Starlink Service Starts To Slow Down As Limited Capacity Rears Its Head
from the disruptive,-it-ain't dept
We’ve noted a few times that Elon Musk’s Starlink broadband service is great if you have no other options. It’s also great if you’ve spent an eternity stuck on an expensive 3 Mbps DSL line straight out of 2003, or a traditional, capped, expensive satellite broadband connection. Being able to get 100 Mbps in the middle of nowhere is a great thing, assuming you can afford it.
But most Starlink press coverage doesn’t really talk much about the fact that the service doesn’t have the capacity to be as disruptive as it’s claiming it will be. Wall Street analysts suggest that Starlink can serve about a million users worldwide over the next few years. For context, somewhere between 20 and 40 million US residents lack broadband, and another 83 million live under a monopoly.
The laws of physics and limited capacity aren’t playing well with Musk’s continued decisions to expand access to the service (RVs, airlines, luxury yachts). Over the last year there’s been increasing reports of significant service slowdowns as reality begins to inject itself into the equation. Now speedtest provider Ookla has measured it, and notes the service has slowed significantly in most countries:
The fact that degraded Starlink service is still faster that many DSL “broadband” providers speaks well to the service’s utility, but the growing congestion isn’t a great sign for a service many claim will revolutionize US broadband access. Combined with Starlink’s often nonexistent customer service, I suspect you’re going to be seeing a lot more grumbling over the next few years as congestion increases.
Ultimately Starlink wants to launch additional waves of next-generation satellites that dramatically boost capacity, but even assuming this all goes swimmingly, Wall Street analysts estimate the max subscriber total (worldwide) could top out at around 6 million. That’s still, even in a best case scenario, a tiny dent in US overall connectivity needs. And again, that assumes Starlink will remain financially viable.
Fixing US broadband requires driving fiber to as many areas as possible, then pushing 5G into most of the gaps (even Musk has admitted 5G plays a better role here). While Starlink can help, it shouldn’t be portrayed as a magic bullet, and over-hyping it to fluff Musk’s stock holdings can act as a bit of a policy and subsidy distraction from better, more reliable, and certainly more affordable broadband solutions.
Filed Under: 5g, cable, digital divide, dsl, fiber, high speed internet, starlink, telecom, wireless
Companies: spacex, starlink
Comments on “Starlink Service Starts To Slow Down As Limited Capacity Rears Its Head”
Fiber push
Dane Jasper has been doing just that since 1994. He’s been phenomenally successful.
He’s built a fiber network and made it not only profitable, scalable, great service, great bandwidth, lower prices, but beat the duopoly for over a decade.
Back to the quote:
Fiber isn’t looking to be driven anywhere. Telcos and CableCos are fighting consumer and local government networks. What’s needed is to eliminate the power they have to prevent private competition to that duopoly. Dane has proven it year after year for over twenty years. (He didn’t start deploying all that fiber back in 1994…)
Starlink is better than what’s out there — for the rural guys. 5G has the same issues vDSL has — telcos won’t put it in place in less than extremely high-density areas. The whole UNE/UNP thing ended up so badly. Sorry Covid (the network, not the disease) and the rest. Telco got back to not letting you use the copper. THANK YOU OUR REPUBLICAN BACKSTABBING OVERLORDS. See the 1982 US vs AT&T, the famous Judge Green (RIP) decision in 1984, and Republicans walking all parts of that decision back since then.
5G is not a real thing. Yeah, telemedicine didn’t exist before 5G and doctors love it now. Except doctors don’t have 5G, have no clue what it is, don’t interview for TV commercials, and just like to yell at IT people.
All that leaves is private or local (government) networks.
Re:
Meh. By most accounts, Sonic is a very good ISP, but their success is limited to a handful of cities in California, and not even full cities. I’ve heard of people in San Francisco who work for huge companies such as Google, and have to deal with Comcast because there’s no other choice that meets the FCC’s “broadband” definition.
Kind of. It’s not clear to what extent Sonic’s held back by legal requirements. If these limitations are basically gone, the statement hasn’t been proven because Sonic hasn’t built the network to the required extent; if major limitations still exist, it hasn’t been proven because the precondition hasn’t been met.
Jasper, as I recall, has advocated for dark fiber to be available everywhere, as the preferred form of municipal or private open-access network infrastruture (though I don’t know whether Sonic allows other companies to use its fiber under such terms). It’s a good idea, but, again, is spreading much too slowly to help most Americans.
…in a rural area. It’s surprising how many such lines exist in urban areas of the USA. There’s no good excuse for it, and Starlink won’t help those people. Even Musk, in a rare break from characteristic hype, has said the service can’t support a large number of people in a small area.
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It’s not surprising that Techdirt — considering its track record — is slinging mud at Elon Musk. At least he’s trying to solve a problem and bring broadband to places with limited access.
What has Techdirt done for the people lately? Electric car production? A better banking system? Nope, just writing hit-pieces on those who are making life better for the masses. Shameful.
Re: Oooh! Oooh! I know this game!
It’s not surprising that Anonymous Coward — considering their track record — is slinging mud at Techdirt. At least they’re trying to solve a problem and bring broadband issues to public view.
What has Anonymous Coward done for the people lately? Net Neutrality reform? A better content moderation policy? Nope, just writing hit-comments on those who are making life better for the masses. Shameful.
Re:
So tell us, when are you and Musk getting married?
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Re: Re:
What an infantile reponse.
Re: Re: Re:
Funny, I thought only adults could get married in my state. That shows me.
Re:
Your claim seems like nothing more than “slinging mud”, because you don’t point out any actual problem with the story. Rather, you go on a tangent to contradict a point—that Musk isn’t trying to make life better—that the story doesn’t mention or imply at all.
In fact, I see no negative claims about Musk in this story. The closest thing is the statement that Musk was the one who decided to expand service in a way that strains network capacity. Any negativity is more about the service itself than the person, but “bringing broadband to places with limited access” is something Karl’s first sentence praises it for.
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You are shameful, and so is your god. He has done nothing to improve anything, and in most ways
Re:
Can’t rebut anything in the article? Attack the author!
Ah the oh-so-telling classics…
In other news, water remains wet.
Re:
Umm, wrong.
Liquid water is not itself wet, but can make other solid materials wet.
Wetness is the ability of a liquid to adhere to the surface of a solid, so when we say that something is wet, we mean that the liquid is sticking to the surface of a material.
From the sounds of it Starlink should be seen and treated more as a spot fix, something that can help but to a much more limited degree than the alternatives.
In that role I could see it serving some use in providing service that’s simply not viable otherwise but even then the majority of work is going to land on other alternatives like local broadband in areas/states where it manages to slip through and as such the latter rather than the former really needs to get most of the attention and funding.
Expensive?
Karl, here’s one for you. Locate one of those expensive Starlink locations in the middle of nowhere. Now call Comcast/Charter/$cableco and get them to quote you a price for installation and 1 months’ service at that location. If you can’t get service, you lose. If they tell you it will be any amount over $2k, you also lose.
Re:
anon, here’s one for you. Don’t read the article and make up a shit question that is implicitly already answered by the same article. Now, does this mean you are stupid or did it make you look stupid? If your answer to the former is yes, you loose. If your answers is the latter, you also loose.
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https://cleanup-eg.com
5G and more
5G is clearly the solution for the wide open majority of the country’s land area.
I’m surprised SL didn’t consider base repeaters to land line systems. A hybrid system. Directing a satellite to a city box and running lines to existing infrastructure would appear to be a viable solution for city coverage. A lower cost of entry, and better access to more subscribers.
The whole one at 100 vs 10 at 25 idea.
starlink over selling
My bill for starlink just went up 10 bucks and my service is worse now than when i first signed up but stalink is my only option and customer service is almost non existant. is there no way the government can stop internet providers from over selling ? They seem to have us by the testicles and just keep squeezing.
Re: Short answer
I have posted a longer answer but it is awaiting moderation and lacks paragraph breaks.
Short answer: The government COULD but it has no incentive to do so. Oversell (write once sell many) is how lawyers make money, and lawyers hire lobbyists. The US Congress is currently ineffective and its agency, the FCC, is beholden to those lobbyists.
Expect no changes.
E
Government roles in oversell
TL;DR Karl has spoken on this many times. The oversell model is how they make a lot of money from a few people. The government doesn’t want to step in because lobbyists.
E
–long version–
KB has opined on this many a time but I don’t think he’s ever taken a stance for/against government regulation. He has made it a point to discuss Starlink bw and availability limits.
The US government can do a lot. Unfortunately passing legislation is not something they seem able to do in the last few years. That leaves promulgation of rules by agencies, and the FCC has been hamstrung, first by “are ISPs common carriers” and then “But we don’t have a majority” and overall “but AT&T lobbyists keep giving us money not to do stuff.”
That really begs the question (yes I mean “beg the question”) of whether government regulation is the answer to the question. This leads to “oversell” being a regular thing done by ISPs, lawyers, authors, musicians, coders, etc.
WRITE ONCE — SELL MANY. Provide a circuit. Sell 10x on that circuit. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. That’s the oversell model.
We could hypothetically answer the question in this way:
1. Yes the US Government could remove the oversell model
2. Yes it can force companies to provide 1:1 (or 100%) of the product to each customer they sell to. This works with consumer goods (buy 4 tires, get 4 tires, and you always have 4 tires). It fails when IP maximalists try to pretend every copy is the same as the original… so buy 4 tires get 1 tire and a right to copy 3 but sometimes not and maybe we yoink that back.
3. The cost of WRITE-ONCE SELL-MANY which in the lawyer world is “selling boilerplate” allows <– see that word there? — them to charge MANY clients for doing MANY times the actual work they do.
If you think the “oversell model” can be fixed despite lawyers everywhere screaming… please do tell how.