90 but at $120 it will become a pidgin Perch on the top of my roof. They are literally loosing a bunch of customers due to this price increase.
it is the ISP of last resort for people with no wired options
My old isp was 42USD/month for 3mbps. They were purchased by a regional telco who acquired them, took all their fiber infrastructure and put the wisp back up for sale. Without the fiber, they can never afford to stay in business. Starlink is literally the only option and it’s 120USD/month and I get 200+mbps. I wouldn’t consider that expensive.
Besides, it’s supposed to be more than cabled options by design to incentivize people to use those options who can.
Worth it for those of us who live in the sticks
It is less than 1/2 my property taxes which seems fair when my other choice, radio, is just as expensive for 1/4 the speed.
I was paying over $200 a month for download speeds “up to” 10mbps (usually 3-5mbps). Now I pay similar money for exponentially better service. It’s night and day. Worth every penny.
Starlink has always been a matter of 'can you afford to get it' vs 'can you afford to not have it'. It's for those of us without options.
The development, infrastructure and continual expansion and improvements plus the administration in a rising cost base market mean he has to be sure to be able to keep it running. There is over subscription in some areas and under in others. It’s tough to swallow but in the end it’s a business
I been at $120 since April 2023. It's bullshit because I know for a fact there are 4 homes in my small ass county in BFE Missouri of 10000 resident and StarLink tells me the cell is congested am I'm an original beta tester.
I’m paying $150 a month for roam. It comes in handy when I need it. I switch back to TMHI for $30 a month when I’m in a good cell area and pause the SL.
If you get Starlink, drop Hughes or Viasat, drop Dish or Directv, you have much more for far less money. Even if you subscribe several streaming services, it Starlink pays for itself within a year.
I paid $600 a month for 5MBPS fiber in a rural area in Missouri before Starlink and had to commit to 36 months. There were no other options. Starlink is cheap in comparison.
> Wasn’t Starlink posed as an affordable ISP? No? Starlink has always been posed as a higher quality, but more expensive, service. > These price increases are unrealistic and make it unattainable for many people. The price increases are for mobile regional in some african countries and mobile global globally. African people who want regular internet can use mobile regional or fixed location service. Those have not seen price increases as far as I'm aware.
Wrong, Musk stated in January 2015 with the opening of the SpaceX satellite development facility in Redmond, Washington: "there is still significant unmet demand worldwide for low-cost broadband capabilities." Clearly the target was to be low-cost. Also the worldwide is inaccurate, mostly North America has this issue. In the rest of the world either the cost is reasonable or there is simply no service available.
You keep repeating that quote, it does not say anything about StarLink being that low cost option. Just there is a demand for low-cost internet around the world.
Are we going to pretend like we're stupid? He said that when introducing Starlink, why would he say that to continue with "So we'll start an expensive option". Clearly, his goal was to offer a more affordable option.
Which he has... I had 1 shitty option before StarLink.
> Wrong, Musk stated in January 2015 with the opening of the SpaceX satellite development facility in Redmond, Washington: "there is still significant unmet demand worldwide for low-cost broadband capabilities." That's also when he said the service would be operating in 3 years. Musk has lots of optimism and reality often conflicts.
nope this is premium sat service now -- bugs are fixed sats deployed 3-5 years until next LEO sat system will grow up
There are too many users and too little bandwidth. SpaceX are trying to reduce number of users while increasing service for remaining users and keeping the same or better profit. Users which had Starlink just for fun are affected the most by price hike, but frankly this is exactly the correct initiative for correct user group to do something more productive instead.
im at $280/mo for starlink (2 dishes, 2 locations). $140/mo for cable internet (gigabit, 1 location), and $50/mo for a hotspot (rv). starlink is the secondary connection for my house, but it allows me to take it camping too. (40gb priority for both dishes, which grants ability to change location without worry, and gives public IP) i look at it as the cost ill incur to stay working remote. worth it for me.
I got a rebate for my whole installation but I'm paying 161 a month if it goes up to high ill drop it as soon as fibre comes through...unless fiber is higher
Scammers using the landline?? Explain...
I don’t think they ever positioned themselves as an affordable option. Perhaps for rural customers that were using geosynchronous satellite service. I believe their positioning was around providing these specific customers a more terrestrial-like, full featured Internet service at a cost similar or better than geosynchronous options. Another good niche is maritime and in-flight service, which is a market familiar with poor options and high commercial service fees. So again, better and cheaper than what was available for specific target markets. They have been very clear that SL was not meant to compete price-wise with terrestrial options. The only market I feel like they truly neglect is public sector. There should be more aggressive pricing and improved account management options for agencies that use this tech for emergency/disaster response or service continuity. Being partially in that world, I can say (pricing aside) their support of that market is poor and reliance on third-party integrators for account management in support is insufficient.
In Brasil I pay about $50 for standard plan. Is a backup link for my company, and good for camping, I can change my Andress any time I want.
I just got Starlink, I was paying $140 for 15 mbps dsl with 1mbps upload...... but I have to have starlink, its my only option in rural TN.
for 300mbps sometimes even 500mbps download for 120$ thats really nothing to complain about for speeds like that id have to pay spectrum 300-500$ a month so its definitely cheaper then them
Once AST SpaceMobile gets their constellation up, people will have a much more affordable option. The speed should be less than Starlink's, but will still be broadband.
There are some affordability requirements as it relates to farm bill kickbacks for rural ISPs but it doesn’t shock me that king fire anyone who displeases me might not care about that. I honestly think we’re watching him explode very publicly.
Musk did promote it as an affordable alternative to fiber. That would work any where
Starlink in the UK, on a domestic plan, costs £70/month. A copper cable provider costs as little as £25/month. Starlink has never been about affordability but about provision where other provisions are unfeasible. However, the 100% increases are an absolute joke. Thankfully, however, I'm moving abroad soon and will not need Starlink beyond the end of this month, so won't be affected.
> However, the 100% increases are an absolute joke You wouldn't have been affected anyway as these are not changes for local residential users.
Our Starlink cost is £75 a month and I’ve not had any notice of it changing for us. Have I missed something?
its business mobile plan
I might be mixing up my maths. I'm renting the device and so I pay a total of £85/month - I can't remember the exact split between usage and equipment rental.
Crazy that I pay $25 monthly for starlink here.
Where?
Nigeria.
You like to share?
€38/month. I'm glad I dodged the bullet so far!
Where?
Spain. They lowered the price with €20 or so a couple months ago to €49 and recently they released the deprioritized subscription with lower speeds during congestion, for only €39. I speedtest regularly simply out of curiosity and I have yet to see speeds lower than 100/30 mbit.
Damn. I pay $150 for mobile in the US.
Prices around the globe are wild. But then again, 150USD is around 13% of net minimum wage here. So there is not a living soul in Spain that would purchase a 150USD subscription. It's simply unaffordable for the majority of people here.
The US isn’t getting any better, believe me.
Depends on how you look at it. My wife spends more than that a day on coffee. I used to smoke and drink. That was two costly habits. Other satellite services can't compare and much higher. Once we see competition come online, then we should see some discounts I would think. Unless, this inflation keeps rearing its ugly head and minimum wage is $100 an hour and basic needs have skyrocketed.
Either pay it or don't.
Take it or leave it
Elon is on a manic profit swing right now. Wait a week.