Starlink “Better Than Nothing Beta”

[FutureBoy]

SpaceX rolls out Starlink “Better Than Nothing Beta” in the US and Canada

ByEric Ralph
Posted on October 27, 2020

SpaceX has officially begun rolling out what it’s deemed a Starlink internet “Better Than Nothing Beta” across the United States and Canada.

The culmination of a mere 11 months of dedicated Starlink launches, SpaceX says that the constellation – some 820 satellites strong – is now large and mature enough to begin covering all of Canada and the US in 2020, “rapidly expanding to near global coverage of the populated world by 2021.”

While global coverage is thus close on the horizon, SpaceX is striving to make it abundantly clear to early Starlink beta customers that the constellation is in a state of extreme change and instability and will be far from perfect: literally Better Than Nothing, for the time being.

Starlink is designed to deliver high-speed broadband internet to locations where access has been unreliable, expensive, or completely unavailable. Under Starlink’s Better Than Nothing Beta program, initial service is targeted for the U.S. and Canada in 2020, rapidly expanding to near-global coverage of the populated world by 2021.

The Starlink app is designed to help you:

• Identify the install location that will ensure the best quality of service
• Check for obstructions that can interfere with service
• Setup your Starlink hardware
• Verify your WiFi connection
• Run speed tests
• Troubleshoot connectivity issues
• Contact support

Starlink App description – Android/iOS

SpaceX’s Android and iOS Starlink apps are effectively identical.
The Starlink beta invite also informs early users that they should expect to receive speeds of 50-150 Mbps and latency (ping) between 20 and 40 milliseconds with occasional service outages and connection interruptions. Curiously, the invite also flies counter to previous hints in the code of SpaceX’s Starlink.com website that beta testing would be free for testers, revealing that Better Than Nothing Beta service will cost $99 per month and require each user to purchase a $499 Starlink user terminal.

While undeniably steep as far as most consumers of normal US and Canadian internet services are concerned, the sheer quantity of social media users revealing the obscene prices they pay for mediocre internet across North America suggests that even Starlink’s high beta pricing can compete with – or obliterate – existing rural providers.

SpaceX has likely produced just a few thousand user terminals in pursuit of a factory capable of delivering millions annually. (NASASpaceflight – bocachicagal)
A step further, SpaceX’s Hawthorne, CA Starlink user terminal factory has just barely begun volume production, all but guaranteeing that the efficiencies possible through economies of scale have yet to be realized. Phased-array antennas have never been mass-produced at the scale Starlink will need to serve even a minuscule percentage of prospective customers, meaning that SpaceX is likely to learn a great deal as it attempts to be the first company to do so.

If one assumes that SpaceX can quickly cut the cost of service and user terminals in half while dramatically improving network performance, Starlink will quickly become a no-brainer in many developed broadband markets.

SpaceX appears to be shipping Starlink user terminals and setup packages to beta users almost immediately after orders are placed. Lacking any kind of obvious non-disclosure agreement (NDA), it appears that the first reviews from Starlink beta users are likely to begin rolling in a matter of days from now.

 

[OneLapper]

Damn. Really hoped to be a beta tester.

I'd love to set this system up on a motor coach or big bunk tractor trailer. That would give the system a real test!

 

[ajdelange]

Can't wait! Damn Bell just shut me down again for being over. I'm 1 ° into the initial service area so maybe by next summer we'll have real internet here.

 

[Crissa]

Damn. Really hoped to be a beta tester.

There will be many more betas as the array of satellites spreads out around the globe. Right now they're barely covering a tiny chunk of what they want to.

-Crissa

 

[ajdelange]

\SpaceX says that the constellation – some 820 satellites strong – is now large and mature enough to begin covering all of Canada and the US in 2020, “rapidly expanding to near global coverage of the populated world by 2021.”

Actually that's a pretty neat trick with satellites at 550 km inclined 53°!

"Most" of Canada would be more like it.

 

[TI4Dan]

I have been on Starlink for a few weeks now and the service far better than the than my last two Satellite companies I had. My problem is I have too many tall trees around me and the satellites are not above the skyline of trees. The reception suffers greatly plus the lack of satellites with oversold services was just insufferable slow up or down loads. Now with Starlink my dish is pointed at 11:00 O'clock with a clear view of the sky first problem resolved, as for speeds the old system did not allow me to watch any internet TV it was simply impossible. With Starlink I have been able to watch Hulu and other services. Starlink has a way to go to completion(a works in progress) but for me the best satellite service so far.

 

[ldjessee]

I was just watching two videos, one of them a teardown of the external device. The person makes several mistakes I caught, like calling StarLink satellites as cubesats, which is completely wrong.

It is the first teardown I saw of the device... I would like those who are radio people and have experience take a look at this (or another) teardown and give their feedback/comments.

 

[ajdelange]

I'd love to be able to say something intelligent about that thing but I'm pretty much limited to "Wow!". An amazing piece of engineering for sure. I just don't know enough about what's currently available in the microwave industry to have the foggiest notion what those chips actually do. Clearly their clocks must by synced and controlled to the picosecond in order to be able to steer at Ku and Ka frequencies and distributing clock that well in a consumer product is no mean feat.

It's celar those smaller chips have to handle the rf interface to the antenna elements which means they must serve as low noise amplifiers during receive and and "high power" amplifiers during transmit. But what are they fed with? From the a system engineer's POV it would be great if they could be fed with digital complex baseband and a phase command in which case they would do the phase shifting, conversion to analoge, and upconversion to RF (and the reverse in receive). Perhaps that's all done in the sub-master and the smaller chips are just the RF stuff. Scribbling on the back of a napkin here. No idea really but I'd love to know.

About the only sensible comment I can offer is that as elevation is handled by the motors the array becomes a set of vertical strips with each strip at the same phase and the phases staggered as one progresses across (horizontally) the array. This makes the design simpler than it would be if it had to track electronically in elevation.

I think we can forgive his referral to the SVs as cubesats. Clearly they basic concept is that of the cubesats or, as the program office I worked for way back when used to call them "paper plates".