And that's the regular plan. Deprioritised Starlink costs €29/month! Still way way more useful service than inreach.
I have inreach and for €19,99 I get 10 SMS per month (i don't subscribe every month) and I also have to pay a €39,99 yearly fee. Starlink is undoubtedly cheaper here.
Of course it's not really the same kind of service. Inreach is a rugged 100 grams device for hiking with its own battery power that can stay connected for days. It can stay connected even in my bag and has a button to call for emergency services.
For internet backup I have a 4G modem right now, connected to my unifi router with auto failover and a script that adds credit to my prepay card over SMS. It serves me ok. But I'd love to have a starlink mini for backup. Just the regular one is a bit big so I didn't get it yet.
Could be saturation indeed, as Ireland is very sparse in rural areas. And so is Spain, outside the few urban centres.
Getting Starlink a few years ago was the first time we had reliable internet at our family farm, and we were stoked. We also started getting better and better service as fiber rolled out across the country, but we never got above 250mbs. Now that fiber is here, it's no longer necessary except perhaps as a backup.
It was no wonder that people started rolling their own WANs with point to point wifi connections until things finally picked up.
But starlink would be a good option there, right?
Alternatively, maybe the meaningful coverage areas are so small and dense that the price should be higher. Since Starlink's biggest limitation is that performance suffers in more densely populated areas.
I’d be happy to pay a premium to never give them another dollar ever again.
What are your current expectations around price and bandwidth as the Starlink service becomes more popular in your area?
If you have the opportunity to have a fibre or copper connection directly to your unit, it seems like a crazy decision to consider Starlink.
Not really, I loved a local new independent provider that strung its own fibre around, but moved out of that building :(
They were particularly great because they didn’t (at the time) do phone or tv, just pure solid internet. No legacy industry to protect by limiting torrents or gb/month limits (fuck you Bell Canada).
VDSL is being phased out.
Is 4G a good backup? I am also in Spain and in my neighborhood we often suffer from power failure under heavy rain, I guess a local transformer is shorting as it impacts just a few streets around my house. But when it happens I also lose phone connectivity. The nearest antenna seems to be located in the few streets impacted and smartphone seemingly cannot reach another one nearby. This made me realize the short radius of mobile network range around a single antenna.
Then just unpause in the starlink app to instantly have access and resume billing
As a former owner of a WISP, this idea of a "backup service" doesn't really work (read: I make no money from you).
I activated our Starlink roam (you can access the captive portal while service is disabled) & all the remote working neighbors came over and shared the connection. It worked great!
""Pause and un-pause service at any time. Billing is in one-month increments, allowing you to customize your service to your individual travel needs."
But I don't think they have any subscription plans priced for that? And there might be issues after a storm if everyone started using it at once.