Personally, I monitored latency more than speed, as I always had enough speed to do whatever I wanted. When I first started using SL, latency averaged around 100ms (which compared to my previous provider HughesNet was amazing, but was high compared to ground based connections), but today averages around 35ms which is still technically higher than ground based connections, but for all practical purposes for me, is indisguishable from any other internet option, even for online gaming and live video streaming.

Although I did not monitor speed as regurarily, it averages around 300Mbps for me. Sometimes it exceeds 400Mbps (I just ran a speed test and got 420Mbps), and it is rarely less than 100Mbps.

I have contacted support twice, and always received quick replies. However, based on my monitoring the Starlink Reddit forum, customer support during their beta period did appear to have often been poor. And there was also a period of time where performance was poor in many populated regions as they started opening up the floodgates a bit sooner than they probably should have, resulting in slow speeds for people in many regions, until their satellite launches caught up to demand.

However, my impression is that both of these issues have improved significantly since Starlink left beta. I do still see some complaints about customer service, but anecdotally it appears less frequent. My impression is that they have the ability to remotely troubleshoot many hardware issues, and will quickly send a replacement if they can confirm a fault. I do worry about this though, as even a quick reply and a quick hardware replacement means several days of downtime.

Speed complaints are almost certainly less frequent than they used to be.

I have no doubt that your customer service hell story is true, and if that happened to me I would be just as turned off, but I think that, especially today, that is not the norm.

I have considered purchasing a spare terminal as a backup, but I do have some concerns. I have heard that terminals that stay unpowered and unconnected for very long periods of time get too behind on FW updates and essentially become bricked, I don't believe that is the case today but I am not 100% sure. Also, back when there used to be a queue for signing up, it would not have been practical to just set up a new account for the new terminal, but now that the sign up queue is gone, maybe it is an option today. I have not fully researched my options for this redundancy idea.

"Optical navigation subsystem sightings of celestial bodies and landmarks on the Moon and Earth are used by the computer subsystem to determine the spacecraft's position and velocity and to establish proper alignment of the stable platform."

And Wikipedia (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_PGNCS):

"The CM optical unit had a precision sextant (SXT) fixed to the IMU frame that could measure angles between stars and Earth or Moon landmarks or the horizon. It had two lines of sight, 28× magnification and a 1.8° field of view. The optical unit also included a low-magnification wide field of view (60°) scanning telescope (SCT) for star sightings. The optical unit could be used to determine CM position and orientation in space."

Around 2000 land owners are affected, and anecdoctally it seems to add a few days to a 811 response (~a week instead of 2-3 days).

I do see military vehicles traveling to and from the one that I am close to semi regularly, perhaps a month or so on average.

As far as fire response, they likely have their equipment for that at the control centers as well.

Or, from a "common sense" perspective, if I spent $1000 on advertising, and earned $100 in revenue from that investment, my ROI is definitely negative.