Its about time that Telstra catches up with remote connectivity.
Starlink is brillant.
Telstra has decided to hang onto Elon Musk's Starlink, although I'll bet it will be a rip-off price.
Telstra plans to help with installation of the Disky (Elon's term for the Starlink dish)
Currently as a regional buyer its priced at A$199 for the full unit including router.
Its great for boats and motorhomes except that its currently powered by 240V AC, many boaters and RVers cut down the back of the Dishy and install a POE and power the unit from a DC conversion.
To assemble the standard unit only takes a few minutes, so I'm not sure what assistance Telstra technicians will be for the installation.
Telstra would be smarter to develop and sell a 12v DC version, as boats, RV's and any off the grid requirements use solar power for charging lithium of AGM batteries. Using an inverter is a waste of energy since the Dishy and Router operate on 48V DC.
Telstra’s Starlink deal could signal a new era of connectivity in hard-to-reach places
By
Tim Biggs
JULY 7, 2023
Telstra will differentiate itself from Starlink not only by having technicians install the dishes for customers, but also by having local technical support.
Low earth orbit (LEO) satellites are nothing new, having been launched into rotation around the planet since the 1950s. Communication relays, spy satellites, earth imaging systems and space microscopes are all zipping around up there all the time. But with Telstra’s
announcement this week that it would use Starlink – operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX – to provide phone and internet services, the practicality of tapping a worldwide constellation of LEO satellites for mainstream, accessible communication has come to the fore.
Starlink satellites orbit in the middle of the earth’s thermosphere and circle the globe in about an hour and a half, passing 550 kilometres above your head. To imagine that distance horizontally, it’s about as far as Sydney is from the Victorian border town of Cobram. It’s higher than the International Space Station, but much lower than geostationary satellites that need to stay above a fixed spot on the earth, which are about 36,000 kilometres up.
Australians have been able to access the internet via Starlink since 2021, and it has more than 120,000 subscribers here. For consumers, the company offers one plan with unlimited data, and the requirement that users install the dish themselves. The cost and speed means Starlink isn’t competitive with most wired internet connection types, but has proved popular in regional areas.
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