No more radios in cars?

people sit in the library all day, hogging the computers

 

I'm trying to think of ways to reduce my (our) internet dependance. I want to have Starlink roaming for emergencies and on-the-road use. But it's $50 a month. Or I could set it to standby for most of the year and use the home internet for $30 a month. But if I get rid of the home internet we could use our cellphones, which are $120 a month. But I could reduce that to $30 a month, or $15 if we did just one cell phone. But then we wouldn't have any internet, and wife wouldn't be able to do videocalls with her family... Decisions, decisions.

 

Starlink is a solid option, and 500kb/s with unlimited is a survivable internet option for some people.

HOWEVER(!!!) comma,
There's about a $240 buy-in and my Spidey senses are tingling about people who try to use the $5 standby mode as their only internet being a long-term option without a larger cash obligation.

I'm evaluating a SL mini now as a 'fallover' for fiber and the results are more than promising.
My intentions at present are to dismount the system at least once a year and take it on a road trip - increasing the hardware buy-in but keeping the overall annual expenses lower than the $50 a month 'roam' option.
By selecting the 'roam' option and the 'mini' hardware I have the dual advantages of lower buy-in costs and lower power usages - AND I can.......'roam.'
I just got my first month's billing...today and it was something like $34 prorated from the $50 minus the 7-day trial period.

If this thread is still active when my first month of 'standby' is billed I will update.
I'm not the LEAST bit hesitant about life at 500kb/sec, and I would use it in a heartbeat as my primary internet since I grew up when "lightning fast speeds" were a tenth of that......and yes.
I know.
Latency is about speed and kb/s is about throughput.
Starlink seems to maintain relatively low latency with their Standby plan at 20-40 ms, which is middling if you're a 'competitive gamer' whatever the crap THAT means.

For normies, 40ms is not detectable.

Still early days for me but like I said before.
More than promising results thus far.

In the Gulf South we use WiFi.
They can sit in the parking lot in their cars and surf to their heart's content.