Starlink internet service begins public beta in the Methow Valley

I've added a poll about Starlink to give us a slightly better idea of the numbers.
I'm sure there must be at least a hundred people with Starlink beta service in the county, and I'm sure there's hundreds more who want the service.

Starlink Service Poll

eeholmes, You're welcome! I'm glad the article was helpful.

Yes, you do get a lot of snow up there, but I think it'll be fine. Let us know your experience though!

I'm quite familiar with your internet experience in LR as we lived in LRAA for nearly 7 years. I had Centurylink service then, and it was quite horrible. Amazingly, from your description it sounds like it's actually degraded since we lived there. I paid for 1.5 mpbs down/256 kbps up DSL, the maximum that their equipment there will support, and it had around 80ms latency or less. It did get extra slow and frustrating on weekends and holidays when many more people were using it. And yes, I was one of the people there complaining to Centurylink about how much they oversold their service in Mazama. It used to be surprisingly reliable and tolerable for years before that.

Yes, unfortunately, you won't want to kick Centurylink to the curb until at least you find out just what Starlink is going to look like when it exits beta. The good thing is that when more people drop Centurylink in the Mazama area, it will result in improved service for the others left on it.

Indeed, Mike. So far, I haven't seen any rhyme or reason as to how invitees are selected. As you say, and I've seen it too, the selection is apparently not by beta signup seniority. I've wondered if they're doing some terrain processing by location addresses, and scoring the signups based on that. But that seems like it would be a fair bit of extra work, and possibly not all that accurate to boot.

I suspect the answer may be something more simple, that they are just selecting via lottery from the current signups in an area, though perhaps filtering by a certain distance from other beta users.

I think there was a good reason that they came back and asked for service street addresses a couple months after starting signups.