Well, considering I've been using Starlink since Jan. 2021, the upload speeds have been more than adequate for typical WFH video/audio calls.

The download speeds dramatically falling over the last year have been a major annoyance when it comes to updating games via Steam or stuff like Microsoft Flight Sim, but streaming video has been perfectly fine the whole time.

Seeing the speeds drop is a bit of a disappointment, but given the reliability of the connection versus our previous ISP, it's 100% worth it for now.

Thanks! I've been wondering if exiling myself deep in Canada and using Starlink to be fully remote was viable. Do you notice any impact from the increase latency (compared to coax cable or fiber) in meetings/voice chat/video games or would it pass the blind test?

Additional question, do you get any connection degradation in bad weather events (if you have them)? Things like snow and storms.

I don't notice any increase in latency in meetings or voice chat. I don't play any real online multiplayer games, but I did do some summoning in Elden Ring the other night and I didn't notice any lag or weirdness with the other players.

We've noticed some slower speeds and satellite obstruction during heavy snow and super heavy intense thunderstorms, but otherwise it's been fine in most of the weather events we experience out on the eastern plains of Colorado.

> 7-12Mbps seem low for typical WFH usage like video conferencing and sharing your screen

It's a little slow, but it's not bad.

It is, however, dramatically better than the <1 Mbps upload speeds (and <5 Mbps download speeds) that a lot of rural customers are getting now.

General rule of thumb for 1080p video streaming = 8 Mbps

720p is half the size, so it should be half that rate = 4 Mbps.

I have no doubt that modern image compression algorithms can bring that down a bit further without too much impact on quality.

So with a median of 7.2 Mbps, that's probably enough for 2 users to have an acceptable video conferencing experience. But if that's the median, then half of their customers have a lower upload speed than that and may only be able to get away with a single user streaming at a time.

And that’s at full motion. Your bobbing head and fixed background takes a lot less.

Same with most screenshares.

I had a 15/1 connection for a while and found no issues with Zoom calls. Maybe an issue if you’re a professional cammer though.

I mostly work on CRUD virtualized apps (effectively screenshares) all workday long and will use well under 1gb in a day.

My biggest beef with Zoom and the like is being unable to restrict resolution/camera quality of myself and others (other than setting the others into small sizes).

I’m in Canada where mobile data is expensive, and therefore very fast. The provider is happy for you to chew your handful of gb per month at full speed and then you top-up with more or get hit with overages.

720p isn't half 1080p, it's a quarter because you're halving resolution on both axes.

1080p is 1920x1080 ~= 2.1m pixels versus 1280x720 = 921,600 .

So a little less than half but definitely not a quarter. And neither dimension is actually halved.

:facepalm: I rushed to be wrong by not mentaly checking that 720 is indeed half 1080. Resolutions indeed never doubled from one step to the next.

Netflix 1080p is 5MB

Beyond some minimal throughput, low latency is a bigger factor in video conferencing and screen sharing and Starlink has low latencies from my understanding.

Thats standard cable numbers. Sadly.

It's faster than all ADSL and most Cable Modem plans, so I'm guessing it's fine?

Well that would be better than what my [canadian] wired internet provided during covid.

My favourite was when Rogers couldn’t complete calls during the day at the beginning of the pandemic. They were saturated and pushed even more people onto web-conference software.

The RDOF "Above Baseline" tier that Starlink bid on requires 100 Mbps down and 20 Mbps up so those speeds are not close to adequate.