Earlier this week Alexandria added four to its population. A couple and their two kids will be living and working remotely from the home I helped them purchase on the east side of Lake Carlos. Both of the parents will be working remotely and a strong internet connection was a must-have. Previously I have written about internet options for locations without a fibreoptic or cable connection. There is another option to add to the list. Elon Musk’s Starlink.
Initially, the couple didn’t think it was an option as the Starlink site produced a message telling them it wasn’t available yet. But, it turns out it is available. It is a little more expensive than local fiber and cable options ($110/month and an upfront cost of $599 for hardware) but offers high-speed (download speeds between 100 Mb/s and 200 Mb/s and latency as low as 20ms in most locations), low-latency broadband internet across the globe. There isn’t a cap on usage either so you don’t need to have concerns about speeds being throttled.
From the Starlink site….”Starlink internet works by sending information through the vacuum of space, where it travels much faster than in fiber-optic cable and can reach far more people and places.
While most satellite internet services today come from single geostationary satellites that orbit the planet at about 35,000km, Starlink is a constellation of multiple satellites that orbit the planet much closer to Earth, at about 550km, and cover the entire globe.
Because Starlink satellites are in a low orbit, the round-trip data time between the user and the satellite – also known as latency – is much lower than with satellites in geostationary orbit. This enables Starlink to deliver services like online gaming that are usually not possible on other satellite broadband systems.”
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