Technology

Who wrote this article?

"A SpaceX support page (which appears to only be available in Swahili, for some erason)"

Don't get me wrong. Fuck any satellite service, and especially FUCK fElon. This article is trash, though.

Sending money to a clown and NOT expecting a fucking circus, are we?

"High demand" meaning underprovisioning.

Fine by me. All his customers are a bunch of suckers

Satellite internet is a last resort. People shouldn't be using it if they have fibre broadband or 5G options that provide the same speeds. It's a lifesaver if you're on a boat, or live off grid, or just a few miles from where the broadband ends. But if it's anywhere with other people then it's going to max out with horrible contention. At the point the only option is "moar satellites".

This is sooo on cue, right as my AI loving IT colleagues are talking about getting starlink, only to have a backup internet connection in case of an outage.

And I read somewhere that he may be trying to buy t mobile to be able to meet that demand.

I am guessing this is to amp up the stock price of the GrokSpaceLink IPO.

I think they'll rug pull hard line internet for residents.

It's all that escaped with a bit of net neutrality.

Cellular and satalitte both allow traffic shaping and that's the more profitable.

Hell, maybe they can nationalize it and get Elin paid.

First, Musk is a nazi-saluting asshole. Now that we have that established, this article is mostly rage-bait with selective truths on the Starlink service. I'm all for calling out bad behavior a company (and there is a little bit here, but not much regarding the customer billing concerns). This (mostly) rage-bait article is (mostly) distracting focus from the very important problem with Starlink regarding Musk's influence on the government entities that are supposed to protect us from oligarchs. Not only does this include the FCC, but the SEC that let musk bend and break rules to IPO the SpaceX stock enriching himself at the cost of the American people

The narrative of the article is "Starlink has massive hidden fees! Look $1500 charge! Look $500 charge! Look $1000 charge!"

There's three different reasonable explanations for the situations all three these.

1. $1500 charge - it was a billing software bug, not a policy change, and Starlink reversed the charges costing the subscriber nothing. Yes, I agree customer service could be better and faster.

2. $500 charge - Subscriber was trying to skirt the rules to save themselves money by subscribing to the [long term plan] for [short term] use. When a subscriber signs up for [long term plan] the extra charge is clearly shown before the service is subscribed to. Yes, the fee is there, but its not hidden. Yes the fee is high, but the prior version of how subscription works meant that the customer would simply be told "we're at capacity for your area, no service for you at all". Instead if service is that important for a user they can choose to pay the fee. Yes, there should be an extra warning when someone is changing their address for [long term plan] but this should be a minor edge case and the poster would not have even run into an issue if they had been subscribing to the appropriate [short term plan].

3. $1000 charge notice - See detail from the $500 charge explanation why this particular $1000 charge notice exists. The alternative is a possibly customer would just be told to go away with no recourse when they may desperately need the service even with the high priced fee. The fee was clearly labeled before purchase and the customer chose not to go forward, which is entirely their right if they don't see the value.

Don't be distracted by the rage-bait from the important concerns of Musk's government influence.

And they pay it? Outside of contract?