[FRIAM] Starlink

[Edward Angel]

I’ve never had the problems Gil has experienced with Comcast. I suspect that because Gil lives in an older neighborhood with old and failing infrastructure. We built our house 25 years ago in a new subdivision that required underground utilities. That meant we have cable to the house and we’re on a local loop without much traffic. Presently I have 1/2 Gb (download) service which is very reliable. It costs about $80/month. More about cost below.

Nevertheless, we hate Comcast and wish there were good alternatives in Santa Fe. In particular:

Cost: the $80/month internet is part of triple play (phone, internet, tv) so is slightly discounted and doesn’t include all the added on fees and charges for equipment. A typical triple play bill can be around $300.month. I recently spent a lot of time trying to reduce the bill. It’s hard. You can get your own modem and save $15/month but although almost all the modems on Amazon or Best Buy claim they are compatible with Comcast, the Comcast website only gives one alternative modem. Hence, if you have a problem connecting which happens to many people they will not help. If you have television that has a cable input but doesn’t support streaming, you have to use their boxes, $10/mo each.

Support: Horrible. Their website is terrible. Almost impossible to get the information you need. I spent half an hour trying to find how much their internet service costs and failed. Finally I was able to find a printout of my bill. It took two trips to their store and a long phone call to get a minor change to my plan done correctly. Their human service calls are a crap shoot. One installer managed to break a bunch of the wires in my panel and didn’t manage to connect the phone. Another was great and I tried to get him to apply for a degree program at UNM to escape Comcast. A third who did the initial install refused to believe that the Costco modem box I had used in ABQ with Comcast could possibly work (I was only used Comcast internet then). Finally, when I insisted he call his supervisor, he was told to just plug in the box. He left saying that was the easiest install he had ever done.

Comcast streaming: Sounds like a good alternative to many issues. Too bad it doesn’t work well. Crashes often. They made some changes and I found that it is the ONLY app I have that will not work with my vpn. After more time wasted trying to get support, I found from forums on their website that if you can manage to get a human on support you will be told it’s not their problem, it’s your computer, your vpn, …. Finally, one human at their store admitted it was hopeless and I just had to live with it.

I haven’t found a good alternative in SF,

Ed

_______________________

Ed Angel

Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS Lab)
Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico

1017 Sierra Pinon
Santa Fe, NM 87501
505-984-0136 (home)		 	angel at cs.unm.edu <mailto:angel at cs.unm.edu>
505-453-4944 (cell) 				http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel

> On Sep 12, 2024, at 11:01 AM, Gillian Densmore <gil.densmore at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Fiber is still 20 minutes into the future. Alas likely never without a overhaul of the "leadership"
> 
> On Thu, Sep 12, 2024 at 8:56 AM Barry MacKichan <barry.mackichan at mackichan.com <mailto:barry.mackichan at mackichan.com>> wrote:
>> What is the situation in Santa Fe now? When I left in 2018, fiber still seemed in the distant future. Our new house in North Carolina, when built, had two fiber boxes by the street, one for CenturyLink and one for Spectrum. Since then, another one was added (unfortunately they accidentally cut the fiber line into the house, sending us back a century for about a week). We pay a bit over a hundred a month for a full gigabit. It is cheaper (per bit) at half a gigabit, but we were running a business and went for the full gigabit.
>> 
>> Since the infrastructure act was passed, our county has been flooded with trucks towing huge spools of orange fiber cable. They are running alongside rural roads and along the village roads back from the main roads. It looks like fiber will be within a hundred yards of almost every driveway.
>> 
>> We have the option of upgrading to 2 gigabit service, and lord knows what we could do bonding together three different providers 😉.
>> 
>> 
>> — Barry
>> 
>> On 12 Sep 2024, at 10:30, Gary Schiltz wrote:
>> 
>> It depends on what's on the other end of your fiber connection :-)  Here in land that tech forgot, getting more than a few tens of megabits feels luxurious. One carrier has fiber optic passing over my property, and they offered to tap into it and give me 20 megabits for the low low price of $100 a month. Starlink's 300 megabits for $45 a month is heaven on earth. Isn't Santa Fe still sort of part of the third world?
>> 
>> On Thu, Sep 12, 2024 at 9:06 AM Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com <mailto:marcus at snoutfarm.com>> wrote:
>>> Neat trick, but no substitute for fiber. 🙂
>>> 
>>> https://www.speedtest.net/result/c/d227591a-534e-4811-a3e9-1b055d44914d
>>> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com>> on behalf of Gary Schiltz <gary at naturesvisualarts.com <mailto:gary at naturesvisualarts.com>>
>>> Sent: Wednesday, September 11, 2024 8:50 PM
>>> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com>>
>>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Starlink
>>>  
>>> I have Starlink here in Ecuador and am very happy with it. But here it is only $45 a month and $120 there. 
>>> 
>>> On Wed, Sep 11, 2024 at 10:21 PM Gillian Densmore <gil.densmore at gmail.com <mailto:gil.densmore at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>> What are folks's thoughts on this? for the atrocious  choices of conned-cast or...nothing? or are there finally ISP's that aren't DSL here?-- How is it? what's it really like? are they anygood? the speed is still god awful at a pathetic 25mgs. but so is Comcast. Appallingly enough. We get snow storms and stuff, is it a blackout then?
>>> Asking because Comcast is going. From sometime early this morning to about 20 minutes ago being out. Being legendarily terrible and no one has had the korvnka's the slap them with a RICO anti-trust suit yet. God only knows why. 
>>> So looking starlink and open to other options:
>>> they have to real propper internet, at least 200mbs each way and white-glove levels of service.
>>> CC owen as well. I suspect we've both had enough.
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