I'm actually a huge fan of "unlimited slow speeds" as a falloff, instead of a cliff.
Aside from the fact it allows you to work with Starlink to buy more fast speed, it also allows core stuff to continue to function (e.g. basic notifications, non-streaming web traffic, etc).
I would kill for a web renaissance to return to this format of webpages, as least as an option. Not only loading improves, but also navigation and accessibility.
Indeed. That's why, when they finally kill old.reddit, I may legitimately stop using it entirely. They've already banned most of the good apps, forcing the pretty terrible official one.
My mobile data plan is like this. It’s funny because when I’m “out of data” my provider sends an SMS suggesting I upgrade to more gigabytes, but then it still continues to work. And yes I checked my bills to make sure that they are not charging me for any usage excess of what’s included in the plan. It’s not even particularly slow. I can still browse the web, send and receive WhatsApp messages, images and videos, watch videos on TikTok etc.
My current plan is 2GB with rollover. Last month I used 2.5GB, and somehow this month has 2GB included + 2GB rollover = 4 GB available which by itself is also weird. Maybe most of the 2.5 GB I used last month was rollover from the month before that or something.
In total I have used 4.6 GB of mobile data so far this month, which is more than the 4 GB (2+2) I have available for this month and it’s still working.
Shockingly to some, the level of network development, especially wireless network, is not the same everywhere. Even population density varies greatly. I just checked our operators, the cheapest mobile plan comes at 1 GiB of data per month. Prices climb really fast after that, making 10-15 GiB (or more) too expensive for many, though you can get 5 GiB/mo subsidized for cheap if you have some sort of disability.
I'm in WA - I pay $20/mo for 15GB on Mint Mobile. I used to do $15/mo for 5GB but kept sometimes bumping into it (tethering and stuff) so I just bit the bullet and upgraded.
Data point: I'm in the US on an old pre-paid plan that gets me 5GB per month at fast speed, dropping down to unlimited "2G" speed after that cap is hit, which I've done only twice in the past 12 years. $30 per month, and I always "bring my own device" (ie, I only buy unlocked phones, not through the carrier). I haven't shopped around for a while.
You should shop around! Some of the MVNOs are offering unlimited fast data at a similar price these days, and something similar to what you have now for cheaper.
Years ago, I picked cell carrier because of this. When I ran out, it switched to O(200kbps), which is fine for email, basic web search, etc.
It was actually a bit ironic that, at the time, you could burn through the whole high-speed quota in seconds or minutes, if you went to the wrong web page. Most carriers would stop or bill you an arm-and-a-leg after.
5G data roaming is hilarious for this. Verizon offered 500MB of high speed data roaming per day in Canada before throttling down to ~128kbps. I ran one single speedtest in the middle of Ottawa on Rogers 5G, didn't even finish the speedtest (hitting an error at the end that it failed), and got the text message going "You've run out of high speed data today. Do you want to buy another 500MB for $5?"
At least it's 2GB/day now. And my 5G roaming is off...
As a residential customer Starlink gave me the unlimited slow speed with a free mini for $60/year, as a tease to promote the full speed at $300/year. But it does everything I need it to, so I'm not incentivized to upgrade. I can listen to YouTube audio, make voip calls, download map tiles or talk with a chatbot without limitations. It's a large quality of life improvement for me because in my rural area there is no cellular connection during most of my driving.
Have they quantified the slow speed? Because when I had Viasat the slow speed so so unbelievably slow it had a hard time loading a regular SPA page in 2-3 minutes.
Regardless of the price and the data, I'd never subscribe to this service due to the owner.
I'm looking forward for alternatives from a more neutral vendor
I think they will have enough clients from other parts of the world to make it work. Large areas of my country can't really be covered with wired networks, it's too expensive to make it economically feasible without massive government subsidies, for which there's no money.
Starlink has already been used to connect very remote rural schools which previously only had dial-up connectivity (enough to send text email, but not much else).
And nobody here cares about American politics, we have enough of our own problems.
It's not really American politics when Elon decides to turn off your countries internet for personal gain. Having such critical infrastructure in the hands of someone unstable wouldn't be a choice I ever make for something so important.
I respect your principles, but at the same time, using Starlink for now does encourage other potential competitors to come forth, at which time you could switch.
Boycott noted, meanwhile, I’ll be enjoying double the roaming data while you wait for that legendary ‘neutral’ competitor to beam down from the heavens.
As if Bezos is better. Elon has a much higher slope but he’s got a head start to catch up on, before they’re all hunting humans for sport on Ellison’s private island.
There are two Chinese alternatives being deployed right now. I believe one is called Guowang. As a red blooded American, I would rather go with Guowang over an American Nazi.
Leftists don't subscribe to it either, which is where "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism" comes from and means. Boycotts don't really work, finance is too interconnected.
"That man" is the only person so far who's actually helped the Iranian people get their voices heard amidst government shutdown of the entire internet.
By this logic, Persians also hate him because he played a big factor in destroying USAID, an organization that has helped Iranians in humanitarian aid and disaster relief. Persian-language broadcasting by Voice of America and Radio Farda has been destroyed by Musk.
As I recently said about Scott Adams: "Good things can be done by Bad people." I think to assume that humans are these monolithic, logically consistent entities is to badly misunderstand humanity.
For example, Planned Parenthood--an organization I definitely believe in--was essentially created by a woman who was a eugenicist--something I definitely do not believe in.
Were I to be supporting PP when Sanger was still alive, I would not have been enriching her, or enabling other things that she believed in (at least not to any extent that would trouble me). Mostly because PP has always been a not-for-profit organization.
Being a Starlink customer, to me, has a straight line connection to enabling that man to do all the things he does.
> I think to assume that humans are these monolithic, logically consistent entities is to badly misunderstand humanity.
I don't think anyone is doing that though. But to decide whether to give someone's business money you do have to come to some sort of decision about their net good vs bad. It's logically consistent for the OP to be aware that Musk is aiding internet connectivity in Iran but still oppose giving him money.
I do not want my technology tied to some person I consider of despicable character. Would I buy a cell phone, even at a good deal from Putin? No. Corporations have increasingly become political. Thanks, United vs FEC! So we see them taking a knee to gain commercial advantage. And as in this case harm to our democracy.
In my opinion, no discussion about Starlink is complete without considering whether the money you pay will be used to profit people or causes you do not want.
If you need this, then great. But I have other choices, just as I would not touch a tesla even if you gave it to me. I just am not that desperate.
I’m always amazed how much people attribute to citizens united, a ruling that overturned portions of a law that was only on the books for 7 years at the time.
Guy is literally mask of white supremacist, why are you supporting this buddy? But yeah, the people that think his robot legions will solve world poverty and bring "sustainable abundance" for all are the sane ration thinking ones.
While I semi-agree, they both do plenty to encourage it. I mostly just wish Elon would stop using the R word. Not enough that I’m going to cancel my plan, but come on.
I get the fight to keep one word to remain non-offensive, instead of changing it every ~10yrs. It might be a locality thing too, when I was going to school the teachers used "special education" but now I've unintentionally offended with that as well. Google says it's "Intellectually Disabled" now. It's hard to keep up, and pretty annoying to constantly be tip-toeing around certain words.
I leave it to others to fight that fight, but I'd take any word.
I'm not certain what "the R word" is, but if you mean "retard" (and derivatives), then there's absolutely nothing wrong with that word. No reasonable person is offended by calling things retarded.
You don’t have any savings in the bank, right? That money you’re hoarding could be buying mosquito nets to save lives - you’re killing people by not donating everything you have.
There is no moral requirement for me to impoverish myself in response to an idiot cutting government/public spending on critical assistance to those in need.
There might be other moral imperatives which indicate that I ought to cash out the 401(k) and give it to people who need support, but this guy and his fucked up "DOGE" bullshit ain't it.
Note the same, maybe if my bank account was equivalent to Elon Musk's it would be a fair argument but hardly the same to expect a shitposter to be equivalent to a man who is a billionaire.
Totally the same. $1 is $1, and it can go to saving those very lives you’re talking about. Put your money where your mouth is - otherwise you just want to virtue signal with my tax dollars.
I do, through my tax dollars. And the amount of money that was DOGEd was literally couch cushion change on the scale of the federal budget. And not only did those cuts directly lead to deaths but weakened US soft power all around the world, letting China step in.
So right now, there are nearly 400,000 verifiable deaths due to the cuts of these programs. It's on track to be way worse than what I imagined, several million to 14 million.
I'm sorry but that's just straight up evil behavior.
It's not just a matter of funding, but infrastructure in place (much of which constituted relationships with local communities) that Marco Rubio ordered dismantled immediately.
My concern is that man, not the many people who work in the corporations who make the computing devices that I use. It's not exactly that those corporations have an unblemished record, but compared to what that guy did during his brief utterly ruinous stint with DOGE and in his election support of that other guy, there isn't a computing device company that doesn't look like St Francis of Assissi.
Yes and the seeds have already been planted by the current US administration taking various financial stakes in public companies as a condition of corporate welfare.
Those were just repaying the loans, having a stake in a company is completely different. It's not hard to push that further and in more creative ways too.
I don't see this as a good analogy, because the financial crisis bailout appeared to save the companies from shuttering, which is not what happened under the current admin.
I spend a lot of time out of reception and starlink has been fantastic. So much so that I leave it on anytime I'm driving where I have cellular reception because it's just consistently good. I get ~100Mbps whether it's a forest service road, ATV trail, or on the highway through curvy mountain passes.
I'm on the 50GB plan so doubling for free is very nice, but it looks like they yanked the ability to optionally purchase additional high speed data for $1/GB. Maybe it's still there?
Nice that instead of completely cutting you off at the cap they put it in super slow 500 kbits. That is actually usable and used to be the fastest speed you could get at home.
My first company was an ISP, and our selling point was that we had higher bandwith out of Norway than any competitors in our price range.... A whopping 512kps.
If I remember right we could get 64kb/s or 128kb/s if you bundled them, that was in Germany. But also, we didn't have that, we only had a 56kb/s modem and I remember really wanting ISDN when I was a kid :)
The first modem that I owned was 1200 baud. The first one that I used was 110 and it was exciting when it was upgraded to 300. It took ~20 years from when I first got online until my home internet reached 512kbps.
I bought a cheap 1200 and then once I had use for it I saved up for a USR 14.4 with a shiny extruded aluminum case. At one point I was sharing that with two roommates using SLIP and surplussed Cisco coaxial NICs.
People always use bits for connectivity. 62.5kB/sec -- maybe really 55-60kB/sec downloaded. Or 18 seconds to get a megabyte.
This is simultaneously fast (on my 14400 bps modem that I spent the most time "waiting for downloading", I was used to 12-13 minutes per megabyte vs. 18 seconds here) and slow (the google homepage is >1MB, so until you have resources cached you're waiting tens of seconds).
It would be nice if everything were just a touch more efficient.
Ok, I’m not normally one to be the pedantic bits/bytes guy, but if you’re gonna go and make a bit/byte “clarification” you need to get the annotation correct or you'll just confuse everyone.
It’s 500kb (small b for bits) and 62.5kB(capital/big B for bytes).
Unfortunately, the 56kbps internet was a lot more usable. I've been on 256kbps cellular connections (T-Mobile free international roaming) and it works, but it's pretty bad. Everything takes way more data these days, and nobody thinks about slow connections when writing software so there are a ton of overly aggressive timeouts and bad UI that assume operations won't take more than few seconds.
No, not nice. Previously, if we exceeded the 50Gb cap, there was the option to continue on at high-speed for $1/Gb. And that's the same price per Gb as the base plan of 50Gb/month for $50. Now, it's either upgrade to unlimited, or enjoy Netflix at 500Kbps. I want the old plan back.
If I calculate correctly then 500 kbps is actually enough for Netflix in standard quality. If one wants to binge watch 4K (7 GB per hour) then the unlimited plan makes more sense anyway.
It's unlikely that we will exceed 100Gb/month in the camper. But if we do, it's either slow speeds, or pay $165/month for unlimited roam every single month we use it, versus paying a little extra for the few times we go over. In the end, it'll probably work out okay for us, but I liked the previous option of being able to get high-speed data at a reasonable price should we go over the limit.
I assume they want to attract as many customers has possible while they have that monopoly - eventually they're going to need to compete with Amazon (Leo) and China (Qianfan, although I assume it'll be banned in the US). The cost of the phased-array terminals probably means there will be some stickiness.
They are interested in other markets where they don't have a monopoly though. Most of the time my cell phone has fast 5g internet, and my cell phone company is trying to sell me on their 5g internet (I have fibre so I don't see the point). For many potential starlink customers there is competition. If you on the ocean they are the only option. If you travel on land they can be the only option in places but you can probably live with no service in those few places.
That's the magic of the free market. Even with no direct rival yet, Starlink innovates like crazy because the threat of competition is always there and consumers demand excellence. Unlike state-granted monopolies, those parasitic structures stagnate and plunder the people.
I've never read Peter Thiel's books, but isn't that kinda a part of his playbook? Monopolies, but driving progress? "Competition is for losers"? I never fully understood it because it seems like then you're just competing with yourself.
I had a “hit” post on bsky [0] (90 likes, big numbers for me) asking whether people would want an unlimited mobile plan throttled at 256kbps for $2/month. Seems like yes?
There’s lots to say about how useable it is (I often get throttled when traveling and it’s really not that bad + it helps curb any desire to scroll videos!)
But mainly I want to ask - I looked into it for a minute and it seems like you couldn’t start an mvno because carriers wouldn’t let you cannibalize them?
You can get very cheap IoT plans but if you tried reselling IoT as esims for consumers, the carriers would kill it?
So yeah - Starlink to mobile is actually the only viable way that routes around this problem?
(((email in profile if you’re cuckoo enough like me and want to start a self service’d throttled mvno)))
Sorry yes - I think it does. Starlink sats can already offer 5G service directly to mobile phones (from the sky!!)
And there are other comments here talking about this specifically - how unlimited bandwidth throttled plans are actually useful and would be great to have.
I want the old plan back. If we went over the 50Gb/month, there was the option of continuing on at $1/Gb, which is the same price per Gb as the base plan. IOW, they didn't punish you for going over. Now if we go over, it's either put up with slow speed data, or upgrade to unlimited.
This is the equivalent of having the previous 50GB base plan and going over by $50 worth of data (an additional 50GB). If you were routinely going 50GB over the 50GB plan, I'd suggest that maybe a 50GB plan wasn't the right plan for you. Under the old plan, 100GB of data would have cost $100. Residential unlimited is $120, so for most users this would seem like an improvement.
That's the thing, we don't regularly go over 50Gb. Probably won't go over 100Gb, either. But if we do, it's either slow speeds, or pay $165/month for unlimited roam every single month we use it, versus paying a little extra for the few times we go over.
This makes the $50/mo plan viable for wan failover. Still have the cgnat issue, but there's some documentation about requesting an ipv4 address from support. Has anyone succeeded with that?
That’s great for me. I use it mainly for work (food trucks, not much data) but sometimes I’ll use it for personal stuff like weekend camping and hit the 50. Now I can just not worry about it ever.
I work remotely and use a starlink mini for work and general internet usage since I road trip in the summer a lot. For work I'm not using doing RDP/remote desktop stuff since I have a company-issued laptop, but I have some experience using it to stream graphics-intensive games from my home PC with a nice GPU to my phone with a mobile controller attached to it.
I saw around 50-100ms of latency in ideal conditions with a clear view of the sky. There are distinct large latency spikes every 30ish minutes, which I think is due to the dish switching between different satellites.
I think the latency would be fine for working, but it will hardly be transparent. When using it to play games, I've mostly stuck to stuff that doesn't require fast responses or parry mechanics, etc.
Even without RDP-ing into another workstation, the latency spikes on video calls can be noticeable. Moment-to-moment video conferencing latency is totally fine, given that most of the major players in the space have pretty good latency compensation baked in.
A few details/complications:
- I'm usually within ~500 miles of my home, which is relevant because starlink satellites communicate with ground stations, and being closer to home will still have a meaningful impact on latency
- host PC is on a wired fiber connection
- I live relatively far north (~65N) and starlink's network isn't biased toward polar orbiting satellites, so my coverage probaby isn't representative of behavior further south. You can see a map of satellites and note the relatively poor arctic and subarctic region coverage here: https://satellitemap.space/
That's not bad for the cheap plan. Even the slow mode is fast enough for video conferencing and doing basic remote work. They still have a separate unlimited plan for anyone who needs more.
I haven't done a video call on it but it does work for youtube. It's best to pause a video at the start but it buffers and plays just fine. Blocky but certainly watchable.
Awesome news. When we started RV traveling we wanted to do the 50G plan whenever we were out of cell-range but it turned out to be such a convenient service that 50G didn't last us more than 3 days so we switched to unlimited and haven't regretted it. Absolutely worth it because even the residential dish works flawlessly while driving and the kids can game and stream all at the same time from the pickup.
You can also start on the 100G plan and when you run out of data switch to unlimited right from the app. That'll bring down the first-month bill a tad and give you a chance to gauge the "slow speed" option.
I’ve kept it on the backup service for 10 GB at $10 or whatever and it’s pretty cool. Used it off my balcony in SF when Google Fiber had a 1 hr outage, take it on road trips, and stuff like that. Totally worth it.
Aside from the fact it allows you to work with Starlink to buy more fast speed, it also allows core stuff to continue to function (e.g. basic notifications, non-streaming web traffic, etc).
When on cellular, I like to call that "HN-only mode." It it is one of the few web properties that is entirely usable at 2G speeds.
My current plan is 2GB with rollover. Last month I used 2.5GB, and somehow this month has 2GB included + 2GB rollover = 4 GB available which by itself is also weird. Maybe most of the 2.5 GB I used last month was rollover from the month before that or something.
In total I have used 4.6 GB of mobile data so far this month, which is more than the 4 GB (2+2) I have available for this month and it’s still working.
So telcos can advertise "Up to 200Mbps" for their package.
But then if they have a 2GB cap, they also need to say, "Caps at 80 seconds of usage".
Because that's what you're paying for at that speed, 80 seconds of usage per month.
Sure, you're not always (or indeed never) doing 200Mbps, but then you're not getting the speed you paid for.
It was actually a bit ironic that, at the time, you could burn through the whole high-speed quota in seconds or minutes, if you went to the wrong web page. Most carriers would stop or bill you an arm-and-a-leg after.
At least it's 2GB/day now. And my 5G roaming is off...
Starlink has already been used to connect very remote rural schools which previously only had dial-up connectivity (enough to send text email, but not much else).
And nobody here cares about American politics, we have enough of our own problems.
I disagree that Bezos & Elon are comparably bad.
Leftists don't subscribe to it either, which is where "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism" comes from and means. Boycotts don't really work, finance is too interconnected.
Him or any of his companies will never see a penny from me.
Like it or not, Persians love him.
For example, Planned Parenthood--an organization I definitely believe in--was essentially created by a woman who was a eugenicist--something I definitely do not believe in.
Being a Starlink customer, to me, has a straight line connection to enabling that man to do all the things he does.
I don't think anyone is doing that though. But to decide whether to give someone's business money you do have to come to some sort of decision about their net good vs bad. It's logically consistent for the OP to be aware that Musk is aiding internet connectivity in Iran but still oppose giving him money.
The same guy could help some people and kick others in the dirt at the same time.
The same Persians in a western country would be called a threat to western culture by parties Musk endorses
Thank you for bringing value to this comments section.
I do not want my technology tied to some person I consider of despicable character. Would I buy a cell phone, even at a good deal from Putin? No. Corporations have increasingly become political. Thanks, United vs FEC! So we see them taking a knee to gain commercial advantage. And as in this case harm to our democracy.
In my opinion, no discussion about Starlink is complete without considering whether the money you pay will be used to profit people or causes you do not want.
If you need this, then great. But I have other choices, just as I would not touch a tesla even if you gave it to me. I just am not that desperate.
I leave it to others to fight that fight, but I'd take any word.
There might be other moral imperatives which indicate that I ought to cash out the 401(k) and give it to people who need support, but this guy and his fucked up "DOGE" bullshit ain't it.
I do, through my tax dollars. And the amount of money that was DOGEd was literally couch cushion change on the scale of the federal budget. And not only did those cuts directly lead to deaths but weakened US soft power all around the world, letting China step in.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-documentary...
https://ph.ucla.edu/news-events/news/research-finds-more-14-...
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-documentary...
https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/usaid-shutdown-has-led-to-hund...
This one is a PDF, so warning:
https://www.medschool.umaryland.edu/media/som/news/news-logo...
So right now, there are nearly 400,000 verifiable deaths due to the cuts of these programs. It's on track to be way worse than what I imagined, several million to 14 million.
I'm sorry but that's just straight up evil behavior.
If the funding cuts were so critical why have other wealthy countries or individuals not stepped in to fund them?
Are they all evil too?
You gonna throw your computer away?
Some of the investments were more national security related and a lot of it was done through the DoD which has a history of this too.
It’s unusual but not entirely unprecedented.
I'm on the 50GB plan so doubling for free is very nice, but it looks like they yanked the ability to optionally purchase additional high speed data for $1/GB. Maybe it's still there?
This is simultaneously fast (on my 14400 bps modem that I spent the most time "waiting for downloading", I was used to 12-13 minutes per megabyte vs. 18 seconds here) and slow (the google homepage is >1MB, so until you have resources cached you're waiting tens of seconds).
It would be nice if everything were just a touch more efficient.
Ok, I’m not normally one to be the pedantic bits/bytes guy, but if you’re gonna go and make a bit/byte “clarification” you need to get the annotation correct or you'll just confuse everyone.
It’s 500kb (small b for bits) and 62.5kB(capital/big B for bytes).
We lived for years on 56kbps, granted the Internet was different back then, but we'd still "use" it, download stuff, etc.
Or even better, 62.5KiB (for kibibyte)
Well, we can’t know if Starlink’s marketing team used 2^10 or 10^3, and since it’d inflate their numbers I guess the latter.
Also as has been noted, in some markets they do compete on price: https://restofworld.org/2025/starlink-cheaper-internet-afric...
https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/innovation-at-amazon/what-i...
There’s lots to say about how useable it is (I often get throttled when traveling and it’s really not that bad + it helps curb any desire to scroll videos!)
But mainly I want to ask - I looked into it for a minute and it seems like you couldn’t start an mvno because carriers wouldn’t let you cannibalize them?
You can get very cheap IoT plans but if you tried reselling IoT as esims for consumers, the carriers would kill it?
So yeah - Starlink to mobile is actually the only viable way that routes around this problem?
(((email in profile if you’re cuckoo enough like me and want to start a self service’d throttled mvno)))
[0] https://bsky.app/profile/greg.technology/post/3mbmwsytnyc23
And there are other comments here talking about this specifically - how unlimited bandwidth throttled plans are actually useful and would be great to have.
Youtubing how to deal with a snakebite might come in more handy.
[0]: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2009171282030653877
I saw around 50-100ms of latency in ideal conditions with a clear view of the sky. There are distinct large latency spikes every 30ish minutes, which I think is due to the dish switching between different satellites.
I think the latency would be fine for working, but it will hardly be transparent. When using it to play games, I've mostly stuck to stuff that doesn't require fast responses or parry mechanics, etc.
Even without RDP-ing into another workstation, the latency spikes on video calls can be noticeable. Moment-to-moment video conferencing latency is totally fine, given that most of the major players in the space have pretty good latency compensation baked in.
A few details/complications:
- I'm usually within ~500 miles of my home, which is relevant because starlink satellites communicate with ground stations, and being closer to home will still have a meaningful impact on latency
- host PC is on a wired fiber connection
- I live relatively far north (~65N) and starlink's network isn't biased toward polar orbiting satellites, so my coverage probaby isn't representative of behavior further south. You can see a map of satellites and note the relatively poor arctic and subarctic region coverage here: https://satellitemap.space/
I put some more details on my blog if you're interested in power specs or DNS options on the router, etc. https://bitcreed.us/bitblog/starlink-on-the-road
You can also start on the 100G plan and when you run out of data switch to unlimited right from the app. That'll bring down the first-month bill a tad and give you a chance to gauge the "slow speed" option.