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Comment by Scoundreller | Hacker News Reader

I could see there being an opportunity for 4G+Starlink setups.

Run Starlink when you need the throughput and turn off that 100w heater when you don’t.

I’m already looking into a timer to turnoff my modem, gaming console and router at night just to turn off that ~20w load doing nothing.

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There is an argument that if you have 4G/5G, you don't really need to go all the way to LEO.

Technically true, iff you have functioning telecom competition.

In Canada, 1G/2G/3G/4G/5G has captured the regulators for decades.

Would be interesting to know where the starlink demand is in USA and how much it overlaps with areas that have 4G+ coverage.

That is exactly what I am doing. The catch is that 4G data is horribly expensive in my area, download two youtube videos and you've blown a months Starlink fees.

In many-to-most cases 4G and especially 5G will simply outperform Starlink. If you have the 4G it may not even be necessary to bother with the Starlink. Unless you want redundancy of a 2nd connection or you can only get a really terrible data plan running both is not likely to make much sense. Starlink also has very onerous North-South field of view requirements that are actually often hard to meet even on completely remote sites (speaking as a Starlink customer with a handful of trees in the yard). Cellular is nowhere near as fussy about placement.

Starlink makes most sense when you have no 4G or 5G reception at all, generally speaking.

Not sure I agree about the 4G/5G comment. I got an unlimited 4g/5g hotspot through Calyx Institute that uses the TMobile network ( https://calyxinstitute.org/membership/internet ). I now also have Starlink. The Starlink service is faster and lower latency. I have noticed Starlink getting slower over the past couple months but it is still quite fast. In my experience the downside to Starlink is that several times a week it drops out completely for 10-20 seconds. I thought I was going to have issues with the trees near the location of my antenna but the app shows almost 0 obstruction in the FOV Starlink cares about. It was surprising to me how far north the antenna wants to point. I was picturing it pointing south like a dish would for a geo satellite but Starlink aren't geo. I've also been a customer of two different local wireless point-to-point ISP. One worked great when it wasn't foggy and when the trees didn't have leaves - so only about 1/4 of the year. The other had 800ms pings and also went down frequently. Starlink has been game changing.

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