Starlink - Anyone get it yet?

Download the starlink app and use the check for obstructions. Point it to the sky and its pretty accurate in terms of what area you need clear. Basically collect the green dots without buildings/trees in the way. It stays on 100% processing but just ignore that.

Once you have the dish connected itl take about 12 hrs before it tells you a clear picture of where you are blocked.

Elaine Byrne in Business Post: We abandoned hope of connection, and signed up to satellite instead - Satellite broadband, from a growing number of providers, may be a quicker and better answer to rural Ireland’s offline woes than the National Broadband Plan.

https://www.businesspost.ie/politics-extra/elaine-byrne-we-abandoned-hope-of-connection-and-signed-up-to-satellite-instead-c15581a2

Must keep an eye on Elaine Byrne's column in the Business Post, she was very positive about it after only a few days connected.

She mentioned in the piece that as more subscribers come on board the cost will come down. No indication from Starlink or Elon that this will happen and there is that expedition to Mars to be paid for...

I still have mine in the garden but played some fifa on it. Definitely not as good as my vdsl ping but I was averaging around 40ms - 50ms. When I get set up properly I plan to test more extensively. And I'm pretty competitive FIFA player so will be able to give a good review.

And this was using the xbox wireless - so Definitely usable.

Its woeful for using any Facebook service for some reason though and the router is very poor in terms of range.

Il put it this way, an excellent mid term solution while we wait for NBI but anyone suggesting it as an alternative is just wrong.

And the monthly price of 100 euro is horrendously expensive. My neighbour eown the road has 500Mb FTTH for 35 a month.

Interesting wonder of it's ping related . The likes of Instagram and FB now seem to eat up bandwidth there's days though.

The reality is that Starlink is, for many/most in rural areas, here NOW whereas NBI fibre is jam tomorrow (5 yrs) for many rural areas. If you are rearing kids or want to run a micro-biz you are not going stop the process till 2026. Starlink is admittedly not cheap but its current performance** comfortably exceeds the performance needs of most households and even EU min requirements for 2025 (>100 Mbps DL). No account is taken of the potential of Starlink in terms of possible price reductions or performance improvements with the introduction of inter sat laser links, expanded constellations, more ground stations and other tech advances by Starlink, OneWeb, TelSat, Amazon and many other players exploiting the potential of LEO sats.

** For months I have been securing consistent speeds averaging 190-200 & 25 Mbps DL & UL, latency of 46 ms and uptime of 99.8%. Not as good as fibre but more than adequate for most homes for the foreseeable.

Yeah exactly. Im 1.5Km from the cabinet I believe. I wouldnt have moved off VDSL if I could get 20Mb+. It was even a fight to convince Vodafone to move me from DSL to VDSL due to very little difference in speeds but I told them to do it (I knew the line would be a bit more stable and upload would increase slightly which it did)

Currently I am actually on both - Vodafone contract not up til March. Its interesting looking at the differences

Vodafone - VDSL

• Down 14Mb Up 1.7ish
• Ping 15-20ms
• Prone to random drops in quality maybe 2-5 times a day.
• Crippled if any downloads/uploads taking place (this along with speed is the big one for me) - I know instantly if some device is doing some auto update or upload as the net grinds to a halt.
• Vodafone router far far better range
• Not a hope streaming 4k

Starlink (not yet tested wired and I still dont have it mounted where I want)

• Down 160-240Mb (it varies) Upload 30Mb consistent
• Ping 40 - 60Ms
• Zero issues with network with multiple downloads/uploads occurring at once.
• Starlink router has very very poor range - will be getting a different router.
• 4k content streams without issue
• Can also be prone to random drops in quality or outages although the outages have been few and far between and speeds dont usually drop often or below say 60Mb.

Mine arrived today, speed is good out of the box, slight concern about packet loss. Its sitting on the ground right now but I'll mount it on the gable end of the house at the weekend. Myself and my sons both game almost daily (them more so than me) so will see how it holds up tonight.

For today it will be just me working from home on it (zoom, voip, vpn etc).

Might help: https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/kcfose/app_check_for_obstructions_issue_your_phone_does/

System takes at least 12 hours to get orientated once it has access to a clear sky.

Download average 230MB

Upload average 50MB

Location Donegal.

Consistant signal min has been 120 plus max 330MB

Happy camper.

Downtime varies per user. Place you home point on this map( 3rd icon in from the right ) and you will get an idea of the route your signals take to the Gateways & POPs.

https://starlink.sx/

How have you guys got your's connected to get those speeds ? With an ethernet cable we can get 300Mbs + but with the wireless , only 30-40 Mbs & that is next to the computer. We contacted customer service & they sent out another router but exactly the same results.

My wife is getting the same speeds on her phone.