Yesterday I spent $99 for the privilege of waiting in line for a possible Starlink slot here in Orlando, Florida. There’s no guarantee I’ll get one, and if I do, it won’t happen until “beginning mid to late 2021,” if it happens at all.
I’m doing this because I’m tired of my terrestrial service provider, Spectrum. They bought out Brighthouse Networks, which was a spinout of Time Warner Cable. So you can see I’ve been doing business with that entire group for some number of years. Spectrum keeps slowly raising my monthly rates so that I’m now back up to $124/month. Yes, this month they doubled my download rate to about 200MBS “at no extra charge!”.
I think that Spectrum’s speed boost is more than just a coincidence with Starlink offering service in my area. And if I stay with Starlink, I’ll have to pay an additional $400 to purchase the antenna and associated equipment. But after that, my monthly fee is a flat $99/month, with speeds starting at $100MBS, which was where I was at before Spectrum boosted mine.
My only problem I need to solve is what to do with my house phone. That’s part of my cable package. I’ve already looked into using an AT&T device to in essence add my home phone to my wireless plan, for an additional $15/month. With my home line split out of my cable package, I have the freedom to pick whomever I want for data, and right now, that selection is Starlink.
I also want to make my home a bit more robust. Earlier this year I installed a UPS and put all my comm gear and one of my computers on it. Sure enough, Florida Flash and Flicker lost power on a clear and sunny day. Everything stayed up on the UPS for the two hours we were without power. Unfortunately Spectrum lost power as well (the loss hit over 1,000 customers). When my home power came back I was still out of Internet connectivity for another three hours as Spectrum fixed their equipment issues. So much for power backup; I still had to power cycle my cellular modem/access point to get everything sorted out.
So here’s to the future. Terrestrial service providers are going to get some real competition in the very near future. And I believe that many of us are going to move to Starlink, or something very similar.
Radarwitch
My Dad had Spectrum in NY. It was terrible. For one thing, it included phone and that phone hardly ever worked right. Repeated service calls would not resolve the issue. When I got there after his death I found they had “back wired” their phone into the house’s existing wiring, leaving it connected to the previous landline service. It took me minutes to find that and seconds to correct it. Too late, of course.
The other thing was that the TV service was no good. It needed to be reset practically every time you wanted to watch anything. Dad gave up trying. My sister is convinced his hassles with those idiots hastened his demise. I could see her point after jousting with them for just a few weeks.
We have Xplornet Internet here via satellite, and for the most part it works. The worst difficulty is snow getting on the dish and interfering with the signal, but I don’t expect that would be a problem for you.
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That’s bizarre about the phone. Out phone plugs directly into the back of the cable modem (there are actually two ports for phones, interestingly). I’m sorry your father went through that crap.
I originally signed up for a plan that included local TV, even though I don’t watch any of it. That was orginally $90/month for TV, Internet, and land line phone. Before that I had Internet and phone, and was paying about what I’m paying now. I called to complain and they had the gall to tell me I had been grandfathered in and I was paying more because I didn’t have a TV package. Now I have the TV package and I’m paying extra for TV ‘service fees.’ Like I said I want off the Spectrum con game ASAP, and I will pay extra to build out the gear I need to accomplish this.
And you’re right about the snow. But we have to contend with hurricanes that can just as easily blow the dish off the roof, even if “properly” secured. A CAT5 storm means all bets are off.
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