Sounds great. However, I've seen ↓31/↑4 and ↓20/↑10 out of it. Anecdata doesn't prove much.
The network is improving, the tech is capable, but the real life performance is not up to snuff. Starlink, much like any company Musk seems to get himself involved with, is promising more than it can deliver, and that hurts when it comes to subsidies. They can have their billions when their network does what it promised to do.
Heres ping info from starlink:
--- google.com ping statistics --- 38 packets transmitted, 38 packets received, 0.0% packet loss round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 26.879/45.073/95.627/11.582 ms
Hughesnet was one of the best options prior to Starlink.
Anecdotes cannot prove population statistics, you need an unbiased random sample for that. But anecdotes absolute can prove limits though. Remember, this is what I was responding to, emphasis added:
>Starlink isn't CAPABLE of meeting its performance commitments
That's what I took issue with and think is important. Starlink is absolutely capable of those speeds; I've seen them. So the problem isn't the technology, the problem is balancing serving the most people (which is a public good too) with maintaining enough performance on average for each one, all while scaling and evolving the technology fast. I'm assuming SpaceX could have submitted private data showing the public results by ookla were off in some way that would have been sufficient and that the FCC didn't ignore that out of lobbying/politics, so I'm taking it as a given that they did fall behind there. But it's not like Starlink is "done", they're continuing to increase sat numbers, build more ground stations, they're prepping to bring online intersat optical links and have no given a firm date for that (it's required for their marine service to get away from coastal waters), they've got much better sats and a solid process on the rocket to launch them. If we didn't need someone to take on some more risk and help accelerate things, this entire program would be meaningless and there would be no need for government in this space at all! I guess it feels like they're being punished for trying to move faster when that's exactly what lots of Americans need. We needed something better then the crap we've had 10 years ago let alone now.
Of course, this may be 100% the correct legal decision depending on the exact language, administration and so on of the program. I could easily see the FCC not doing well on that but that doesn't mean they aren't required to stick to it by law. But that's not what I see most people criticizing it on, they're talking technical and societal angles instead. And on those grounds, I can be disappointed if the program didn't have some leeway. "Needs to be ready by 2028" isn't good enough!
Starlink is probably below three nines of reliability on even having a connection, and may only be at one to two nines or so on the speed demands. Many people on Starlink get bursts of decent speed and also stretches where the network operates at a crawl.
Thus, they can offer you good speed and still be incapable of meeting performance commitments.