[Starlink] Re: Starlink Standby Mode

[Ulrich Speidel <u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz>]

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/
****************************************************************