Tag: starlink

Starlink to Start Throttling Users

Via Michael Baylor on Twitter, it looks like Starlink is going to begin throttling users who consume more than 1TB of data transfers in a month.

Those who go beyond the allocation will be “depriortized” for the remainder of the month and will likely experience degraded connection speeds.

Here’s the notice Baylor received today:

Starlink will not run the bandwidth meter between 11pm and 7 am at the moment, so night owls should be ok for now.

It’ll be interesting to see how they’ll manage the continued growth of the service. I have a feeling this is just the beginning.

See my Starlink videos here!

Starlink Goes Mobile for RV Owners

Starlink is now available for RV owners and others who find themselves always on the road in need of good connectivity. The new RV service plan will allow for users to start and stop service as needed and will cost $135 monthly. This is compared to the $99 service offering that’s locked to a fixed address.

Starlink’s Service Availability as of May 24, 2022

While the service is available throughout many parts of the world there are pockets without connectivity. In the map above a good portion of the central United States is currently not available for service. So it’s possible RV owners will still find pockets where they can’t get connectivity. The service map can be found here.

Service availability will improve over time as SpaceX continues to launch large batches of satellites each month.

SpaceX is also working on getting Starlink installed on aircraft which should be a significant upgrade over current satellite and ground based systems on commercial airliners. But SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted that service for vehicles in motion is not yet reliable enough to roll it out to a larger customer base.

Starlink Holding Up Against Russian Cyberattacks

Starlink has become a key communication tool for the Ukrainian military and the Russians are having a hard time detecting and jamming it. As we’ve found in our Starlink coverage the service is remarkably easy to connect to and offers bandwidth on par with low to mid range cable Internet services.

Elon Musk in a tweet today says that the satellite network has so far resisted Russian jamming and hacking attempts. Starlink’s network engineers are up against a tough adversary with state level resources so they no doubt will have to remain on their toes.

The service doesn’t work as well in the eastern part of the country as the satellite network still relies on ground stations to connect users to the Internet. But SpaceX is working on a laser based orbital relay that would bypass many ground stations to route traffic. At some point we might see SpaceX launch servers into positions to act as CDNs for streaming services, etc.