Starlink's new rectangular dish is smaller, lighter and comes with an IP54-rated WiFi...

[jsilva]

In brief: Satellite Internet service Starlink has revealed a new rectangular user terminal kit for users. The kit comes with a smaller and lighter dish that is compatible with new mounting accessories and an IP54-rated WiFi router without a built-in Ethernet port. For now, the new user terminal is limited to United States customers.

During the whole "Better Than Nothing Beta" test that started over a year ago, Starlink users were limited to a 23-inch-wide, 16-pound circular dish that came with a WiFi router and all the necessary cables. That's now changing, as Starlink is getting ready to launch a new dish that changes in shape, size and specifications.

The new rectangular dish is 12 inches wide and 19 inches long and weighs about 9.2 pounds, making it not only much smaller but also lighter, which might come in handy for those trying to mount it in certain areas. This new dish also offers new mounting options that allow users to install it on a side wall, a roof, or even on a pipe or a ground pole.

Besides the dish, the new Starlink hardware kit also comes with a 3x3, MU-MIMO WiFi router with IP54 rating (water resistant), but Starlink claims it's configured for "indoor use." Unlike the older router, the power supply of the new router is integrated within and doesn't have a built-in Ethernet port, but the latter can be solved by acquiring an Ethernet adapter through Starlink's shop.

Like the original user terminal kit, the new one should also be priced at $499, so there's a good chance that Starlink is still selling them at a loss. Starlink president Gwynne Shotwell said the new kits cost less than $1,500, adding that SpaceX "just rolled out a new version that saved about $200 off the cost."

The new user terminal kit is available for "all new orders fulfilled in the United States," but seeing how wait times are being pushed due to increasing demand, it might take some time before customers get their hands on the new dish.

We should also consider that Elon Musk stated Starlink would officially launch in October, marking the end of the "Better Than Nothing Beta" program. The thing is, we're already midway through November and haven't yet seen an announcement of the satellite Internet service.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/92204-starlink-new-rectangular-dish-smaller-lighter-comes-ip54.html

 

[Uncle Al]

Interesting .... I was under the impression their focus was improving the speed of the service ....

 

[theruck]

No internet in heavy rain and snow

 

[BadThad]

No internet in heavy rain and snow

And high latency and low upload speeds.

 

[passwordistaco]

Launch those satellites and take my money!!!

"the median download speed can range from 64.51 Mbps (Madison County, Indiana) to 168.30 Mbps (Morgan County, Alabama).

According to Ookla, when compared to cable or fiber internet, Starlink does lag in the ping department. Starlink latency in the U.S. and Canada sees pings between 31ms to 88ms."
https://www.tomsguide.com/news/starlink-internet-coverage-speed-cost-satellites-ipo-and-latest-news

Not worried about weather.
https://wccftech.com/starlink-dish-covered-by-ice-performs-smoothly-after-300mbps-speed-test/

About every 3 months Comcast cuts out for days at a time, then returns with no changes on my end. The only thing you can do on the phone, website, chat, or app is schedule a tech visit. I know my stuff works. Fix your damned lines!

 

[TheBigT42]

And high latency and low upload speeds.

These do not suffer from the High Latency and Low Speeds like traditional Sat Internet.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/i9w09n

https://www.speedtest.net/insights/blog/starlink-hughesnet-viasat-performance-q2-2021/

I would not call these numbers High Latency or Low Speeds

 

[wiyosaya]

Given Musky's track record, less than $1,500 probably means $1,499.99

I'm glad I don't have to rely on this.

 

[Lionvibez]

Interesting .... I was under the impression their focus was improving the speed of the service ....

That is still a primary goal but there are others equally important. Reducing cost of the terminals, improving them for outside weather etc

These do not suffer from the High Latency and Low Speeds like traditional Sat Internet.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/i9w09n

https://www.speedtest.net/insights/blog/starlink-hughesnet-viasat-performance-q2-2021/

I would not call these numbers High Latency or Low Speeds

Yup huge difference between LEO and GEO for Stats.

The speed and latency are great for SAT. But average compared to wired land connections.

 

[seeprime]

There are several farmers in my area that have zero access to any broadband options. Hughes speeds suck, and is overly expensive. One of them may have received his disk by now. He signed up about six months ago when I showed him Starlink's webpage when working on his PC in our shop. Other farmers have WISP, slow and pricey, DSL horrible with download speeds at some locations at under 1mbps. Cellular cost as much as $250 per month when used as needed. So, Starlink is a bargain for rural farmers, even if the latency is double what Musk wants it to be. Starlink will help the farmers track pricing in closer-to-real time.

 

[Raytrace3D]

And high latency and low upload speeds.

I currently get 25mbs down and no more than 5mbs up on a good day. I get 65ms ping and pay well over $100 a month and have frequent multi-day outages, so an inconvenient storm that causes brief outage is the least of my worries. Starlink may not be for everyone (as I'm sure you have cable or some other high-speed terrestrial service), but for those of us who have no other options, Starlink stands out as the best option by far.

 

[wiyosaya]

I currently get 25mbs down and no more than 5mbs up on a good day. I get 65ms ping and pay well over $100 a month and have frequent multi-day outages, so an inconvenient storm that causes brief outage is the least of my worries. Starlink may not be for everyone (as I'm sure you have cable or some other high-speed terrestrial service), but for those of us who have no other options, Starlink stands out as the best option by far.

Perhaps this might be an option? https://www.t-mobile.com/isp?cmpid=...p.ds&msclkid=f4f74afbbc5a1775480e2b75608e0a36
T-mobile is not the only mobile provider offering internet only.

 

[corrosive23]

Perhaps this might be an option? https://www.t-mobile.com/isp?cmpid=...p.ds&msclkid=f4f74afbbc5a1775480e2b75608e0a36
T-mobile is not the only mobile provider offering internet only.

Home Internet is not available at your address just yet—but our network is growing fast!

5th largest city in the country. I mean I knew before I even check as their cell coverage is **** here too.

 

[Raytrace3D]

Perhaps this might be an option? https://www.t-mobile.com/isp?cmpid=...p.ds&msclkid=f4f74afbbc5a1775480e2b75608e0a36
T-mobile is not the only mobile provider offering internet only.

Unfortunately, I tried T-Mobile, ATT and Verizon hotspot options in my area but because of various reasons, the tech's that came out to my home were not able to get a good enough signal to guarantee service so they refused to install. I'm fortunate to have DSL at least, some on my street have no internet options. They can't even get ATT to install DSL at their homes.

 

[Rdmetz]

No internet in heavy rain and snow

Again it's called "better than nothing" for a reason, it's for those that literally would have nothing rain or shine if they didn't have this.

 

[Rdmetz]

These do not suffer from the High Latency and Low Speeds like traditional Sat Internet.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/i9w09n

https://www.speedtest.net/insights/blog/starlink-hughesnet-viasat-performance-q2-2021/

I would not call these numbers High Latency or Low Speeds

It's almost like people speak on things they've done almost zero research into online sometimes...lol

 

[ruairi]

No internet in heavy rain and snow

Heavy snow? Sure, but that also affects fixed wireless and in bad cases even microwave links. Heavy rain? Not in my experience and I live in rural Ireland where it sometimes rains hard enough to cause light damage to property.

And high latency and low upload speeds.

180-220 Mb/s down and 28-33 Mb/s up in my experience. Average latency where I am is down to ~28ms, which is better than cable.

So yeah, YMMV, but this is a far better service than many cable users get.

 

[Reehahs]

Why would you design a router without an integrated ethernet port?

 

[BVB2000]

Interesting .... I was under the impression their focus was improving the speed of the service ....

Speed will increase the bigger the constellation grows. Also, they are now launching Starlink Block 1.5 satellites which have laser links and higher bandwidth. Block 2.0 should also be ready soon.

 

[wiyosaya]

Unfortunately, I tried T-Mobile, ATT and Verizon hotspot options in my area but because of various reasons, the tech's that came out to my home were not able to get a good enough signal to guarantee service so they refused to install. I'm fortunate to have DSL at least, some on my street have no internet options. They can't even get ATT to install DSL at their homes.

Certainly, with anything involving terrestrial radio spectrum signals, reception can be spotty, and 5G won't be any better. I tried DSL in my area something like 10+ years ago. A tech that came out to investigate our problem told us that the problem was the telephone company's switch that we are on was 30,000 feet away. The result was 500kbps download speeds. DSL is only good to 20,000 feet at most. I did an MVNO for a while that was over t-mobile, but we have a t-mobile tower less than a mile from our home. If you are that fortunate, then 30Mbps down is reasonable.

Most of that effort was to get away from Spectrum (AKA Time Warner) and their abusive practices. I'm sure people will be jealous, but now, a small local company is providing FTTH with symmetric 500mbps at $50/mo. Within a month of it being available to my home, I subscribed and gave Spectrum the finger forever.

For the US supposedly being so advanced in tech, the manipulation and infighting in the ISP market within the US proper, has turned most areas in the US into turd-world internet.

Maybe when the ATSC 3.0 OTA TV standard is more widely deployed, things will improve since it is capable of providing IP OTA, and it would not surprise me if companies started delivering ISP service utilizing TV channels. IMO, there needs to be more acceptance of Municipal ISP service, but that varies from state to state because of political reasons.

 

[Raytrace3D]

IMO, there needs to be more acceptance of Municipal ISP service, but that varies from state to state because of political reasons.

Absolutely... I have 8 lines of dark fiber running on poles overhead across my front yard, but the company who owns them can not lease the lines to anyone outside of a non-profit as they are part of the school district (there is a school about a half mile down my road). They told me they are trying to form a separate company that would legally allow them to offer to residential customers, but since the network is payed for by tax payers, they can not. lol

About 1100 feet away from my home, separated by cow pastures everyone on that side of the street has cable and fiber, but the rest of us literally have nothing. Comcast has given me a few quotes over the years ranging from 13k to 10k to do the install with a 3-5 year contract at $500 a month (business class, they wont even consider residential).

ATT installed DSL at my house when I moved in 8 years ago because of a mistake they made on their website. My neighbor's house is just 50 feet away and ATT refused to install for them because they no longer wish to sell or maintain DSL lines in my area. I am the only one on my side of the road who has any kind of internet. What I would give to have access to the fiber in front of my house though as it's 10G each.

 

[wiyosaya]

Absolutely... I have 8 lines of dark fiber running on poles overhead across my front yard, but the company who owns them can not lease the lines to anyone outside of a non-profit as they are part of the school district (there is a school about a half mile down my road). They told me they are trying to form a separate company that would legally allow them to offer to residential customers, but since the network is payed for by tax payers, they can not. lol

That seems definitely like politics in action. I just don't get why a certain party is against things like this. IMO, it is totally inane - and supposedly for the sake of a "free market". Nothing but pure BS, IMO, especially since Taxpayers paid for the lines.

There's a county, tax-payer paid for, fiber line running down the road about 1/4 mile from my home, and the last I knew, the county was investigating how it might be made accessible to the public since it is something like 80% dark. As I understand it, it is used mainly for police and fire departments in the county. I don't think my fiber provider is leasing any space on it, but it seems like it would have made much more sense to allow the fiber provider to lease space on it. I'm in Blue state - so I think it will be interesting to see where things go with the county's fiber line.

 

[Danny101]

No internet in heavy rain and snow

Rain-X helps! Or even wax. It won't interfere with the signal either. I got so irritated one time and just tried it. Voila!.

 

[theruck]

Rain-X helps! Or even wax. It won't interfere with the signal either. I got so irritated one time and just tried it. Voila!.

does not help in sunny area. it gets melted instantly at the sun

 

[Danny101]

does not help in sunny area. it gets melted instantly at the sun

Well, in my case it was about stormy weather. May need to reapply when one is coming.

 

[jengelha]

Perhaps this might be an option? https://www.t-mobile.com/isp?cmpid=...p.ds&msclkid=f4f74afbbc5a1775480e2b75608e0a36
T-mobile is not the only mobile provider offering internet only.

We have been using T-mobile's home internet service for months now and while it is definitely better than the DSL we previously had, it is not that great. We get up to 60Mbps at around 3AM, but as low as 5bps (yes only 5 bits per second) during the day. I have a cron job that regularly checks and this performance data is from sampling over the last month or so. I believe the problem is priority rated and since we are a home data client, we have the lowest priority. Our T-Mobile phones can get faster data at the exact same time in the exact same location. During prime time with multiple users, there are times it is not practical to use.