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.
Is this the new standard price or a promo?
If it's standard price will we be asking Elon for an OzBargain special? Lol
New hardware on the way perhaps?
Was considering this the other day but $900 buy in turned me off. I think I’ll remove the new 4G modem and outdoor antennas from my cart and go with this now. Thanks OP
Agree, this price reduction will remove a major hurdle for a lot of people. It's almost at the price point of "I'll just give it a go" for many
That was my major problem too, now it's $50/m becoming $139. Is Sky Muster really that bad..
$55 for 25mbps max (avg 17mbps), capped at 25gb a month, (found one provider offering approx $135 a month for 100gb)
For anyone running a business or with a streaming family, that's atrocious.
@Tuttle: Sky Muster Plus exists which is unmetered 12am-4pm, and 4pm-12am only meters video/VPN, and depending on how legitimate your streaming services are they usually don't even get counted in the cap. It's honestly not that bad except for the 600+ms latency. I think I've just talked myself out of Starlink lol. https://www.speedtest.net/result/13878442631
@AngryAlfred: You certainly won’t be gaming. But you can download a local game on that fine.
I used 20/20mbps with felix for 2 months and was able to download games on steam. 50mbps will work. Just might drop up and down randomly. I doubt it will hold 50mbps at all times.
These things are awful for astrophotography.
Talk to Musk, maybe next generation of armature telescope is lower orbit satellite based :)
Hmmm…widely available high speed internet for people in rural/remote areas, or clear skies for a tiny number of people engaged in a niche hobby, which one should we consider more important?
It's not just a problem for astrophotographers but also for astronomers. I don't think it's a case where we have to choose to go one way or the other. More can be done to mitigate the problem than is currently being done.
this site lets you know when the brightest satellites are going to be going past your location - so you could check that and know when not to start a long exposure. I haven't tried astrophotography for a couple of years but I imagine if you get a long line of those starlink ones going through it would look very bright.
I shot some astro last season and it's awful. Dotted white streaks through most of my shots.
The Gen 2 of the satellites that SpaceX are launching are only a fraction of tbw brightness/illmniation of the original sats, in a direct response by SpaceX to reduce their brightness for amateur astronomers
so are cities. Bloody humans
Yes I agree, as an astrophographer I dread the proliferation of low orbit satellites like Starlink, though more accessible internet for people in remote areas is a good thing. More needs to be done to mitigate the light pollution they cause.
I guess I can't complain too much though. Starlink satellite trails are responsible for my most shared and award winning photo that ended up on NASA's APOD, in The Australian and in many other places! https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap220614.html
Wow is that your shot? That's great! Do you have a link to your work somewhere?
Can someone please share images of the hardware? Interested to see how it works on the move? TIA
you need to be stationary
You can buy an "RV version" that allows it to travel. (pictures in there)
https://www.starlink.com/rv
I’ve been schooled..
Saw a sailing video where they attached a RV dish in a rod on top of the sail. 150/10Mbps. Think a subscriber used their address then FedEx the unit to some port. Was working for their video uploads.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTJKfOn…
(this is a legit issue they had in colder countries with their heated dish's)
Look on youtube. And you can move it. Even to another country. I saw a guy on Youtube who took it from USA over to… ugh, I forget… Singapore maybe!? Yeah I think it was Singapore. He to change… something… in the settings to ".sg".
Got Telstra 5G mobil broadband sim only, paired with old Telstra's v2 4G modem and achived 120-170 down and 30-50 up.
5G Netgear modem given only 300x25, no big different for me. The plan price was $75 for 2 years.
What's the data allowance?
400Gb
At this price it’s starting to be an NBN Skymuster killer. When at the NBN the worry about 6 years ago was these LEO satellites. Skymuster is basically 2000s technology with little to no ability to reconfigure. Still a number of Starlink constellations to be launched and come online.
The Chief Twit is going to dominate the market very soon in regional and remote across Australia as word get around. I wouldn’t be surprised if you further price drops in the hardware and alternative plans. Time to write down the book value of the nbn assets.
Time to write down the book value of the nbn assets.
Yep. New federal government can just blame it on the last, same old story
Good, it's about time our friends in rural areas got the internet they deserve (and desperately need). NBN was always lip service, and Skymuster total dogshit.
Price drop is nice. I have had this at home for since Jan 22, it;s great as an overall connection there are quite regular minor dropouts though with a clear sky. It doesn't impact general use and streaming but if you are on a video conference you will dissapear or dropout for a bit.
$139 is pretty pricey. The NBN is supposedly looking at the Bezos version. I guess if you’re going from kbs to hundreds of mbps then $139 might be worth it. Feel like $79-99 is still the max and $59-69 is still pushing it for internet on-mass.
SkyMuster was $2 billion just for the satellites with a lifespan of 15 years and used by a max of 100,000 people. That works out to a $111/month/person only for the satellite. They also subsidise the ongoing costs and the hardware.
Imagine if they applied this subsidy to Starlink.
All for subsidising the remote regions. Otherwise there will be no IOT farms and rural innovation.
Saying that. Muster was the best they had at the time and a lot of analysts thought starlink would work. Can subsidise this as long as it’s under the TIO too.
In the last six months Starlink has jacked up prices and added additional fees.
They have oversold badly overseas to the point it is unusable in peak times in places.
They are bringing in data caps (unknown details) in the US and messing with the network constantly.
They promised ipv6 and 20msec latency years ago but you're stuck on CGNAT and have no chance of getting 370mbps/51.6mbps often.
You'll probably see around 100/10 and 60ms latency these days - and they might double the price next week. You never know with this Musk twit. The companies he runs are a shambles.
It is better than skymuster and FTTN though, just don't make the mistake of believing the marketing.
Good morning
Can we use this for home internet?
Cheers
yes
This seems like another Elon needs money, quick get as many subscribers on board as possible to pay for the Ukrainian hustle … how long will StarLink survive the capital burn
Twitter was pricey
Your guess is as good as mine
Is the portable RV one any slower?
Its just astonishing to me how latency can be so low via wireless satellite.
Low earth orbit satellites are only 500km away so a return trip is 1000km, or about 3.5 milliseconds
The setup cost wasn't the problem for me it's the monthly ongoing cost.
This might be Musk's last attempt to make money off Starlink before Vlad ends it.
They're friends.
A: "Let's buy a motorhome and go see remote areas of Australia."
B: "Only if we pay $139/m for Starlink so we can watch Youtube."
A: "We could just wait until we hit populated areas every few days and use wifi or a cheap phone plan."
B: "WTH IS WRONG WITH YOU !?"
A: "Let's buy a motorhome and go see remote areas of Australia."
4wd + motorhome + accessories is about a a gazillion dollars - so they'll charge you $174 for RV Starlink so you can watch Youtube.
LOL. I'm subbed to a motorhome Facebook group, and seriously it's like… "Ask the Leyland, ask the Leyland, ask the Leyland VLOGGERS."
For years after the internet became a thing, everyone was like: "Wth would I need THAT or a computer for!?" Now those same people are retired and it's like they desperately need to be connected to the internet 24/7 for life support. They buy motorhomes the price of a small house, even build carports and garages to store instead of use them. They leave home for the occasional weekend totaling maybe a month a year, leaving it to sit and depreciate the rest of the time. When they do go anywhere it's nearly exclusively directly to the caravan park they had to book months in advance because all the other motorhome drivers mean no vacancies. Then, in spite of the fact they have so little room inside one person has to be sitting down for the other to walk inside one, they're so large outside they can only park an hour (or less) on public streets.
So then they start musing about buying a "toad" to tow as well so they can… um… GO SEE THINGS. (Which goes to prove what the rest without one are doing.) Then they drive the toad around a bit during the day, or to Colesworths for bread and milk so they don't have to put the foldable chairs and foam squares on the ground away - then return to the rolling mansion and sit inside watching Netflix… venturing outside only to gather with other motorhomers to score the parking skills of another, or when someone tosses a bag of charcoal into a Bunnings fire pit in the evening when they sit around it and pretend they're "campers" and "taking a break from the rat race."
They may as well forget the motorhome, invest the money instead, hop in their car, and use the interest earned to pay for a hotel and use the free wifi. But then they can't sit around that Bunnings fire pit pontificating with the other pretenders about towing weights and how to let a truck driver past on a one lane highway.
Camping my ___. ;-D
Lot of people talking about their ping being x y or z but I've no idea "where" people are pinging.
As in, what is SL like for pinging, for example, Europe?
With a fixed line, we're hampered by all sorts of routing issues so I'm curious if this is any different with a satellite?
Presumably this would be worse than a fixed line if there is still some form of ground link involved?
Your dish talks to a satellite and the satellite talks to the nearest ground station so it's not any different in terms of routing. There are satellites they've launched with laser links that can talk to each other but there aren't enough up there yet. Ideally the constellation would keep all the traffic in the sky and talk to the nearest destination ground station but they're not there yet.
Here are some speed tests I just did to different sites in Europe.
https://www.speedtest.net/result/13878686329.png
https://www.speedtest.net/result/13878690597.png
https://www.speedtest.net/result/13878693029.png
https://www.speedtest.net/result/13878695431.png
https://www.speedtest.net/result/13878697785.png
Thanks David, that's great info.
After I posted, I dug a bit deeper and read a bit about the laser links and satellites being able to talk directly with one another.
That would be a game changer I think if it happens (and equally, if it's made available for us here).
If I use this .. Will Elon delete my social media posts if he doesn't agree with them?
Yes unless you wear a tinfoil hat
Worth noting that 400Mbps down and 50 up are absolute outliers - don't bank on seeing that regularly. For me these days it's generally somewhere between 150 and 200Mbps down, 10-20 up.
Depends on where you are and how many around you are also on Starlink, really.
My standard speed is ~300/20. In the States they get much worse speeds these days too.
What’s with the hole in coverage around Murchison, WA?
Area 52
The Australian Radio Quiet Zone WA
For the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murchison_Radio-astronomy_Obse…
The satellites would greatly affect the radio telescope if they were transmitting while they can bee "seen" by the radio telescope.
Can anyone with experience with this comment on the quality of zoom/teams teleconferencing?
On an ordinary day it's perfectly fine. If there's service issues that day you might get the odd drop-out, but nothing totally unacceptable.
I now dislike Musk almost as much as I dislike Murdoch. So it's a "No" from me.
I was at a friends recently (regional Vic) and wanted to try a speed test. Several tests in a row came up at around 65/5….my fried reported that streaming Netflix kept buffering and the Telstra 4g service it replaced while testing slower was a more reliable service.
Just an observation I made.
Waiting for my FTTP to be connected, then the world is my oyster. :)
Any knows if the $450 price is for the RV plan with the flat high-performance, not just the standard dish?
Also wondering this
Can you use the non RV version at multiple sites? I might end up in the outback for 6 months at a time, and my partner has a WFH job so would need something like this. Can we bring it with us to different sites occasionally?
You’d need the RV version, though I read you can turn on the portability feature and pay for it when needed. Though I am not the authority on this.
Been using starlink for about 4 weeks - highly recommend it. Alternative I have is only 20mbit fixed wireless NBN which is over-subscribed. I run both for redundancy but have never had to use fixed wireless yet. I moved from a property with 1 Gbit FTTH and honestly general usage does not feel any different. Obviously latency is higher but only around 15-20ms.
Speed test tonight: http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/d/7257bbfd-10d2-4c19-8428…
Of course it excludes Darwin. This absolutely miserable city is excluded in everything. Except misery. We have a foothold on that gem.
Might be the replacement to my shitty HFC nbn connection I have been needing
Will a DNS server work with this?
Does this make sense for metropolitan areas or better to leave for rural?
is there a way to highlight comments or just see relevant ones? First page was people discussing politics and labour vs liberal. I just want to see people that have it or know a little about the product
Not available in Russia?
this "RV" version and ability to pause sounds absolutely sweet, does anyone know how it works? Is it pro-rated per day so if you only went camping a couple of times a year but needed fast internet in remote locations its worth it? Or each time you unpause you pay a full month, or some random limit to the number of pauses you can do?
Wondering if it's worth considering for $450 hardware cost ..
Starlink for RVs provides the ability to pause and un-pause service at any time and is billed in one-month increments, allowing users to customize their service to their individual travel needs.
I’d like to buy it and turn it on just for when I am away. It sounds like I could do that but will the get annoyed if I only have it on 1-2 months in the year? 😆
I'm thinking the same - wondering if this will be ok… I'm planning to camp and then use it at places like fraser island etc… obviously whilst stationary… anyone have any feedback on how it's going?
Does anyone know if you can buy the hardware without activating the service? I want to buy the dish but am not moving to a rural area for a couple of months, can I delay the monthly billing?
Keen to get this for when remote camping/boating but $174 a month geez is a bit steep…is it worth getting just for the discounted hardware costs; and then deactivate so I've got it up my sleeve for later on; or anyone expect hardware will remain similar cost later on?
I saw a physical poster in Tasmania and it said until New Years and it has similar wording on the RV webpage (https://www.starlink.com/rv) at the moment as well.
LET THAT SINK IN