Internet via Satellite in Thurston County (appointed, house, buying)

[Peloton]

We are consider buying a vacant lot in western Thurston near the Capital Forest to build a home, however, the lot is outside the service area for Comcast and Century Link. What has been the experience of anyone who gets internet via satellite? Most the the reviews I've read have been all over the place. Seems like the average in mediocre. Thanks!

[Diana Holbrook]

We had Hughesnet when we first moved here and we hated it, but it is the best of the traditional satellite services, at least in terms of their billing structure. If you’re curious about these differences, I can explain more tomorrow :-)

Eventually, we could get DSL through CenturyLink so that’s what we’re currently doing.

You can now get on the waiting list for Starlink - might take a few months but all reports I’ve heard of it are great. We are on the list now.

[MechAndy]

I really like our Starlink.
It took nearly 1 year on the waiting list.
Ours in in a dense tree area and runs well enough to have a person working zoom meek and another streaming stuff.

[Diana Holbrook]

Yeah Starlink is the way to go for the long term! We can't wait.


The issue I was too tired to explain last night with the other satellite services is not their speed, they seemed to work well enough for most of what we did, it's just the total allowance was limited, and once you go over it, they start ratcheting down your speed, or charging overages, or both.

We had HughesNet, who had 24-hour limits. The other Dish services set monthly limits. That sounds good, but if you go over a monthly limit with 2 weeks left, you're suffering slow speeds that get slower and slower the more you use, for two weeks, til the cycle resets. At least with a 24 hour clock, you're only over data limit til the next day.

We had the highest plan at the time, and only used it for traditional internet browsing, not streaming. And we went over. When they ratcheted us down to a crawl and we had contracts to do and send.... It was not pretty here, many bad words were uttered!

[Diana Holbrook]

Get back to us, Peloton, interested in talking more about the lot.... it's an area I know very well!

[StealthRabbit]

Originally Posted by Diana Holbrook

Yeah Starlink is the way to go for the long term! We can't wait.
...

Careful what you wish for, especially being certain about a LT solution as vulnerable as low orbit satellites
You can bet China and Russia are feverishly creating a solution to disrupt Starlink.

I have over 10 friends on Starlink, who... After years of waiting, then being disappointed in reliability and the certainly the cost increases... are wondering if it really is "better-than-nothing". Unfortunately, in rural USA...it is all we may ever have (that's a very sad state). WA users have been much better served by Starlink than lower latitudes. Various reasons, but population density including LA, PHX, Dallas, may be stretching the bandwidth for Starlink, as rural friends at those latitudes have miserable speeds and coverage. Friends and neighbors from 44-50 deg N have gotten used to the bleeps. I only get speeds 10. - 30mbps when I use a neighbor's Starlink, with very predictable drops. (It's about 5x worse than original speeds, when few users). They were very early beta testers. Works ok, where nothing worked before (canyon property in dense forest). Buried fiber would much better. Fiber came past our driveway 9 yrs ago, but we can't access.... Only available to public schools and libraries). Homeschools do not count. $25k on annual property taxes doesn't matter.


Some countries, and regions of the USA are doing similar to REA of the 1930s, and forming fiber or land based broadband ISP
(Co-ops of each exist in WA). Lots of funding available now, if you want to form an ISP co-op.

[PS90]

We've had Starlink for about 15 months now. If I gave it a review, I would give it 3 or 3.5 stars out of 5.

We have 0 obstructions (trees are potentially a big problem), so ours is a good representation of our region, I think. When it's off-peak time, it works excellent - often over 200mbps. Easily enough to handle our family of 4, all streaming stuff at once.

However, peak time speeds vary a LOT. I think it has a lot to do with the number of people on it at the time, and also with the number of satellites in use in the area. I've had peak speeds as low as 2 mbps from about 7pm-10pm. This will last for about 2 months, then they speed up - I think it has to do with SpaceX launching more satellites, resulting in more bandwidth. Then, as they add more subscribers, it slowly slows down until they launch more satellites again. Right now, our peak time speeds are around 30 mbps.

The other big issue is deterioration of the service. In barely over a year, they have since implemented a 1TB data cap, and have raised the price from $100 to $110 per month - and the price is going up again this May to $120/month.

Compared to Hughesnet or some kind of cellular hotspot (which is what we were doing before Starlink), it's 100X better than both. But if something better comes along that is feasible and affordable, like the new 5G mobile internet, or maybe a good line-of-sight internet tower, then we will likely dump Starlink.

[Peloton]

Originally Posted by Diana Holbrook

Get back to us, Peloton, interested in talking more about the lot.... it's an area I know very well!

I’m also concerned about the gun fire noise from Triangle Pit.

[Diana Holbrook]

Originally Posted by Peloton

I’m also concerned about the gun fire noise from Triangle Pit.

Some gunfire is going to be a real thing if you are near there, particularly on weekends when the weather is nice. There are a few gravel pits around where people shoot. That one is the easiest to get to, therefore popular.

There's also a big Gun Club out there off Bordeaux Road that you'll hear from anywhere within several miles.

It is sporadic. Wait for a nice sunny Saturday morning and go out there and listen... Or find out when there will be a shoot at the Evergreen Gun Club... and see how loud it is and whether you would like it. Most people get used to it, especially those who like to occasionally take part in the activity, which lots of people do. If you will always hate it, it may never get better.

[MechAndy]

My daughter lives about a half mile from a skeet/trap range club.
This place only has shotguns which is I can hear at her house on the weekends and is not a bit deal noise wise.

If it was a pistol or a rifle pit that constantly had hi-powered rounds going off it would be a deal breaker for me, especially if I lived down the megaphone alley of a 3 sided pit.

Another thing that would concern me would be the lead in the water table and the soil.
We drink and eat from our water so having a green/organic policy here works best for us.