Starlink is delivering a promise that has been made for decades: to get broadband internet access in rural parts of the country. No one could deliver the goods. Until now. Elon Musk’s rather cheeky proposal to put thousands of satellites in the air to reach remote customers has already borne fruit according to our tests of the Starlink service which is still in beta.
In our initial Starkink review, we found that it is simple to set up faster than DSL lines, but also faster than many basic cable packages can actually deliver. Certainly as the only option for sparsely populated areas, Starlink could be an outcome, albeit expensive. The basic hardware package is $ 499, plus $ 99 per month for service. (Shipping and taxes set the initial total at $ 581.94).
Based on a few weeks of testing, this is what we love about Starlink so far – and what needs to be improved.
What is Starlink and how does it work?
So why is Starlink such a savior? Because in many parts of the United States – let alone parts of the developing world – there are no or very poor high-speed Internet options. In our rural test site in Vermont, for example, there is no cellular service, no cable service, and no optical fiber. And 5G will not help. The towers should be too many to bounce off signals around the mountains, and the lower frequency version of 5G that gives you more distance is simply not fast enough. Enter Starlink’s service.
Starlink uses a network in low orbit satellites to bring the signal to you. There are currently more than 1,000 small Starlink satellites up, but thousands are still needed before the system is complete (each SpaceX Falcon 9 launch has 60 satellites).
Unlike Dish or DirecTV birds, they are not geosynchronous or geostationary satellites; so the Starlink dish that consumers use should be able to move automatically when needed to pick up a new satellite. But the big advantage that Starlink has is that the satellites orbiting the lower earth, which is about 340 miles above the earth, significantly reduce the signal delay or delay, especially compared to DirecTV satellites, which are more than 22,000 miles above the planet sits.
Starlink review: price and plans
No official Starlink data plans have been announced yet. Starlink currently only offers the flat $ 99 per month service during the beta period. Whether this will change when the service goes live is unknown.
Starlink Review: Coverage
There is no official coverage map, but Starlink plans to eventually offer its service around the world. In a FCC Submission, the company revealed that it would initially “offer commercial service in the northern United States and southern Canada, and then expand rapidly to a global coverage of the populated world by 2021.” Our tests were done in southern Vermont.
Starlink overview: included
Everything you need to get Starlink up and running comes in a single package: the flat, large pizza bowl, a temporary dish rack, 100-foot connecting cable, and a Wi-Fi router / controller that connects be with the dish. You don’t even have to plug things in; everything is already connected. There is no user manual or instructions, just a piece of poster board with a large 3-step graphic setup guide.
The dish is motorized to automatically adjust its purpose, and is heated to keep it from snow and ice. To perform these tricks, it uses a special cable that is permanently attached to the dish and carries not only the signal to the router but also the dish. Therefore, if the cable is damaged, you can not just disconnect it from the antenna and purchase a new cable or use a basic coaxial cable.
Starlink Overview: Installation
Unlike installing and aiming a TV satellite dish, getting the Starlink system up and running is a relative breeze. Just push the dish rack into the tripod and place it on the lawn outside where there is an unobstructed view of the sky. Include the Wi-Fi router and then run the Starlink app to get online. (Note: if you do not have an internet connection where you live, remember to go into the city first so you can download the Starlink app.) If you are fast, it can all be reached within ten minutes.
It assumes that everything goes smoothly. We came across some hooks.
The first problem was the length of the supplied cable. The Ethernet cable is only 100 feet long, so if you have a large house (for a roof installation) or need to put the dish away from the house to get a tree-free look to the sky, you’ll get in trouble . And because it is permanently attached to the dish, you can not simply exchange it for a longer cable.
The second issue was that it is difficult to look at obstructions. We placed the dish in an open area, but the dish faced a northern part of the sky (facing south, where satellite TV dishes should be aimed). It is therefore not surprising that we received a message “Obstacles block your internet connection for about 9 hours a day”. It is accompanied by an image indicating the direction of the obstructions. The culprit: trees that are hundreds of meters away, but manage to hide the view.
The Starlink smartphone app has an option to look at obstructions when you move them with the camera of the phone. But placing the phone exactly in the suggested position of the dish and following the on-screen instructions to turn the camera on or off is tricky, if not impossible, because the camera must be at knee height. We tried to lie on the ground to look better.
Once you have found the ideal position for the Starlink dish, the idea is to install it permanently. Roof locations require additional brackets and hardware, which can be found online from about $ 15. If you need a pole bracket adapter, Starlink sells one for $ 24.
Starlink overview: speeds and overall performance
We tested Starlink for a couple of weeks in all kinds of weather conditions and it subjected to typical internet tasks, from streaming 4K movies and participating in Zoom conference calls to uploading and downloading great videos. Overall, we’ve seen some impressive speeds, but Starlink is still a beta work. Anyone who has downloaded hundreds of emails through rural downloads or waited for a Bridgerton delivery to finish buffering will be delighted to see how Starlink handles such tasks within a fraction of a second.
Although the results of our speed tests vary widely, usually from about 15 Mbps to about 50 Mbps download speed, we did reach a peak of 89.48 Mbps on Speedtest.net. We got similar results on Fast.com. Upload speeds were usually slower, from 5 Mbps to 32 Mbps, and the delay was usually about 32 ms.
Then why the great variation in speed? Some of the results depend on the time of day. We checked and found that the number and location of Starlink’s satellites varied. Most of them seem to have merged in the northwestern United States and those we were aiming for were further north across southern Quebec.
For its part, Starlink does warn beta users to expect speeds ranging from 50 Mbps to 150 Mbps – and to expect some setbacks. The biggest annoyance in this beta test period is indeed that the Starlink service will retire without warning – only to reconnect milliseconds later.
In our Zoom-obsessed world, video calling provides an excellent testing application. We did several Skype, Zoom, Facetime, and Microsoft Teams sessions to see how Starlink fared with such critical applications. For example, Skype calls initially seemed sharp and crystal clear – until they did not and people on the other hand could not hear half of what we were saying. We had the same experience with VoIP calls and even encountered some hurdles with streaming services. In one case. after streaming a 4K movie for half an hour, it suddenly stops and needs to be reloaded. The same comment applies to games: Starlink can be pretty funny, but the dropout during the beta period means you won’t win any Call of Duty battles for now.
Given the reservations, Starlink shows tremendous potential and was still impressively fast, especially when compared to DSL in the same place. The best that the fixed DSL line could do on Fast.com was a download of 1.2 Mbps, 320 Kbps and a delay of 182 ms.
Finally, satellite services can be vulnerable to snow and rain. Starlink thaws snow by actually heating the dish and melting the flakes as they land. It worked well during several severe snowstorms, especially compared to a TV satellite dish that we have to clean occasionally. However, we experienced a decrease in bandwidth during snowstorms and heavy rain. Bandwidth is usually reduced during these periods to the download speed of about 20 Mbps.
Starlink review: early verdict
Anyone who has lived in an area that does not have fast internet access for some time will find Starlink worth the price. It’s the only game in town until Amazon launches and other competing services (whenever). Starlink is also likely to improve and eliminate beta outages, as the company places thousands of satellites above the earth.
In a recent tweet, Elon Musk promised that Starlink would reach a speed of around 300 Mbps later this year when more satellites are in place. It seems to city dwellers nothing with fiber cables running down the street, but to people in the country, it’s an internet dream come true.