[Starlink] Re: Starlink Standby Mode

[Starlink] Re: Starlink Standby Mode

[Colin_Higbie]

I find the Standby mode to be a great backup option. $5/mo for unlimited low-bandwidth usage. This is something I've been urging them to offer for about a year now.

About 18 months after I originally purchased and subscribed to Starlink, our power company (not phone company as you'd expect, really our electric power company) rolled out fiber to rural communities in northern NH. As great as Starlink was compared to what we had before, fiber is even better now that it's available (1Gbps for $79/mo, consistently tests as A on Bufferbloat). But it's not 100% reliable. For example, when there are widespread power outages, it goes down. The Starlink standby option is perfect for those situations.

Latency remains decent, just limited bandwidth. And if the fiber outage remains in effect for too long, we could always activate Starlink at full bandwidth for that month, where it appears they're taking that option away from people with inactive accounts not already on Standby mode (they may be bluffing on that – you'd think they would want to make it easy for anyone to give them money and resubscribe, standby customer or not). 

Cheers,
Colin

[Starlink] Re: Starlink Standby Mode

[Luis A. Cornejo]

There is another electric cooperative in my county that did just that.
Strung fiber along the posts, I was not lucky enough to be part of their
territory. But from people that I know it’s similar that’s it’s fast but
not always reliable, so storms can take some down, often around here it’s
also a backhoe, and when it does down, it’s down for a while.

But I agree, it’s a great backup. Although it probably costs almost as much
to run in electricity as the service itself! =o)

-Luis

On Tue, Sep 9, 2025 at 1:41 PM Colin_Higbie via Starlink <
starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:

> I find the Standby mode to be a great backup option. $5/mo for unlimited
> low-bandwidth usage. This is something I've been urging them to offer for
> about a year now.
>
> About 18 months after I originally purchased and subscribed to Starlink,
> our power company (not phone company as you'd expect, really our electric
> power company) rolled out fiber to rural communities in northern NH. As
> great as Starlink was compared to what we had before, fiber is even better
> now that it's available (1Gbps for $79/mo, consistently tests as A on
> Bufferbloat). But it's not 100% reliable. For example, when there are
> widespread power outages, it goes down. The Starlink standby option is
> perfect for those situations.
>
> Latency remains decent, just limited bandwidth. And if the fiber outage
> remains in effect for too long, we could always activate Starlink at full
> bandwidth for that month, where it appears they're taking that option away
> from people with inactive accounts not already on Standby mode (they may be
> bluffing on that – you'd think they would want to make it easy for anyone
> to give them money and resubscribe, standby customer or not).
>
> Cheers,
> Colin
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list -- starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> To unsubscribe send an email to starlink-leave@lists.bufferbloat.net
>

[Starlink] Re: Starlink Standby Mode

[Oleg Kutkov]

Well. I prefer a good old free pause.
I have seven Starlink terminals on my account, and I mostly don't use 
them, except for some experiments, occasional tests, firmware dumps, and 
similar purposes.
Now they will charge me $35 each month for basically nothing.

On 9/9/25 23:14, Luis A. Cornejo via Starlink wrote:
> There is another electric cooperative in my county that did just that.
> Strung fiber along the posts, I was not lucky enough to be part of their
> territory. But from people that I know it’s similar that’s it’s fast but
> not always reliable, so storms can take some down, often around here it’s
> also a backhoe, and when it does down, it’s down for a while.
>
> But I agree, it’s a great backup. Although it probably costs almost as much
> to run in electricity as the service itself! =o)
>
> -Luis
>
> On Tue, Sep 9, 2025 at 1:41 PM Colin_Higbie via Starlink <
> starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>
>> I find the Standby mode to be a great backup option. $5/mo for unlimited
>> low-bandwidth usage. This is something I've been urging them to offer for
>> about a year now.
>>
>> About 18 months after I originally purchased and subscribed to Starlink,
>> our power company (not phone company as you'd expect, really our electric
>> power company) rolled out fiber to rural communities in northern NH. As
>> great as Starlink was compared to what we had before, fiber is even better
>> now that it's available (1Gbps for $79/mo, consistently tests as A on
>> Bufferbloat). But it's not 100% reliable. For example, when there are
>> widespread power outages, it goes down. The Starlink standby option is
>> perfect for those situations.
>>
>> Latency remains decent, just limited bandwidth. And if the fiber outage
>> remains in effect for too long, we could always activate Starlink at full
>> bandwidth for that month, where it appears they're taking that option away
>> from people with inactive accounts not already on Standby mode (they may be
>> bluffing on that – you'd think they would want to make it easy for anyone
>> to give them money and resubscribe, standby customer or not).
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Colin
>> _______________________________________________
>> Starlink mailing list -- starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> To unsubscribe send an email to starlink-leave@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list -- starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> To unsubscribe send an email to starlink-leave@lists.bufferbloat.net

-- 
Best regards,
Oleg Kutkov

[Starlink] Re: Starlink Standby Mode

[J Pan]

nothing better than free ;-) but it may cost them more than $5/mo to
maintain an active dish. don't they just want to keep as many
revenue-generating customers for an upcoming ipo?
--
J Pan, UVic CSc, ECS566, 250-472-5796 (NO VM), Pan@UVic.CA, Web.UVic.CA/~pan

On Tue, Sep 9, 2025 at 2:01 PM Oleg Kutkov via Starlink
<starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>
> Well. I prefer a good old free pause.
> I have seven Starlink terminals on my account, and I mostly don't use
> them, except for some experiments, occasional tests, firmware dumps, and
> similar purposes.
> Now they will charge me $35 each month for basically nothing.
>
> On 9/9/25 23:14, Luis A. Cornejo via Starlink wrote:
> > There is another electric cooperative in my county that did just that.
> > Strung fiber along the posts, I was not lucky enough to be part of their
> > territory. But from people that I know it’s similar that’s it’s fast but
> > not always reliable, so storms can take some down, often around here it’s
> > also a backhoe, and when it does down, it’s down for a while.
> >
> > But I agree, it’s a great backup. Although it probably costs almost as much
> > to run in electricity as the service itself! =o)
> >
> > -Luis
> >
> > On Tue, Sep 9, 2025 at 1:41 PM Colin_Higbie via Starlink <
> > starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
> >
> >> I find the Standby mode to be a great backup option. $5/mo for unlimited
> >> low-bandwidth usage. This is something I've been urging them to offer for
> >> about a year now.
> >>
> >> About 18 months after I originally purchased and subscribed to Starlink,
> >> our power company (not phone company as you'd expect, really our electric
> >> power company) rolled out fiber to rural communities in northern NH. As
> >> great as Starlink was compared to what we had before, fiber is even better
> >> now that it's available (1Gbps for $79/mo, consistently tests as A on
> >> Bufferbloat). But it's not 100% reliable. For example, when there are
> >> widespread power outages, it goes down. The Starlink standby option is
> >> perfect for those situations.
> >>
> >> Latency remains decent, just limited bandwidth. And if the fiber outage
> >> remains in effect for too long, we could always activate Starlink at full
> >> bandwidth for that month, where it appears they're taking that option away
> >> from people with inactive accounts not already on Standby mode (they may be
> >> bluffing on that – you'd think they would want to make it easy for anyone
> >> to give them money and resubscribe, standby customer or not).
> >>
> >> Cheers,
> >> Colin
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Starlink mailing list -- starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> >> To unsubscribe send an email to starlink-leave@lists.bufferbloat.net
> >>
> > _______________________________________________
> > Starlink mailing list -- starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> > To unsubscribe send an email to starlink-leave@lists.bufferbloat.net
>
> --
> Best regards,
> Oleg Kutkov
>
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list -- starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> To unsubscribe send an email to starlink-leave@lists.bufferbloat.net

[Starlink] Re: Starlink Standby Mode

[Ulrich Speidel]

What gets me here is that this is yet more evidence of SpaceX trying to 
do user density and capacity management.

Recap: Spectral capacity per cell is limited - to quite how much depends 
a good bit on how much service neighbouring cells need. They can divide 
that capacity between users via channel division schemes such as time 
division, frequency division or code division, but the bottom line is 
that if you divide capacity, you end up with slices that you can assign 
to users much like slices from a pie (or pizza). The more users in a 
cell, the more competition for the slices.

Note also that there are two ways for Starlink to run out of capacity in 
a cell:

 1. They can run out of frequencies to use. This is impossible to fix
    without someone having to compromise on their slice.
 2. They can run out of beams - meaning there would be a frequency to
    communicate on but there's just no satellite in view that has a beam
    that it can currently point at the cell. This is possible to fix
    with more satellites / beams per satellite.

Now when you are starting to run out of capacity, you have a bunch of 
options at your disposal:

  * You can launch more satellites with more beams to reduce beam
    capacity bottlenecks. SpaceX clearly do this as their constellation
    is growing in sat numbers and beams per sat.
  * You can try and deter new users from signing up by charging a higher
    price in the area you're running out of capacity in, or by charging
    a congestion fee. We've seen SpaceX do this when they ostensibly ran
    out of beams a couple of years ago in some areas & didn't extend
    discount schemes to cells with high user densities. We're seeing
    them do it now in many areas where new subscribers are tapped for
    congestion fees.
  * You can growl at existing users to try and make them go away. We've
    seen SpaceX do this in an island location where local users whose
    dishys were on a roaming plan but had taken up permanent residence
    there were told to pack them up and continue operation elsewhere.
  * You can shrink the size of the slices for existing users. If you
    look at the Starlink speeds map, that's what seems to have happened
    in a few of the places where they were "sold out" for a while and
    are now available again. You'll be looking for the minimum download
    speeds here and want to compare those with places where Starlink
    user density is low. Of course, this slice shrinking isn't ideal
    because folk love their bandwidth and all it takes is a cranky
    influencer who isn't happy with what they see. So it's best avoided
    if you can.

Last but not least, you can try and put the squeeze on the amount of 
spare capacity you need to retain in case not-so-active users become 
active. That's you guys with the "I have my Starlink only for backup in 
case my fibre gets cut" or those of you with the "I only use my Starlink 
at my summer house during the holidays". While you're not using your 
Starlink, you don't need any slices, so SpaceX can sell that capacity in 
the area to new users. But woe betide them should all those inactive 
users suddenly activate - be it because the holidays have started, or 
because that backhoe or natural disaster has hit.

So what you can do is sell smaller slices of the capacity pie and at a 
cheaper price, but make that "official" so nobody complains. Similarly, 
you can try and ease those out that put their plans on hold for extended 
periods of time - you want to make it unattractive for them to hold on 
to their entitlement to a big slice at the drop of a hat.

TLDR: I'd be a little skeptical that you'll be able to switch from a 
backup plan or pause to a full one as easily as you might think.

On 10/09/2025 9:20 am, J Pan via Starlink wrote:
> nothing better than free ;-) but it may cost them more than $5/mo to
> maintain an active dish. don't they just want to keep as many
> revenue-generating customers for an upcoming ipo?
> --
> J Pan, UVic CSc, ECS566, 250-472-5796 (NO VM),Pan@UVic.CA, Web.UVic.CA/~pan
>
> On Tue, Sep 9, 2025 at 2:01 PM Oleg Kutkov via Starlink
> <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>> Well. I prefer a good old free pause.
>> I have seven Starlink terminals on my account, and I mostly don't use
>> them, except for some experiments, occasional tests, firmware dumps, and
>> similar purposes.
>> Now they will charge me $35 each month for basically nothing.
>>
>> On 9/9/25 23:14, Luis A. Cornejo via Starlink wrote:
>>> There is another electric cooperative in my county that did just that.
>>> Strung fiber along the posts, I was not lucky enough to be part of their
>>> territory. But from people that I know it’s similar that’s it’s fast but
>>> not always reliable, so storms can take some down, often around here it’s
>>> also a backhoe, and when it does down, it’s down for a while.
>>>
>>> But I agree, it’s a great backup. Although it probably costs almost as much
>>> to run in electricity as the service itself! =o)
>>>
>>> -Luis
>>>
>>> On Tue, Sep 9, 2025 at 1:41 PM Colin_Higbie via Starlink <
>>> starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I find the Standby mode to be a great backup option. $5/mo for unlimited
>>>> low-bandwidth usage. This is something I've been urging them to offer for
>>>> about a year now.
>>>>
>>>> About 18 months after I originally purchased and subscribed to Starlink,
>>>> our power company (not phone company as you'd expect, really our electric
>>>> power company) rolled out fiber to rural communities in northern NH. As
>>>> great as Starlink was compared to what we had before, fiber is even better
>>>> now that it's available (1Gbps for $79/mo, consistently tests as A on
>>>> Bufferbloat). But it's not 100% reliable. For example, when there are
>>>> widespread power outages, it goes down. The Starlink standby option is
>>>> perfect for those situations.
>>>>
>>>> Latency remains decent, just limited bandwidth. And if the fiber outage
>>>> remains in effect for too long, we could always activate Starlink at full
>>>> bandwidth for that month, where it appears they're taking that option away
>>>> from people with inactive accounts not already on Standby mode (they may be
>>>> bluffing on that – you'd think they would want to make it easy for anyone
>>>> to give them money and resubscribe, standby customer or not).
>>>>
>>>> Cheers,
>>>> Colin
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Starlink mailing list --starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>> To unsubscribe send an email tostarlink-leave@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Starlink mailing list --starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>> To unsubscribe send an email tostarlink-leave@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> --
>> Best regards,
>> Oleg Kutkov
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Starlink mailing list --starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> To unsubscribe send an email tostarlink-leave@lists.bufferbloat.net
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list --starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> To unsubscribe send an email tostarlink-leave@lists.bufferbloat.net

-- 
****************************************************************
Dr. Ulrich Speidel

School of Computer Science

Room 303S.594 (City Campus)

The University of Auckland
u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz 
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
****************************************************************

[Starlink] Re: Starlink Standby Mode

[Sebastian Moeller]

Hi Ulrich,

thanks for the nice description. I think there is one more (engineering-wise challenging) option, reduce the number of users per cell by shrinking the cells... This likely would require better antennas on the satellites and maybe better dishies, no? Same as with any other segment-limited system, with a given user density, reduce the size and you end up with fewer users each having a higher likelihood of getting a larger share of the pie.
Now here is my question (we might have discussed this before, but my memory is dim), how hard would it be to say reduce the area per cell by a factor or 2? And what is the realistic lower boundary for cell sizes that can be gotten vom the 500 km+ orbits (and respective longer paths when the satellite is not exactly above a dishy)?

Regards
	Sebastian

P.S.: Your scenario of a thundering herd of users rushing to their backup link when something with the primary goes haywire seems to haaapen over here for LTE/5G backups, fully acceptable most of the time except those times when you really need it ;)



> On 10. Sep 2025, at 07:36, Ulrich Speidel via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
> 
> What gets me here is that this is yet more evidence of SpaceX trying to do user density and capacity management.
> 
> Recap: Spectral capacity per cell is limited - to quite how much depends a good bit on how much service neighbouring cells need. They can divide that capacity between users via channel division schemes such as time division, frequency division or code division, but the bottom line is that if you divide capacity, you end up with slices that you can assign to users much like slices from a pie (or pizza). The more users in a cell, the more competition for the slices.
> 
> Note also that there are two ways for Starlink to run out of capacity in a cell:
> 
> 1. They can run out of frequencies to use. This is impossible to fix
>   without someone having to compromise on their slice.
> 2. They can run out of beams - meaning there would be a frequency to
>   communicate on but there's just no satellite in view that has a beam
>   that it can currently point at the cell. This is possible to fix
>   with more satellites / beams per satellite.
> 
> Now when you are starting to run out of capacity, you have a bunch of options at your disposal:
> 
> * You can launch more satellites with more beams to reduce beam
>   capacity bottlenecks. SpaceX clearly do this as their constellation
>   is growing in sat numbers and beams per sat.
> * You can try and deter new users from signing up by charging a higher
>   price in the area you're running out of capacity in, or by charging
>   a congestion fee. We've seen SpaceX do this when they ostensibly ran
>   out of beams a couple of years ago in some areas & didn't extend
>   discount schemes to cells with high user densities. We're seeing
>   them do it now in many areas where new subscribers are tapped for
>   congestion fees.
> * You can growl at existing users to try and make them go away. We've
>   seen SpaceX do this in an island location where local users whose
>   dishys were on a roaming plan but had taken up permanent residence
>   there were told to pack them up and continue operation elsewhere.
> * You can shrink the size of the slices for existing users. If you
>   look at the Starlink speeds map, that's what seems to have happened
>   in a few of the places where they were "sold out" for a while and
>   are now available again. You'll be looking for the minimum download
>   speeds here and want to compare those with places where Starlink
>   user density is low. Of course, this slice shrinking isn't ideal
>   because folk love their bandwidth and all it takes is a cranky
>   influencer who isn't happy with what they see. So it's best avoided
>   if you can.
> 
> Last but not least, you can try and put the squeeze on the amount of spare capacity you need to retain in case not-so-active users become active. That's you guys with the "I have my Starlink only for backup in case my fibre gets cut" or those of you with the "I only use my Starlink at my summer house during the holidays". While you're not using your Starlink, you don't need any slices, so SpaceX can sell that capacity in the area to new users. But woe betide them should all those inactive users suddenly activate - be it because the holidays have started, or because that backhoe or natural disaster has hit.
> 
> So what you can do is sell smaller slices of the capacity pie and at a cheaper price, but make that "official" so nobody complains. Similarly, you can try and ease those out that put their plans on hold for extended periods of time - you want to make it unattractive for them to hold on to their entitlement to a big slice at the drop of a hat.
> 
> TLDR: I'd be a little skeptical that you'll be able to switch from a backup plan or pause to a full one as easily as you might think.
> 
> On 10/09/2025 9:20 am, J Pan via Starlink wrote:
>> nothing better than free ;-) but it may cost them more than $5/mo to
>> maintain an active dish. don't they just want to keep as many
>> revenue-generating customers for an upcoming ipo?
>> --
>> J Pan, UVic CSc, ECS566, 250-472-5796 (NO VM),Pan@UVic.CA, Web.UVic.CA/~pan
>> 
>> On Tue, Sep 9, 2025 at 2:01 PM Oleg Kutkov via Starlink
>> <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>> Well. I prefer a good old free pause.
>>> I have seven Starlink terminals on my account, and I mostly don't use
>>> them, except for some experiments, occasional tests, firmware dumps, and
>>> similar purposes.
>>> Now they will charge me $35 each month for basically nothing.
>>> 
>>> On 9/9/25 23:14, Luis A. Cornejo via Starlink wrote:
>>>> There is another electric cooperative in my county that did just that.
>>>> Strung fiber along the posts, I was not lucky enough to be part of their
>>>> territory. But from people that I know it’s similar that’s it’s fast but
>>>> not always reliable, so storms can take some down, often around here it’s
>>>> also a backhoe, and when it does down, it’s down for a while.
>>>> 
>>>> But I agree, it’s a great backup. Although it probably costs almost as much
>>>> to run in electricity as the service itself! =o)
>>>> 
>>>> -Luis
>>>> 
>>>> On Tue, Sep 9, 2025 at 1:41 PM Colin_Higbie via Starlink <
>>>> starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> I find the Standby mode to be a great backup option. $5/mo for unlimited
>>>>> low-bandwidth usage. This is something I've been urging them to offer for
>>>>> about a year now.
>>>>> 
>>>>> About 18 months after I originally purchased and subscribed to Starlink,
>>>>> our power company (not phone company as you'd expect, really our electric
>>>>> power company) rolled out fiber to rural communities in northern NH. As
>>>>> great as Starlink was compared to what we had before, fiber is even better
>>>>> now that it's available (1Gbps for $79/mo, consistently tests as A on
>>>>> Bufferbloat). But it's not 100% reliable. For example, when there are
>>>>> widespread power outages, it goes down. The Starlink standby option is
>>>>> perfect for those situations.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Latency remains decent, just limited bandwidth. And if the fiber outage
>>>>> remains in effect for too long, we could always activate Starlink at full
>>>>> bandwidth for that month, where it appears they're taking that option away
>>>>> from people with inactive accounts not already on Standby mode (they may be
>>>>> bluffing on that – you'd think they would want to make it easy for anyone
>>>>> to give them money and resubscribe, standby customer or not).
>>>>> 
>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>> Colin
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Starlink mailing list --starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>>> To unsubscribe send an email tostarlink-leave@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>>> 
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Starlink mailing list --starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>> To unsubscribe send an email tostarlink-leave@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>> --
>>> Best regards,
>>> Oleg Kutkov
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Starlink mailing list --starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>> To unsubscribe send an email tostarlink-leave@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> _______________________________________________
>> Starlink mailing list --starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> To unsubscribe send an email tostarlink-leave@lists.bufferbloat.net
> 
> -- 
> ****************************************************************
> Dr. Ulrich Speidel
> 
> School of Computer Science
> 
> Room 303S.594 (City Campus)
> 
> The University of Auckland
> u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
> ****************************************************************
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list -- starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> To unsubscribe send an email to starlink-leave@lists.bufferbloat.net

[Starlink] Re: Starlink Standby Mode

[David Lang]

at the same time that they introduced standby mode, they gave me a 'free month' 
of service on a dish that I used to have, but replaced because it broke, trying 
to get me to activate it again.

that's an action of a service pushing for more usage, rather than less.

I see the standby mode as encouraging people to have a dish 'just in case'

you talk about channel division, time division, and code division, but you are 
leaving out direction division. these are steerable arrays (on both ends) and 
there is no reason that they can't have more than one beam covering a particular 
cell on the same frequency, if the beams are sufficiently far apart that the 
antennas on the ground can steer to one satellite vs a different one.

David Lang

On Wed, 10 Sep 2025, Ulrich Speidel via Starlink wrote:

> Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2025 17:36:29 +1200
> From: Ulrich Speidel via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>
> Reply-To: Ulrich Speidel <u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz>
> To: starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> Subject: [Starlink] Re: Starlink Standby Mode
> 
> What gets me here is that this is yet more evidence of SpaceX trying to do 
> user density and capacity management.
>
> Recap: Spectral capacity per cell is limited - to quite how much depends a 
> good bit on how much service neighbouring cells need. They can divide that 
> capacity between users via channel division schemes such as time division, 
> frequency division or code division, but the bottom line is that if you 
> divide capacity, you end up with slices that you can assign to users much 
> like slices from a pie (or pizza). The more users in a cell, the more 
> competition for the slices.
>
> Note also that there are two ways for Starlink to run out of capacity in a 
> cell:
>
> 1. They can run out of frequencies to use. This is impossible to fix
>   without someone having to compromise on their slice.
> 2. They can run out of beams - meaning there would be a frequency to
>   communicate on but there's just no satellite in view that has a beam
>   that it can currently point at the cell. This is possible to fix
>   with more satellites / beams per satellite.
>
> Now when you are starting to run out of capacity, you have a bunch of options 
> at your disposal:
>
> * You can launch more satellites with more beams to reduce beam
>   capacity bottlenecks. SpaceX clearly do this as their constellation
>   is growing in sat numbers and beams per sat.
> * You can try and deter new users from signing up by charging a higher
>   price in the area you're running out of capacity in, or by charging
>   a congestion fee. We've seen SpaceX do this when they ostensibly ran
>   out of beams a couple of years ago in some areas & didn't extend
>   discount schemes to cells with high user densities. We're seeing
>   them do it now in many areas where new subscribers are tapped for
>   congestion fees.
> * You can growl at existing users to try and make them go away. We've
>   seen SpaceX do this in an island location where local users whose
>   dishys were on a roaming plan but had taken up permanent residence
>   there were told to pack them up and continue operation elsewhere.
> * You can shrink the size of the slices for existing users. If you
>   look at the Starlink speeds map, that's what seems to have happened
>   in a few of the places where they were "sold out" for a while and
>   are now available again. You'll be looking for the minimum download
>   speeds here and want to compare those with places where Starlink
>   user density is low. Of course, this slice shrinking isn't ideal
>   because folk love their bandwidth and all it takes is a cranky
>   influencer who isn't happy with what they see. So it's best avoided
>   if you can.
>
> Last but not least, you can try and put the squeeze on the amount of spare 
> capacity you need to retain in case not-so-active users become active. That's 
> you guys with the "I have my Starlink only for backup in case my fibre gets 
> cut" or those of you with the "I only use my Starlink at my summer house 
> during the holidays". While you're not using your Starlink, you don't need 
> any slices, so SpaceX can sell that capacity in the area to new users. But 
> woe betide them should all those inactive users suddenly activate - be it 
> because the holidays have started, or because that backhoe or natural 
> disaster has hit.
>
> So what you can do is sell smaller slices of the capacity pie and at a 
> cheaper price, but make that "official" so nobody complains. Similarly, you 
> can try and ease those out that put their plans on hold for extended periods 
> of time - you want to make it unattractive for them to hold on to their 
> entitlement to a big slice at the drop of a hat.
>
> TLDR: I'd be a little skeptical that you'll be able to switch from a backup 
> plan or pause to a full one as easily as you might think.
>
> On 10/09/2025 9:20 am, J Pan via Starlink wrote:
>> nothing better than free ;-) but it may cost them more than $5/mo to
>> maintain an active dish. don't they just want to keep as many
>> revenue-generating customers for an upcoming ipo?
>> --
>> J Pan, UVic CSc, ECS566, 250-472-5796 (NO VM),Pan@UVic.CA, Web.UVic.CA/~pan
>> 
>> On Tue, Sep 9, 2025 at 2:01 PM Oleg Kutkov via Starlink
>> <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>> Well. I prefer a good old free pause.
>>> I have seven Starlink terminals on my account, and I mostly don't use
>>> them, except for some experiments, occasional tests, firmware dumps, and
>>> similar purposes.
>>> Now they will charge me $35 each month for basically nothing.
>>> 
>>> On 9/9/25 23:14, Luis A. Cornejo via Starlink wrote:
>>>> There is another electric cooperative in my county that did just that.
>>>> Strung fiber along the posts, I was not lucky enough to be part of their
>>>> territory. But from people that I know it’s similar that’s it’s fast but
>>>> not always reliable, so storms can take some down, often around here it’s
>>>> also a backhoe, and when it does down, it’s down for a while.
>>>> 
>>>> But I agree, it’s a great backup. Although it probably costs almost as 
>>>> much
>>>> to run in electricity as the service itself! =o)
>>>> 
>>>> -Luis
>>>> 
>>>> On Tue, Sep 9, 2025 at 1:41 PM Colin_Higbie via Starlink <
>>>> starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> I find the Standby mode to be a great backup option. $5/mo for unlimited
>>>>> low-bandwidth usage. This is something I've been urging them to offer 
>>>>> for
>>>>> about a year now.
>>>>> 
>>>>> About 18 months after I originally purchased and subscribed to Starlink,
>>>>> our power company (not phone company as you'd expect, really our 
>>>>> electric
>>>>> power company) rolled out fiber to rural communities in northern NH. As
>>>>> great as Starlink was compared to what we had before, fiber is even 
>>>>> better
>>>>> now that it's available (1Gbps for $79/mo, consistently tests as A on
>>>>> Bufferbloat). But it's not 100% reliable. For example, when there are
>>>>> widespread power outages, it goes down. The Starlink standby option is
>>>>> perfect for those situations.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Latency remains decent, just limited bandwidth. And if the fiber outage
>>>>> remains in effect for too long, we could always activate Starlink at 
>>>>> full
>>>>> bandwidth for that month, where it appears they're taking that option 
>>>>> away
>>>>> from people with inactive accounts not already on Standby mode (they may 
>>>>> be
>>>>> bluffing on that – you'd think they would want to make it easy for 
>>>>> anyone
>>>>> to give them money and resubscribe, standby customer or not).
>>>>> 
>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>> Colin
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Starlink mailing list --starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>>> To unsubscribe send an email tostarlink-leave@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>>> 
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Starlink mailing list --starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>> To unsubscribe send an email tostarlink-leave@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>> --
>>> Best regards,
>>> Oleg Kutkov
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Starlink mailing list --starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>> To unsubscribe send an email tostarlink-leave@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> _______________________________________________
>> Starlink mailing list --starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> To unsubscribe send an email tostarlink-leave@lists.bufferbloat.net
>
>

[Starlink] Re: Starlink Standby Mode

[Ulrich Speidel]

On 10/09/2025 7:53 pm, David Lang wrote:
> at the same time that they introduced standby mode, they gave me a 
> 'free month' of service on a dish that I used to have, but replaced 
> because it broke, trying to get me to activate it again.
>
> that's an action of a service pushing for more usage, rather than less.
Maybe they didn't think you'd ever use it again, maybe you live in an 
area with low user density. It's not like they discourage new or 
returning users everywhere - to the contrary. It's only in places with 
high user densities.
>
> I see the standby mode as encouraging people to have a dish 'just in 
> case'
>
> you talk about channel division, time division, and code division, but 
> you are leaving out direction division. these are steerable arrays (on 
> both ends) and there is no reason that they can't have more than one 
> beam covering a particular cell on the same frequency, if the beams 
> are sufficiently far apart that the antennas on the ground can steer 
> to one satellite vs a different one.

At first glance, yes, that sounds like an attractive way of making your 
spectrum resource go an extra mile.

That's until you discover what SpaceX's colleagues in various other 
competing satellite services did a long time ago ... drum roll ... the 
small print in Table 21-4 of the ITU Radio Regulations! It's just 
numbers really, but it stipulates an EPFD limit for NGSO systems in the 
part of the Ku band spectrum that Starlink uses. EPFD stands for 
equivalent power flux density, essentially the power in watts per square 
metre per Hertz of bandwidth that is allowed to hit the Earth's surface, 
"limit" means "maximum", and NGSO means non-geostationary orbit, which 
includes every single Starlink satellite in existence.

Oh, and the ITU Radio Regulations are the internationally agreed-upon 
globally binding rules for radio communications, and unlike treaties 
like nuclear non-proliferation that can be ignored with near impunity, 
it's a rule book that most nation states stick to fairly religiously 
because if they don't, then nobody else will, and then we'll all need 
fibre to communicate because wireless in all its forms would be near 
unusable. Anyway, I digress.

Now much to SpaceX's chagrin, this boring-looking rule got introduced a 
long time before people really thought that anyone could be 
dumb/rich/powerful/megalomaniac enough to build an actual LEO 
mega-constellation. The EPFD limit relates to combined emissions from 
all of your satellite fleet that might hit the ground in a particular 
area (read "cell") from any of your spacecraft. This means that if you 
fire two beams on the same frequency - even from two different 
satellites in your system - at the same cell, you have to add the powers 
of the two beams and count the sum towards the EPFD limit.

For its first generation satellites, SpaceX committed to a slightly 
lower EPFD limit - simply because the rule hadn't ever been applied to 
LEO constellations of this type. That limit is just sufficient to allow 
for beams with 16QAM modulation (that's 4 bits per Hertz of bandwidth 
per second max., using OFDM) to be used for space-to-ground comms from 
ONE spacecraft to a Dishy-sized antenna. For its second generation, 
SpaceX argued that it could sail tighter to the regulatory limit, which 
essentially allows for 64QAM instead (6 bits per Hertz ... blah). But 
yeah, there's a wall, and it's not very flexible.

SpaceX have railed against it in numerous FCC filings. For the incumbent 
providers, that rule is like garlic against vampires, and they just love 
it.

Direction division as you suggest can help a bit with frequency re-use 
in cells that are in the same neighbourhood (using more satellites), but 
it can't be used to create additional capacity in a cell.

We've been trying to publish the details of this for a while, but 
finding a good networking conference capable of recruiting sufficient 
referees that don't self-assess as "unfamiliar" with the topic has been 
a bit of a challenge. Suggestions welcome.

>
> David Lang
>
> On Wed, 10 Sep 2025, Ulrich Speidel via Starlink wrote:
>
>> Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2025 17:36:29 +1200
>> From: Ulrich Speidel via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>
>> Reply-To: Ulrich Speidel <u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz>
>> To: starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> Subject: [Starlink] Re: Starlink Standby Mode
>>
>> What gets me here is that this is yet more evidence of SpaceX trying 
>> to do user density and capacity management.
>>
>> Recap: Spectral capacity per cell is limited - to quite how much 
>> depends a good bit on how much service neighbouring cells need. They 
>> can divide that capacity between users via channel division schemes 
>> such as time division, frequency division or code division, but the 
>> bottom line is that if you divide capacity, you end up with slices 
>> that you can assign to users much like slices from a pie (or pizza). 
>> The more users in a cell, the more competition for the slices.
>>
>> Note also that there are two ways for Starlink to run out of capacity 
>> in a cell:
>>
>> 1. They can run out of frequencies to use. This is impossible to fix
>>   without someone having to compromise on their slice.
>> 2. They can run out of beams - meaning there would be a frequency to
>>   communicate on but there's just no satellite in view that has a beam
>>   that it can currently point at the cell. This is possible to fix
>>   with more satellites / beams per satellite.
>>
>> Now when you are starting to run out of capacity, you have a bunch of 
>> options at your disposal:
>>
>> * You can launch more satellites with more beams to reduce beam
>>   capacity bottlenecks. SpaceX clearly do this as their constellation
>>   is growing in sat numbers and beams per sat.
>> * You can try and deter new users from signing up by charging a higher
>>   price in the area you're running out of capacity in, or by charging
>>   a congestion fee. We've seen SpaceX do this when they ostensibly ran
>>   out of beams a couple of years ago in some areas & didn't extend
>>   discount schemes to cells with high user densities. We're seeing
>>   them do it now in many areas where new subscribers are tapped for
>>   congestion fees.
>> * You can growl at existing users to try and make them go away. We've
>>   seen SpaceX do this in an island location where local users whose
>>   dishys were on a roaming plan but had taken up permanent residence
>>   there were told to pack them up and continue operation elsewhere.
>> * You can shrink the size of the slices for existing users. If you
>>   look at the Starlink speeds map, that's what seems to have happened
>>   in a few of the places where they were "sold out" for a while and
>>   are now available again. You'll be looking for the minimum download
>>   speeds here and want to compare those with places where Starlink
>>   user density is low. Of course, this slice shrinking isn't ideal
>>   because folk love their bandwidth and all it takes is a cranky
>>   influencer who isn't happy with what they see. So it's best avoided
>>   if you can.
>>
>> Last but not least, you can try and put the squeeze on the amount of 
>> spare capacity you need to retain in case not-so-active users become 
>> active. That's you guys with the "I have my Starlink only for backup 
>> in case my fibre gets cut" or those of you with the "I only use my 
>> Starlink at my summer house during the holidays". While you're not 
>> using your Starlink, you don't need any slices, so SpaceX can sell 
>> that capacity in the area to new users. But woe betide them should 
>> all those inactive users suddenly activate - be it because the 
>> holidays have started, or because that backhoe or natural disaster 
>> has hit.
>>
>> So what you can do is sell smaller slices of the capacity pie and at 
>> a cheaper price, but make that "official" so nobody complains. 
>> Similarly, you can try and ease those out that put their plans on 
>> hold for extended periods of time - you want to make it unattractive 
>> for them to hold on to their entitlement to a big slice at the drop 
>> of a hat.
>>
>> TLDR: I'd be a little skeptical that you'll be able to switch from a 
>> backup plan or pause to a full one as easily as you might think.
>>
>> On 10/09/2025 9:20 am, J Pan via Starlink wrote:
>>> nothing better than free ;-) but it may cost them more than $5/mo to
>>> maintain an active dish. don't they just want to keep as many
>>> revenue-generating customers for an upcoming ipo?
>>> -- 
>>> J Pan, UVic CSc, ECS566, 250-472-5796 (NO VM),Pan@UVic.CA, 
>>> Web.UVic.CA/~pan
>>>
>>> On Tue, Sep 9, 2025 at 2:01 PM Oleg Kutkov via Starlink
>>> <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>>> Well. I prefer a good old free pause.
>>>> I have seven Starlink terminals on my account, and I mostly don't use
>>>> them, except for some experiments, occasional tests, firmware 
>>>> dumps, and
>>>> similar purposes.
>>>> Now they will charge me $35 each month for basically nothing.
>>>>
>>>> On 9/9/25 23:14, Luis A. Cornejo via Starlink wrote:
>>>>> There is another electric cooperative in my county that did just 
>>>>> that.
>>>>> Strung fiber along the posts, I was not lucky enough to be part of 
>>>>> their
>>>>> territory. But from people that I know it’s similar that’s it’s 
>>>>> fast but
>>>>> not always reliable, so storms can take some down, often around 
>>>>> here it’s
>>>>> also a backhoe, and when it does down, it’s down for a while.
>>>>>
>>>>> But I agree, it’s a great backup. Although it probably costs 
>>>>> almost as much
>>>>> to run in electricity as the service itself! =o)
>>>>>
>>>>> -Luis
>>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, Sep 9, 2025 at 1:41 PM Colin_Higbie via Starlink <
>>>>> starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> I find the Standby mode to be a great backup option. $5/mo for 
>>>>>> unlimited
>>>>>> low-bandwidth usage. This is something I've been urging them to 
>>>>>> offer for
>>>>>> about a year now.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> About 18 months after I originally purchased and subscribed to 
>>>>>> Starlink,
>>>>>> our power company (not phone company as you'd expect, really our 
>>>>>> electric
>>>>>> power company) rolled out fiber to rural communities in northern 
>>>>>> NH. As
>>>>>> great as Starlink was compared to what we had before, fiber is 
>>>>>> even better
>>>>>> now that it's available (1Gbps for $79/mo, consistently tests as 
>>>>>> A on
>>>>>> Bufferbloat). But it's not 100% reliable. For example, when there 
>>>>>> are
>>>>>> widespread power outages, it goes down. The Starlink standby 
>>>>>> option is
>>>>>> perfect for those situations.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Latency remains decent, just limited bandwidth. And if the fiber 
>>>>>> outage
>>>>>> remains in effect for too long, we could always activate Starlink 
>>>>>> at full
>>>>>> bandwidth for that month, where it appears they're taking that 
>>>>>> option away
>>>>>> from people with inactive accounts not already on Standby mode 
>>>>>> (they may be
>>>>>> bluffing on that – you'd think they would want to make it easy 
>>>>>> for anyone
>>>>>> to give them money and resubscribe, standby customer or not).
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>>> Colin
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> Starlink mailing list --starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>>>> To unsubscribe send an email tostarlink-leave@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Starlink mailing list --starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>>> To unsubscribe send an email tostarlink-leave@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>> -- 
>>>> Best regards,
>>>> Oleg Kutkov
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Starlink mailing list --starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>> To unsubscribe send an email tostarlink-leave@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Starlink mailing list --starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>> To unsubscribe send an email tostarlink-leave@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>
>>
-- 
****************************************************************
Dr. Ulrich Speidel

School of Computer Science

Room 303S.594 (City Campus)

The University of Auckland
u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
****************************************************************

[Starlink] Re: Starlink Standby Mode

[J Pan]

it is clear that they just want to have more "active" users and growth
on their book now (for ipo): free month, $5/mo standby, referral
program, etc. above physics, there is economics ;-) the easiest way
for them is actually to put starlink into every tesla they are
producing now, standby by default for telemetry and all kinds of data
they want to collect, more if higher speed
--
J Pan, UVic CSc, ECS566, 250-472-5796 (NO VM), Pan@UVic.CA, Web.UVic.CA/~pan

On Wed, Sep 10, 2025 at 3:25 AM Ulrich Speidel via Starlink
<starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>
> On 10/09/2025 7:53 pm, David Lang wrote:
> > at the same time that they introduced standby mode, they gave me a
> > 'free month' of service on a dish that I used to have, but replaced
> > because it broke, trying to get me to activate it again.
> >
> > that's an action of a service pushing for more usage, rather than less.
> Maybe they didn't think you'd ever use it again, maybe you live in an
> area with low user density. It's not like they discourage new or
> returning users everywhere - to the contrary. It's only in places with
> high user densities.
> >
> > I see the standby mode as encouraging people to have a dish 'just in
> > case'
> >
> > you talk about channel division, time division, and code division, but
> > you are leaving out direction division. these are steerable arrays (on
> > both ends) and there is no reason that they can't have more than one
> > beam covering a particular cell on the same frequency, if the beams
> > are sufficiently far apart that the antennas on the ground can steer
> > to one satellite vs a different one.
>
> At first glance, yes, that sounds like an attractive way of making your
> spectrum resource go an extra mile.
>
> That's until you discover what SpaceX's colleagues in various other
> competing satellite services did a long time ago ... drum roll ... the
> small print in Table 21-4 of the ITU Radio Regulations! It's just
> numbers really, but it stipulates an EPFD limit for NGSO systems in the
> part of the Ku band spectrum that Starlink uses. EPFD stands for
> equivalent power flux density, essentially the power in watts per square
> metre per Hertz of bandwidth that is allowed to hit the Earth's surface,
> "limit" means "maximum", and NGSO means non-geostationary orbit, which
> includes every single Starlink satellite in existence.
>
> Oh, and the ITU Radio Regulations are the internationally agreed-upon
> globally binding rules for radio communications, and unlike treaties
> like nuclear non-proliferation that can be ignored with near impunity,
> it's a rule book that most nation states stick to fairly religiously
> because if they don't, then nobody else will, and then we'll all need
> fibre to communicate because wireless in all its forms would be near
> unusable. Anyway, I digress.
>
> Now much to SpaceX's chagrin, this boring-looking rule got introduced a
> long time before people really thought that anyone could be
> dumb/rich/powerful/megalomaniac enough to build an actual LEO
> mega-constellation. The EPFD limit relates to combined emissions from
> all of your satellite fleet that might hit the ground in a particular
> area (read "cell") from any of your spacecraft. This means that if you
> fire two beams on the same frequency - even from two different
> satellites in your system - at the same cell, you have to add the powers
> of the two beams and count the sum towards the EPFD limit.
>
> For its first generation satellites, SpaceX committed to a slightly
> lower EPFD limit - simply because the rule hadn't ever been applied to
> LEO constellations of this type. That limit is just sufficient to allow
> for beams with 16QAM modulation (that's 4 bits per Hertz of bandwidth
> per second max., using OFDM) to be used for space-to-ground comms from
> ONE spacecraft to a Dishy-sized antenna. For its second generation,
> SpaceX argued that it could sail tighter to the regulatory limit, which
> essentially allows for 64QAM instead (6 bits per Hertz ... blah). But
> yeah, there's a wall, and it's not very flexible.
>
> SpaceX have railed against it in numerous FCC filings. For the incumbent
> providers, that rule is like garlic against vampires, and they just love
> it.
>
> Direction division as you suggest can help a bit with frequency re-use
> in cells that are in the same neighbourhood (using more satellites), but
> it can't be used to create additional capacity in a cell.
>
> We've been trying to publish the details of this for a while, but
> finding a good networking conference capable of recruiting sufficient
> referees that don't self-assess as "unfamiliar" with the topic has been
> a bit of a challenge. Suggestions welcome.
>
> >
> > David Lang
> >
> > On Wed, 10 Sep 2025, Ulrich Speidel via Starlink wrote:
> >
> >> Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2025 17:36:29 +1200
> >> From: Ulrich Speidel via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>
> >> Reply-To: Ulrich Speidel <u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz>
> >> To: starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> >> Subject: [Starlink] Re: Starlink Standby Mode
> >>
> >> What gets me here is that this is yet more evidence of SpaceX trying
> >> to do user density and capacity management.
> >>
> >> Recap: Spectral capacity per cell is limited - to quite how much
> >> depends a good bit on how much service neighbouring cells need. They
> >> can divide that capacity between users via channel division schemes
> >> such as time division, frequency division or code division, but the
> >> bottom line is that if you divide capacity, you end up with slices
> >> that you can assign to users much like slices from a pie (or pizza).
> >> The more users in a cell, the more competition for the slices.
> >>
> >> Note also that there are two ways for Starlink to run out of capacity
> >> in a cell:
> >>
> >> 1. They can run out of frequencies to use. This is impossible to fix
> >>   without someone having to compromise on their slice.
> >> 2. They can run out of beams - meaning there would be a frequency to
> >>   communicate on but there's just no satellite in view that has a beam
> >>   that it can currently point at the cell. This is possible to fix
> >>   with more satellites / beams per satellite.
> >>
> >> Now when you are starting to run out of capacity, you have a bunch of
> >> options at your disposal:
> >>
> >> * You can launch more satellites with more beams to reduce beam
> >>   capacity bottlenecks. SpaceX clearly do this as their constellation
> >>   is growing in sat numbers and beams per sat.
> >> * You can try and deter new users from signing up by charging a higher
> >>   price in the area you're running out of capacity in, or by charging
> >>   a congestion fee. We've seen SpaceX do this when they ostensibly ran
> >>   out of beams a couple of years ago in some areas & didn't extend
> >>   discount schemes to cells with high user densities. We're seeing
> >>   them do it now in many areas where new subscribers are tapped for
> >>   congestion fees.
> >> * You can growl at existing users to try and make them go away. We've
> >>   seen SpaceX do this in an island location where local users whose
> >>   dishys were on a roaming plan but had taken up permanent residence
> >>   there were told to pack them up and continue operation elsewhere.
> >> * You can shrink the size of the slices for existing users. If you
> >>   look at the Starlink speeds map, that's what seems to have happened
> >>   in a few of the places where they were "sold out" for a while and
> >>   are now available again. You'll be looking for the minimum download
> >>   speeds here and want to compare those with places where Starlink
> >>   user density is low. Of course, this slice shrinking isn't ideal
> >>   because folk love their bandwidth and all it takes is a cranky
> >>   influencer who isn't happy with what they see. So it's best avoided
> >>   if you can.
> >>
> >> Last but not least, you can try and put the squeeze on the amount of
> >> spare capacity you need to retain in case not-so-active users become
> >> active. That's you guys with the "I have my Starlink only for backup
> >> in case my fibre gets cut" or those of you with the "I only use my
> >> Starlink at my summer house during the holidays". While you're not
> >> using your Starlink, you don't need any slices, so SpaceX can sell
> >> that capacity in the area to new users. But woe betide them should
> >> all those inactive users suddenly activate - be it because the
> >> holidays have started, or because that backhoe or natural disaster
> >> has hit.
> >>
> >> So what you can do is sell smaller slices of the capacity pie and at
> >> a cheaper price, but make that "official" so nobody complains.
> >> Similarly, you can try and ease those out that put their plans on
> >> hold for extended periods of time - you want to make it unattractive
> >> for them to hold on to their entitlement to a big slice at the drop
> >> of a hat.
> >>
> >> TLDR: I'd be a little skeptical that you'll be able to switch from a
> >> backup plan or pause to a full one as easily as you might think.
> >>
> >> On 10/09/2025 9:20 am, J Pan via Starlink wrote:
> >>> nothing better than free ;-) but it may cost them more than $5/mo to
> >>> maintain an active dish. don't they just want to keep as many
> >>> revenue-generating customers for an upcoming ipo?
> >>> --
> >>> J Pan, UVic CSc, ECS566, 250-472-5796 (NO VM),Pan@UVic.CA,
> >>> Web.UVic.CA/~pan
> >>>
> >>> On Tue, Sep 9, 2025 at 2:01 PM Oleg Kutkov via Starlink
> >>> <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
> >>>> Well. I prefer a good old free pause.
> >>>> I have seven Starlink terminals on my account, and I mostly don't use
> >>>> them, except for some experiments, occasional tests, firmware
> >>>> dumps, and
> >>>> similar purposes.
> >>>> Now they will charge me $35 each month for basically nothing.
> >>>>
> >>>> On 9/9/25 23:14, Luis A. Cornejo via Starlink wrote:
> >>>>> There is another electric cooperative in my county that did just
> >>>>> that.
> >>>>> Strung fiber along the posts, I was not lucky enough to be part of
> >>>>> their
> >>>>> territory. But from people that I know it’s similar that’s it’s
> >>>>> fast but
> >>>>> not always reliable, so storms can take some down, often around
> >>>>> here it’s
> >>>>> also a backhoe, and when it does down, it’s down for a while.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> But I agree, it’s a great backup. Although it probably costs
> >>>>> almost as much
> >>>>> to run in electricity as the service itself! =o)
> >>>>>
> >>>>> -Luis
> >>>>>
> >>>>> On Tue, Sep 9, 2025 at 1:41 PM Colin_Higbie via Starlink <
> >>>>> starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> I find the Standby mode to be a great backup option. $5/mo for
> >>>>>> unlimited
> >>>>>> low-bandwidth usage. This is something I've been urging them to
> >>>>>> offer for
> >>>>>> about a year now.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> About 18 months after I originally purchased and subscribed to
> >>>>>> Starlink,
> >>>>>> our power company (not phone company as you'd expect, really our
> >>>>>> electric
> >>>>>> power company) rolled out fiber to rural communities in northern
> >>>>>> NH. As
> >>>>>> great as Starlink was compared to what we had before, fiber is
> >>>>>> even better
> >>>>>> now that it's available (1Gbps for $79/mo, consistently tests as
> >>>>>> A on
> >>>>>> Bufferbloat). But it's not 100% reliable. For example, when there
> >>>>>> are
> >>>>>> widespread power outages, it goes down. The Starlink standby
> >>>>>> option is
> >>>>>> perfect for those situations.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Latency remains decent, just limited bandwidth. And if the fiber
> >>>>>> outage
> >>>>>> remains in effect for too long, we could always activate Starlink
> >>>>>> at full
> >>>>>> bandwidth for that month, where it appears they're taking that
> >>>>>> option away
> >>>>>> from people with inactive accounts not already on Standby mode
> >>>>>> (they may be
> >>>>>> bluffing on that – you'd think they would want to make it easy
> >>>>>> for anyone
> >>>>>> to give them money and resubscribe, standby customer or not).
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Cheers,
> >>>>>> Colin
> >>>>>> _______________________________________________
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> Dr. Ulrich Speidel
>
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>
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>
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[Starlink] Re: Starlink Standby Mode

[J Pan]

or you can bond two or more 0.5/0.5mbps dishes in standby mode for
1/1, 2/2, and so on?
--
J Pan, UVic CSc, ECS566, 250-472-5796 (NO VM), Pan@UVic.CA, Web.UVic.CA/~pan

On Mon, Sep 8, 2025 at 2:35 PM Luis A. Cornejo via Starlink
<starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>
> Here is an interesting debloated Starlink in stand by mode connection. It's
> actually quite usable for basic stuff like email, texting, Wifi Calling on
> cell, it even streams youtube at 240p which is quite watchable with minimal
> bufferbloat. The debloating grade is a fairly constant C grade.
>
> egress status:
> qdisc cake 805f: root refcnt 2 bandwidth 450Kbit diffserv4 dual-srchost nat
> nowash ack-filter split-gso rtt 100ms noatm overhead 48 mpu 72
>
> ingress status:
> qdisc cake 8060: root refcnt 2 bandwidth 450Kbit diffserv4 dual-dsthost nat
> nowash ingress no-ack-filter split-gso rtt 100ms noatm overhead 48 mpu 72
>
> I haven't tweaked the overhead and mpu as those are what I use for my LTE
> based main WAN.
>
> Not bad for $5/mo, pretty decent backup for comms, I wish Starlink let us a
> la cart upgrade the bandwidth in chunks; like if I can get .5/.5mbps for
> $5, can I get 2/1 for $10, or 4/2 for $15 etc...
>
> Cheers!
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