Advertisement while surfing PriusChat: View attachment 294146 The usual suspects, Goggle Fiber and AT&T, sent junk mail for $40/mo. I had already switched to WOW for $25/mo at 160 mbs and very happy. When I eventually upgrade to an iPhone with direct call and/or a car mounted Starlink terminal, I’ll switch ending my T-mobile $50/month. It is getting very close to price parity. Only I don’t want to replicate the Russian Starlink experience. Ah, what delicious choices to make. Bob Wilson
I'm still paying $5 for Starlink Mini in Roam and on standby as a fallover for my heavily subsidized Fiber to the Premises (FTTP) - sometimes called Fiber to the Home (FTTH.) My 0.5mb/s of unlimited data with the plan is good enough to run a camera and alarm system and the smaller panel uses less than 20 watts real world. The smaller panel also suffers from less wind loading during storms in my particular install. My intentions are to switch to a $50 a month Residential plan with an adult-sized dish (panel) when I retire and keep the original 'mini' for travel and my radio hobby (POTA/SOTA.) I do not have much experience with the direct-to-cell plans. My iPhone (13) is not thusly equipped, and like the Starlink system I'm going to let more early adopters fund the non-recurring engineering work for this feature. Many people think that DTC will eliminate terrestrial cell towers and fiber altogether, but I remain 'slightly' skeptical, since I'm Hurricane Hugo/Katrina/Helene years old. Cell towers will be around for a while but they have a high failure rate during natural (and human caused) disasters. Consider this: It is highly probable that there are more active CW (Continuous Wave/Morse Code) operators today than at any point in the history of amateur radio, despite the fact that this mode is no longer being required for licensing. ......AND there are three times the number of active licenses today compared to 1970. And only ~50% more population. Communications is pretty important and MOST of the failure points are what we call 'last mile' issues. Starlink (and amateur radio) eliminates those almost entirely.
