Starlink - Anyone get it yet?

Here are three speed tests (wired tests) in a row just after 5pm Irish time.

Yep, seeing the same speeds in installs

I won't be. Once I'm fibred (at the ass end of the NBI project in 2029 no doubt 🙄), I'll be dumping Starlink. It's not a price thing, just that wired is always better.

Just one point to consider about fibre, which one of the pole crew said to me. They have been busy doing fibre installs, tree trimming is neglected. Your fibre line is running to the nearest exchange which could be 10, 20 km away? Bad storm, how many trees are on that line? A fibre repair is much more complex than a copper wire joining. If there a lots of breaks after a storm, how long will people be waiting for repairs?

Fibre was down for over a week where I am when half the trees down one road came down on the cable. Still plenty more to come down. But I'm waiting for cable, could get starlink but not unless the price goes below €60.

Eh, the National Broadband Plan will not cover every household on this island. For example, I live in an estate in a town and because of that I am not in their plans. I cannot get FTTH (high speed) because not one of the major providers will provide it because ducts into the property and outside of the property (public property) are either blocked or too small. They label it ‘undeliverable’. So if I want high speed broadband, there is no alternative unless I employ satellite broadband. If you think that the National Broadband Plan is the answer to everyone’s problems then I reckon the idea of the tooth fairy and the magic beans must really blow your mind!!

Thanks. Already contacted them. They are not interested because I get speeds over 30Mbps. I have literally tried everything but to no avail. I do appreciate the constructive input though. And I do acknowledge that if someone gets anything more than that then not getting FTTH is a first world problem.

I have this and use irishvoip. It's been fine apart from very bad weather. It may cut in and out a bit.

I notice there is a very snobby attitude to satellite broadband on this forum.

I already had half decent normal (non dect) phones that worked well so I got a Grandstream HT812 ATA. This means you can connect the old phones to it. I got the grandstream from Irishvoip and it was just plug and play. I have wired ethernet to the grandstream and then wired phones from the grandstream. Avoid equipment rental as the equipment isnt really that expensive. If i didnt have deceent old phones I would have just got dect phones. But if you need more than one dect phone you better check is it covered with 1 subscription. I dont think it always is.

With Starlink I have their router in bypass mode and use my own router. You will have to do this or else get a switch as the starlink router only has 1 ethernet port. If you use your own router you will also have to buy an ethernet adaptor from starlink. Its very easy to set up in bypass mode.

I don't know where you are getting this from any of my posts. I'm delighted with Starlink, as it got me out of a hole when my FWA provider shut down and all I was left with is utterly useless (after 3pm on school days) 4G. I run my small little business from home, delivering online training courses to people morning, noon and sometimes at night. So I have to have stable connectivity. 4G wouldn't cut it, but Starlink does.

However, when it becomes available to me, I would prefer the vastly higher bandwidth that Fibre would provide, particularly upstream.

I'll just finish here by saying you will find older posts from me calling Satellite broadband utter crap. This in relation to geostationary satellite services that are fierce expensive, weather affected, laggy and with limited data allowances. I was a customer of one of them for a couple of years before I got the FWA installed and I could barely tolerate it.

If the fibre is coming from my nearest exchange, then it's 2KM away. Yes there are a lot of trees beside the telephone lines along that 2KM and some of them have come down in previous storms, taking the lines with them. So this would be a business risk to me. For shorter outages I could fire up an unlimited Three 4G mobile broadband in a few minutes as I have a router and PAYG SIM. If it was to be a lengthy outage or I needed to run a training session, I would relocate to an alternative premises that I can get the use of 20KM away that has 500Mbps FTTH.

Sounds a bit "Oooo ... this new fangled fibre thing is fierce complicated" from the eir engineer. Local community volunteers in B4RN areas are splicing fibre and doing repairs all by themselves.

I'm not saying the Openeir or NBI should allow others to carry out such repairs. But splicing fibre isn't rocket science.

There are many reasons to not be a fan of starlink. Firstly the obvious one many people dont like Elon and dont want to pay him money. Secondly with that dislike comes a distrust over what he may or may not do with his platform as he is well know to change his mind over critical things in his companies at the drop of a hat so relying on it for internet access may not be something people are happy doing. Thirdly its a fact that ground based infrastructure maintained by the national operator is simply in many peoples minds more reliable than a satellite system and they also might be happier paying a domestic company than a foreign one. Theres many more reasons to not be a fan, like the potential for starlink and its likely competitors to ruin the night sky and eventually leave us with a very cluttered mess up there. Also the satellites themselves arent very environmentally friendly as they degrade quite quickly due to the low orbits they are in so some see it as a waste of the raw materials they are made of and constantly putting new ones up there adds a lot of pollution to the atmosphere.

As I said before when i get NBI next year ill be weighing my options and the cons list for starlink will include all of the above.

How does electricity get to your house?

Over last 20 years ish of having a landline phone(and very **** internet ofc) I cannot remember one occasion where I have lost phone or internet. Lots of very bad storms in that time. I'm rural and 4.5km from exchange with old poles all along roads. It's remarkable how resilient they are. Lose electricity at least 2-3 timers per year through storms.

There's also a service level agreement specified for fibre repairs so it's not like you're going to be left without internet for weeks if the worst were to happen.

Just mad to think people would stick with Starlink after their area gets fibre enabled, you're cutting off your nose to spite your face imho.