[Starlink] Re: Starlink Standby Mode

[Colin_Higbie <CHigbie1@Higbie.name>]

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