Update: Includes starlink for RV's, lower price is applied at checkout. $174 for the first month and you can pause the service at any time.
Availability map — Service for Darwin & Northern Australia expected Q1 2023.
Elon Musk’s space venture - Starlink price has dropped to $450.
Starlink is a satellite internet service providing high-speed, low latency broadband internet with speeds from 50Mb/s to 400Mb/s and latency from 20ms to 40ms. Early users are reporting speeds of 300Mbps+.
1 Month of free service for referrer and referee.
The free market solution is to not offer any service to remote customers so it isn't really a solution at all.
The free market solution is to not offer any service to remote customers so it isn't really a solution at all.
Um, what do you think Star Link is?
Yep.
The NBN was Rudd's baby - and he was union-led, socialist big government on steroids.
Dead right.
Such a nonsense take.
When the contracts were signed for Skymuster, the SM product were top of the line. SL was not even a concept.
It also launched in 2015 and two satellites provide coverage to the entire continent. I don't think anyone can deny that SM is an absolutely amazing piece of kit. It provided and will still provide a much-needed service to many Australians.
Yet another lesson in * monopoly vs competition…
There, fixed it for ya.
There, fixed it for ya.
Well you didn't actually, because in the two examples provided so far, bit are govt vs private, and neither are monopolies.
NBN is not a monopoly in the case of satellite services, nor is NASA a monopoly in launch platforms.
Absolutely slays rural NBN's Skymuster
What about the 20% of Australia that Starlink doesn't cover, is it still better there than Skymuster?
You could tell skymuster was always going to be horrible just from the the name
If your only other option is Sky Muster this a guaranteed a better option.
Anything ground based should be faster though, although it’s not impossible to have worse Wireless/4G performance.
Wouldn’t bother with Starlink if any cabled NBN was available as Starlink is slowing down in populated areas and switching the old fast speed to a premium tier. The total amount of bandwidth available on Starlink won’t support the number of users who would benefit from it, much less those in urban areas, they’re likely to introduce caps eventually, kick off users or limit bandwidth substantially.
When it says "low latency" I'm sceptical, given that it needs to travel distances to orbit and back down.
Does anyone have any ookla speed test ping results? Curious to see what pings people are actually getting.
may be it is low latency compared to GEO as it is in LEO
Agreed, but I wonder if anyone has any actual results on Ping tests with ookla speed test.
Wonder what LEO starlink can actually achieve.
https://www.ookla.com/articles/starlink-hughesnet-viasat-per…
Not Aus, but shows a lot of data from other countries - fan only imagine Aus is faster due to far less users accessing any given VLEO sat
Yes there are plenty if you google it. From experience ~25ms.
They also have different routes to some places so you can end up with less hops to destinations.
I finally have something productive to contribute:
My parents live in Hivesville and this is the [speedtest[(https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/857199500141002752/10…) my mum gets when testing. She keeps me updated on how it fares at different times of day and how it weathers the weather (pun intended) and she says it always shoots back similar results.
She unfortunately only purchased it a month ago and I'm going to have to call her and break the news while I tell her I'm going to pull the trigger. I am worried though. Why the sudden 50% price slash? Hoping this isn't another Dicksmith gift card scandal.
@NeggerOfDeals: Guessing economics of scale plus tech. They were priced originally at their true cost, but I guess SL are looking to expand their customer base? plus they've made plenty of changes to the hardware and software since it first launched.
@NeggerOfDeals: Hivesville is great! I used to come through all the time for work as a travelling tech. Got a friend who lives in the Hivesville/Proston area
A mate did one and is getting 68ms with 8ms jitter >> 274.3 Down and 26.6 up
What's Geo?
Geostationary orbit
Geo stationary orbit (as in the satellite sits above the same point of earth the whole time). To achieve it, physics requires the sat to be roughly 36,000km up - this is what Skymuster does.
LEO/VLEO is low/very low earth orbit, where Starlink sits. It requires a lot more satellites (2300 last count) due to being lower (and the curvature of earth), but these only sit roughly 550km up.
Immediately you can see that being only a fraction of the height of GEO sats allows you to have much faster transmissions (lower latency).
Plenty of YT videos around with speed test results - A bit of variance with pings given very dependent on a bunch of conditions etc but the few I saw seemed to end up around the 20-50 ms area (as compared to Skymuster 500-600 ms)
There is a spreadsheet on Whirlpool from memory
When it says "low latency" I'm sceptical, given that it needs to travel distances to orbit and back down.
The majority of speed through GPON backbones is lost in refraction, as the light bounces around inside the optical fiber, creating a 'longer' route. Its measured at 0.66 of c, where c is the constant(speed of light through a vacuum). So if there is nothing to bounce off, c approaches 1.0
You sound like you know a bit about fiber, have they developed any technologies to reduce the refraction ?
There are two camps. One is ISPs, they like the refraction effects because it keeps the signal for longer inside the 'pipe' before it needs a repeater installed along the route. So they can reduce costs of deployment.
The other is high frequency traders, and they have more than enough cash to throw at decreasing latency:
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/20/12/15/1927205/high-freque…
, as the light bounces around inside the optical fiber, creating a 'longer' route. Its measured at 0.66 of c,
That's not how it works. The speed of light in glass is 0.66 of the speed of light in a vacuum.
You're also thinking of multimode fiber. The majority of GPON networks use single-mode fiber, and certainly all of the transit links use single mode fiber, because otherwise the data rate will be limited by dispersion (the data edges become "blurred").
There is no "bouncing around" in single mode fiber.
Also, there are newer fibers in use that do transmit at the speed of light. Look up "photonic crystal fiber" for details. They create hollow fibers, and at the ridiculously small dimensions they use, air molecules won't enter the fiber. So the light is actually travelling in a vacuum, inside a fiber.
Also, there are newer fibers in use that do transmit at the speed of light. Look up "photonic crystal fiber" for details. They create hollow fibers, and at the ridiculously small dimensions they use, air molecules won't enter the fiber. So the light is actually travelling in a vacuum, inside a fiber.
Interesting, are these in use today?
@philmarcracken: Yes, but as it is new technology and hence quite a lot more expensive, only the trading houses have installed it AFAIK.
There have been a few recent breakthroughs in getting the new fiber to have similar attenuation/km rates as conventional fiber, so it looks like the new fiber will soon be suitable for replacing some of the shorter long-distance links. Whether it actually gets used that way will depend on the economics and whether there are enough customers willing to pay for the lower latency, because it will always be more expensive than conventional fiber. However, when you look at the entire cost of laying a fiber in the ground, the cost of the photonic crystal fiber probably won't be a major part of that, once large-scale manufacturing starts.
@philmarcracken: I've just been having a look at what's commercially available, and I may have made an error above.
The article I read about hollow-core fiber described it as light traveling in a vacuum, but the commercial products describe it as light traveling in air. Speed of light in air is 99.97% the speed of light in a vacuum, ever so slightly slower.
I can't find the article, and it may have been written by a journalist instead of a scientist, so it may have been not entirely accurate. I recall the article saying that when air molecules try to enter the fiber, they have to be moving pretty well aligned with the axis of the hole, or they "bounce" away. If they get to just inside the hole, there's like a 40% chance their next movement will take them out of the hole, and a 10% chance they will go further into the hole. So the net movement is out of the hole.
If there are any physicists here on OzBargain, does the above paragraph make sense, for holes on the order of 10um diameter?
If you want to see the eye-watering prices of photonic crystal fiber at the moment, here's the first page I found with prices, prices are per metre:
https://www.newport.com/f/hollow-core-photonic-bandgap-cryst…
Whenever I've ran a test on mine I get around 30-60ms. I don't have any trouble when I'm gaming and I was able to gamestream to my parents house (they're on NBN) from my desktop PC after a few adjustments to quality.
Its low latency for its class, doesn't hold a candle to fixed line.
Of course, anyone who can get half decent fixed line shouldn’t even consider this, it’s only for when fixed line isn’t an option or is severely compromised
The latency is trash compared to fixed line (those of us lucky enough to be on fiber get 1-2ms…) but that’s to be expected
I am not comparing the two, just explaining to the original comment that its low latency within the context of the technology rather than generally.
Depends on the fixed line. It is roughly equivalent in latency to dsl (copper) but an order of magnitude greater latency compared to fiber.
Copper doesn't effect latency that much. You might get an extra 5-10ms on a copper line vs fibre, there is still a significant difference between copper and satellite. If you are getting 20-40ms ping on copper line there will be another issue at play.
Probably averages 50 for me, but obviously that number is unstable, and can blow out to over 100. Occasionally drops me out of online games.
Overall, I'm pretty happy with it, but do wonder why I have to use this service living in the middle of the Canberra suburbs.
When it says "low latency" I'm sceptical, given that it needs to travel distances to orbit and back down.
Starlink satellite operating altitude is 340km. Not that far for a radio wave to travel…
Yes. Starlink operates at 340km, versus NBN Skymuster that operates at 35,780km.
This is why Starlink is considered low latency.
The speed of light is pretty quick
Getting around 80-100ms on our service. Not great but much better then other satellite options.
The killer is availability and short duration drop outs. Its great for what it is, but it isn't a replacement for fibre.
You know the speed of light ?
c = sqrt(e/m)
When it says "low latency" I'm sceptical, given that it needs to travel distances to orbit and back down.
Starlink satellites are 550km away. That's 1100km round trip distance. At the speed of light, that only takes 3.67ms, so the distance is not an issue. There are other factors involved of course.
Geostationary systems like Skymuster have a return trip distance of over 70,000km which will take 233.5ms, so the latency will be at least that.
Most of the internet latency is not due to distance but due to number of hops that takes nodes to process.. processing latency.. if going via satellites reduces/optimises the number of hops then it can be faster than optical fibre on a given situation.
i bought it a month ago and have only set it up once in my backyard for testing. My speedtest was 101 Mbps down / 18 Mbps up and 40 ms latency. I have the RV version that I can turn on and off, I was using it for a trip to the Flinders which was canceled.
Can you buy it and not activate it?
if you are in a 5G area, this might be an alternative at a cheaper price
5G is solid. I've been using mine since before covid. got tired of waiting for NBN and lagging on ancient ADSL speeds. instant 10x speed increase
speed goes up and down depending on network congestion but never drops below 100mbs. right now 120/50 and I've seen occasional 200 down
Vodafone is even cheaper @ $55/month for 100 Mbps plan (discounted for 6 months)
Van park at Mullaway NSW has it and bloody useless.
But how many peiple are hanging off it?
Not saying it isnt the satellite causing the problem, but its more likely an issue on the wifi side.
Worked ok when first installed but then it appears satellite issues occurred and management switched back to NBN. Maybe a user issue.
…or maybe sharing the connection is against the TOS.
Or management didn't want to spend the cost / reserve just for management
@Headless: The park owner installed it as a business account when the managers were on leave in February. It then started playing up and they appear to be leaving it to him to sort out. NBN, phone and TV reception are all bad in the area and hopefully the owner will sort it soon.
One of the campsites I go to was on NBN satellite last year. This year they switched to Starlink and they were over the moon with it. They said it's much better than what they had before. Maybe the van park has faulty hardware, or it just happened to be a bad period for Starlink then?
I reckon I may be just about able to throw a stone on your roof from here. :)
Pity it’s not Starlink for RV or I’d be all over this
What do you mean starlink for RV… You mean recreation vehicles? E.g. is a standard device/plan geo-locked?
Correct, I’m not actually sure whether the residential plan is geo-locked however with RV plan you can pause and resume the service when you want. So if you go camping you can activate it and pause when you’re back home.
wouldnt you want to take the net with you if you go camping?
Can you not re-calibrate the antenna when you repark?
It's the same hardware. Cheaper than 1/2 price. Can change to RV mode any time I thought.
If you can change to RV mode then this changes things…
What is RV mode? Would it mean you can have synchronous travel, or pack up at point A and set up a base station at point B? Thanks
Website mentions a portability add on. Definitely interested to know if this is RV friendly
The same hardware price for RV is applied at checkout.
This is a stella offer.
Yep, out of this world.
Paid double this for hardware two months ago. Splitting it with a neighbour so monthly is the same as SkyMuster. In comparison, it's amazing.
I’mconsidering a similar option. What do you use to share the internet with neighbour?
If you don't care about sharing a public IP address, you can just use a standard TP link router. From there a cable runs to them and to you with your routers configure to DHCP for their WAN port.
This requires a router to attach to Starlink and one router for each neighbor.
What sort of ping are you getting? Suitable for VoIP? Have you had much downtime of service?
Very little downtime <2min a day. Don't VOIP. Ping is about 50 consistently. Good enough for War Thunder/Minecraft on PC and Splatoon/Rocket League on the Switch.
bruh, you play rocket league on the switch …..
Awesome deal thank you.
Building a new house just accross river into NSW and basically this is a must have. Tempted to get early for more speed 👍
yeah, dont worry about floods, net is a must have.
Yeah we're building on the high ground 5km away, its more that we dont get Victorian services and on the tail end of what NSW offer….
Solar and battery backup enivatable but budget only goes so far. Just awesome putting a power point in garage, knowing it will be for an EV down the track, thanks to EV FBT exemption 😉 (3 phase capable also).
Pretty good deal.apart from the money going to the cult of musk
As in, funding a guy who is doing things like.. Starlink?
Yeah how dare he create successfull businesses out of nothing, so rude.
As in funding a grifter born with a silver spoon in his mouth who takes billions in handouts from the govt and gets credit for things he never founded
As in funding a grifter born with a silver spoon in his mouth who takes billions in handouts from the govt and gets credit for things he never founded
Lol, there's always one…
waaaa he took away the Orwellian moderation of a social media platform
as an individual he's an absolute fruitcake but you cannot knock what he's built with SpaceX and Starlink as a business.
And buying stupid social media platforms for too much money.
I'm sorry, but you have to be blind to not know what kind of a dipshit Elon Musk is.
Yes, he does Starlink. He also does a lot of terrible stuff. Let's not lionize him too much.
Vlad the Impaler's not happy with satellites floating around.
Let the star war begins;)
Definitely. Years ago, the best I could get at my home was ADSL1 and literally 0.3Mbps for $90/month. Telstra did not give a (profanity) as they were the only infrastructure available with no incentive to upgrade. NBN installed FTTP in my area and I got 100/40 for the same price.