It's a real 150-300 down, 16-25 Mbps up. In many cases it actually beats the DOCSIS3 cable operator's network at the same location for jitter, packet loss, downtime.
The unfortunate economics of building 4000-6000 kg sized geostationary telecom satellites with 15 year finite lifespans, and launching them into a proper orbit ($200 million would not be a bad figure for a cost to put one satellite in place) mean that the oversubscription/contention ratios on consumer grade VSAT are extreme.
Dedicated 1:1 geostationary satellite still has the 492-495ms but is remarkably not bad, but you're looking at a figure of anywhere from $1300 to $3000 per Mbps, per direction, per month for your own dedicated chunk of transponder kHz for SCPC. You're also looking at a minimum of $7000-9000 for terminal equipment. That's the unfortunate reality right now.
I feel sorry for both viasat/hughesnet consumer grade customers, who are suffering, and also the companies, who are on a path dependent lock in towards obsolescence. Even more so if various starlink competitors like Kuiper, Telesat's LEO network and OneWeb (not exactly a competitor since it won't be serving the end user, but same general concept) actually launch services.
Do you have any more specific data you could share there? For example, how much of that percentage is caused by downtime and how much is caused by random lost packets outside of downtime? Or how long does it go unavailable?
Not within the past 3-4 weeks, but there have been previous times of 30 to 120 minute downtime at 0200 in the morning local time while the starlink people do terminal firmware updates and other changes in the network.
This often started with off the shelf wireless APs (like the venerable D-Link DWL-900AP+ with often home made antennas connected. If the network had more knowledgeable Unix people, they might have used an old PC running Linux or BSD with hostapd and an PCI wireless card. The most advanced ones even had home-built optical links (Seriously, 10 Mbit/s full duplex on 2001 by light was super cool! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RONJA) though our network was not that hardcore. :P We did lay some cable via agricultural pipe and build a makeshift com tower next to a Vineyard. :)
Over time the networks got high larger via bridging and wired or even fiber segments and a lot of the hardware was often replaced by high performance Microtik and Ubiquity devices.
Also the networks often merged into bigger ones, covering whole cities and their surrounding villages, with APs on top of grain silos and water towers.
Some of the networks are still independent and quite big, some were bought by big "traditional" telecom companies and some still operate as user coops to this day.
With high gain antennas you simultaneously increase mutual reception and decrease reception of other signals, giving a triple boost to your signal-to-noise ratio if you can use it on both sides (sender: +1 txpower; receiver: +1 signal reception, +1 interference rejection), so that is what you should aim for.
Transmit power does comparatively little (sender only: +1 txpower, -? amplifier noise), while blanketing the area with useless power (both in-band and out-of-band²) that can get you detected and affect other devices. Especially if you driver you transmitter near the limit (or use a shitty amplifier, broadband antenna) further increasing out-of-band transmissions, which is the part that is likely to get you a visit from regulators.
¹ gain ~ directionality; symmetric in both reception and transmission
² out-of-band - frequencies other than intended ones
We spent today taking a look at properties, and the internet situation goes downhill fast from where we presently rent from DSL to "unknown". HughesNet is an option, but it's an iffy option for latency reasons, and Starlink is crazy pricey. Cellular is a total non-starter: there is none.
Our realtor lives on a road with a bunch of people willing to pony up to get decent internet, but they can't get the ISP to actually run media down the road because it's too few houses, never mind that there's money on the table.
So if you're a web developer, please know that there are real folks in the USA who have legitimately lousy internet options in 2021. In our case, it's self inflicted, but I'm going to make some sweeping assumptions based on the houses we drove by and say it isn't a matter of choice for everybody.
Family in Placerville CA went from unusable <1mbps viasat to 50-190mbps overnight.
I hope it puts all the geostationary satellite companies into bankruptcy.
As someone whose only internet options for a few years were satellite and WISP that cost several hundred dollars for 8 Mbps down, I understand where they’re coming from :)
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nepal-airline-odd-idUSEIC...
As for the plane: there is a reason why European Union bans aircraft from many countries. Why not get... good technicians?
So we went from paying 9.95/month for average 56k service, to 80/month for a service that was worse than that.
To add insult to injury, a local broadband provider kept sticking their signs at our driveway next to our mailbox, and we would call to try and get service, but we were apparently 200 feet past the limit of their service area. People who lived at the mouth of our driveway had service, our neighbors had service, but we were too far out they said.
I repeat: as late as 2016 I WOULD HAVE KILLED TO BE ABLE TO JUST USE FREAKING DIALUP!