Starlink starts $99 per month 'Better than Nothing' internet service beta

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SpaceX is expanding its Starlink satellite internet beta to interested parties, requiring a $499 upfront purchase on top of a $99 per month fee.

Starlink starts $99 per month Better than Nothing internet service beta


SpaceX, one of the several projects from Tesla CEO Elon Musk, has sent out emails to those who expressed interest in signing up for the Starlink internet service.

The service will cost $99 per month but requires a user to purchase a $499 Starlink Kit. The kit includes a user terminal, a mounting tripod, and a WiFi Router. An iOS app for the service has recently appeared on the App Store.

The company has told customers to temper their expectations, according to an email seen by CNBC. The company itself calls it the "better than nothing beta" and warns that data speeds will likely vary between 50-150Mbps, with latency of between 20ms to 40ms -- as well as "brief" periods of no connectivity at all.

Customers had signed up to be informed about the beta via Starlink's website, and SpaceX says in less than two months, nearly 700,000 individuals had signed up to learn more about the service. The form remains open on the Starlink site.

SpaceX hopes to build an interconnected internet network with thousands of satellites that could provide high-speed internet to anyone on the planet. The company estimates that the project could cost over $10 billion to build but could bring in as much as $30 billion a year.

Currently, SpaceX has over 900 Starlink satellites in orbit, which enables the company to begin offering service to customers in some regions of the United States. According to the Starlink site, SpaceX hopes to expand to "near-global coverage of the populated world by 2021."

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 18
    tjwolftjwolf Posts: 424member
    The article waits until the second-to-last sentence to point out that the service is only being offered to customers *in some* regions of the US.  Kinda annoying.  That region is likely only northern states as StarLink has previously said so.

    I'm desperately waiting for StarLink to become available as I've been WFH for 6 months on Verizon LTE with two bars :(  There's no broadband available in this "remote" part of NC (less than 1/2hr away from Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill - the technology hub of NC :-(

    Does anyone know if the satellite dish will require separate power or uses Power over Ethernet?  When I built the house, I had the foresight to run coax and ethernet to the roof, but not power :-(
    forgot usernamellamawatto_cobra
  • Reply 2 of 18
    DAalsethDAalseth Posts: 3,015member
    Yes it’s expensive. Yes it’s not great speeds and is laggy. But it’s beta. They barely have half of their initial fleet up. It will improve as there are more launches. Plus if you are in the wilds of Nunavit it might be your only option. It’s better than nothing.
    edited October 2020 caladanianwatto_cobra
  • Reply 3 of 18
    I would love to put this on my RV and get Internet wherever I go in the US but I’m not sure they allow roaming.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 4 of 18
    When you read about the amount of space junk already in orbit around the Earth + the amount of additional space junk that ideas like this would add...it just doesn't seem very smart. 
    Beatswatto_cobra
  • Reply 5 of 18
    DAalseth said:
    Yes it’s expensive. Yes it’s not great speeds and is laggy. But it’s beta. They barely have half of their initial fleet up. It will improve as there are more launches. Plus if you are in the wilds of Nunavit it might be your only option. It’s better than nothing.
    If you consider how Tesla handles other products in Beta, it will continue to get better over time.  Maximum speeds, stable throughput, consistency of availability, are all things I could see them improving.  Latency... perhaps with hardware upgrades to both the satellite and ground equipment.  It was honest of them to set current expectations.
    viclauyycwatto_cobra
  • Reply 6 of 18
    DAalsethDAalseth Posts: 3,015member
    DAalseth said:
    Yes it’s expensive. Yes it’s not great speeds and is laggy. But it’s beta. They barely have half of their initial fleet up. It will improve as there are more launches. Plus if you are in the wilds of Nunavit it might be your only option. It’s better than nothing.
    If you consider how Tesla handles other products in Beta, it will continue to get better over time.  Maximum speeds, stable throughput, consistency of availability, are all things I could see them improving.  Latency... perhaps with hardware upgrades to both the satellite and ground equipment.  It was honest of them to set current expectations.
    Yes it will get better. when the company gets a few thousand satellites, it will likely be pretty good. And the satellites will improve over time ans they update and replace them.
    When you read about the amount of space junk already in orbit around the Earth + the amount of additional space junk that ideas like this would add...it just doesn't seem very smart. 
    I couldn’t agree more. There is a lot of junk, and each time some yahoo conducts a ASBM test there’s more, not to mention fragments from impacts. It’s getting crowded. Also the impact on astronomy could be terrible. You already can’t go out and look at the sky without seeing a couple of satellites. Multiply that by a hundred and it will really spoil the sky. 
  • Reply 7 of 18
    Wgkrueger said:
    I would love to put this on my RV and get Internet wherever I go in the US but I’m not sure they allow roaming.
    Roaming...  Ba-ha-ha!
  • Reply 8 of 18

    tjwolf said:
    The article waits until the second-to-last sentence to point out that the service is only being offered to customers *in some* regions of the US.  Kinda annoying.  That region is likely only northern states as StarLink has previously said so.

    I'm desperately waiting for StarLink to become available as I've been WFH for 6 months on Verizon LTE with two bars :(  There's no broadband available in this "remote" part of NC (less than 1/2hr away from Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill - the technology hub of NC :-(

    Does anyone know if the satellite dish will require separate power or uses Power over Ethernet?  When I built the house, I had the foresight to run coax and ethernet to the roof, but not power :-(
    You can always use a PoE extractor to supply remote power to a non-PoE device.
    llamalolliver
  • Reply 9 of 18

    When you read about the amount of space junk already in orbit around the Earth + the amount of additional space junk that ideas like this would add...it just doesn't seem very smart. 
    Time for Spectre to launch Bird One and start collecting all the satellites and space junk.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 10 of 18
    llamallama Posts: 104member
    tjwolf said:
    I'm desperately waiting for StarLink to become available as I've been WFH for 6 months on Verizon LTE with two bars :(  There's no broadband available in this "remote" part of NC (less than 1/2hr away from Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill - the technology hub of NC :-(
    Same here in the exurbs of Northern Virginia.  I am 52 miles from the White House and I have *zero* wired broadband options.  My county is backing p2p microwave, but somehow even 40' in the air they could not pick up signal from the three towers in my immediate area.  I am stuck using AT&T Unlimited hotspots with external antennas to enjoy some fraction of the broadband experience.  Speeds vary maybe 10Mbps-40Mbps but the ping can be anywhere from 30ms to 3000ms....  We stream without particular issues, but gaming can be awesome and then lag out causing wailing from the living room.  :D 

    Starlink can't come soon enough!
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 11 of 18
    llama said:
    tjwolf said:
    I'm desperately waiting for StarLink to become available as I've been WFH for 6 months on Verizon LTE with two bars :(  There's no broadband available in this "remote" part of NC (less than 1/2hr away from Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill - the technology hub of NC :-(
    Same here in the exurbs of Northern Virginia.  I am 52 miles from the White House and I have *zero* wired broadband options.  My county is backing p2p microwave, but somehow even 40' in the air they could not pick up signal from the three towers in my immediate area.  I am stuck using AT&T Unlimited hotspots with external antennas to enjoy some fraction of the broadband experience.  Speeds vary maybe 10Mbps-40Mbps but the ping can be anywhere from 30ms to 3000ms....  We stream without particular issues, but gaming can be awesome and then lag out causing wailing from the living room.  :D 

    Starlink can't come soon enough!
    HughesNet should be an option for you.  It has been around for a couple of decades.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 12 of 18
    When you read about the amount of space junk already in orbit around the Earth + the amount of additional space junk that ideas like this would add...it just doesn't seem very smart. 
    True.

    But all starlink satellites has a return home feature, crash and burn back to earth, when it is end of life. It is not perfect but it is a lot better than other LEO to HEO satellites that will just die in space and stay for long time. 
    jdb8167lolliverwatto_cobra
  • Reply 13 of 18
    jdb8167jdb8167 Posts: 627member
    viclauyyc said:
    When you read about the amount of space junk already in orbit around the Earth + the amount of additional space junk that ideas like this would add...it just doesn't seem very smart. 
    True.

    But all starlink satellites has a return home feature, crash and burn back to earth, when it is end of life. It is not perfect but it is a lot better than other LEO to HEO satellites that will just die in space and stay for long time. 
    And they orbit very low compared to most satellites.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 14 of 18

    Wgkrueger said:
    I would love to put this on my RV and get Internet wherever I go in the US but I’m not sure they allow roaming.
    Not yet but Musk has talked about it. Right now this is a very limited beta release.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 15 of 18
    ciacia Posts: 268member
    When you read about the amount of space junk already in orbit around the Earth + the amount of additional space junk that ideas like this would add...it just doesn't seem very smart. 
    These SpaceX satellites are in extremely low orbit (which is why they should have good speeds and low latency).

    They are so low that without their onboard propulsion they will drop into the earth's atmosphere and burn up in just a few months.   So they aren't really hurting the space junk problem as they, by design, rapidly de-orbit.

    The stuff up high (Geosynchronous) is where the serious space junk issue is.  That stuff will be floating around for thousands of years before they come down, even 10's of thousands of years.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 16 of 18
    llama said:
    tjwolf said:
    I'm desperately waiting for StarLink to become available as I've been WFH for 6 months on Verizon LTE with two bars :(  There's no broadband available in this "remote" part of NC (less than 1/2hr away from Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill - the technology hub of NC :-(
    Same here in the exurbs of Northern Virginia.  I am 52 miles from the White House and I have *zero* wired broadband options.  My county is backing p2p microwave, but somehow even 40' in the air they could not pick up signal from the three towers in my immediate area.  I am stuck using AT&T Unlimited hotspots with external antennas to enjoy some fraction of the broadband experience.  Speeds vary maybe 10Mbps-40Mbps but the ping can be anywhere from 30ms to 3000ms....  We stream without particular issues, but gaming can be awesome and then lag out causing wailing from the living room.  :D 

    Starlink can't come soon enough!
    HughesNet should be an option for you.  It has been around for a couple of decades.
    And it has SUCKED for a couple of decades.  
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 17 of 18
    jcs2305jcs2305 Posts: 1,340member
    llama said:
    tjwolf said:
    I'm desperately waiting for StarLink to become available as I've been WFH for 6 months on Verizon LTE with two bars :(  There's no broadband available in this "remote" part of NC (less than 1/2hr away from Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill - the technology hub of NC :-(
    Same here in the exurbs of Northern Virginia.  I am 52 miles from the White House and I have *zero* wired broadband options.  My county is backing p2p microwave, but somehow even 40' in the air they could not pick up signal from the three towers in my immediate area.  I am stuck using AT&T Unlimited hotspots with external antennas to enjoy some fraction of the broadband experience.  Speeds vary maybe 10Mbps-40Mbps but the ping can be anywhere from 30ms to 3000ms....  We stream without particular issues, but gaming can be awesome and then lag out causing wailing from the living room.  :D 

    Starlink can't come soon enough!
    HughesNet should be an option for you.  It has been around for a couple of decades.
    Op mentions streaming and gaming and HughesNet has some pretty small data caps? 50Gb is their largest and gaming and streaming movies in HD or anything else can eat up 50Gb pretty quickly.


    watto_cobra
  • Reply 18 of 18
    tjwolf said:

    Does anyone know if the satellite dish will require separate power or uses Power over Ethernet?  When I built the house, I had the foresight to run coax and ethernet to the roof, but not power :-(
    The dish is indeed powered via PoE, and the kit comes with the injector.
    watto_cobra
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