Starlink internet

[dern]

We're moving to Norfolk in a month or so and the internet options are very limited and as I work from home this is a problem. I can get a normal installation that says it should be 40Mb download and 10Mb up which is just about ok but if it's lower or unreliable I'd be stuck in a contract and not able to run the online meetings I need to for work. I could use the mobile phone network but having spent a lot of time in Norfolk I'm very sceptical that this would be something I could rely on.

So I bought a Starlink 'dish' and have signed up for an account. It's pretty expensive at £75 a month but given the alternative is to rent an office locally it seems like a bargain. I haven't tried it out in Norfolk yet but I stuck it on the patio here and tried it out. It did loads of updates and eventually settled down between 100-150Mb down and about 20Mb up with a latency of 29ms. Starlink satellites are in low earth orbit which is why the latency isn't 2 seconds.

This is the 'dish' and the plate rotates and tilts to find/track satellites...

starline-1.jpeg (1.1 MiB) Viewed 1196 times

Its view if the sky is pretty bad in the test position as it's next to the house and there are several trees. In the new house it'll be installed here...

new-house.jpeg (439.4 KiB) Viewed 1196 times

...and the view of the sky north is this and as the 'dish' is above the phone lines it should work pretty well...

new-house-view.jpeg (321.45 KiB) Viewed 1188 times

I'll keep this up to date when we move and I find out how good it is. Hopefully it'll be useful to someone.

[Rockburner]

£75 a month for that kind of service is getting towards the "reasonable" end of things.
Will keep an eye on this, we're currently getting about 80Mb tops from the EE 4G signal at a cost of about £40 a month*.




* my EE bill is complex: 1 "phone" sim for calls/texts/data, 1 "data" sim for a my hotspot, and 1 unlimited data sim for the house: total is about £69 a month.

[Rockburner]

Oh yeah - hope you don't get any issue from the neighbours complaining about the new "radiation mast"!

[MrLongbeard]

This is the 'dish' and the plate rotates and tilts to find/track satellites...

Isn't the chimney in the proposed mounting position at risk of blocking the signal ?

[dern]

This is the 'dish' and the plate rotates and tilts to find/track satellites...

Isn't the chimney in the proposed mounting position at risk of blocking the signal ?

It might do. I'll have to check when I get there. There are plenty of alternatives, even moving it down the roof to the front may be an option. It may be better at the top of one of the windows to the front but I'll have to see when I get there.

[Count Steer]

Looks like a very nice gaff. Hope the move goes well.

[Kernel]

My boss was expecting a fibre install when KCOM came a knocking in the village at the end of his lane, ultimately they decided running 1 mile of fibre for 3 houses was out the question so he decided to go down the Starlink route. Mostly he's been happy with it, only real issue he ran in to was with Starllink, at the time, only running Carrier grade NAT, like mobiles so he couldn't set up any inbound connections. I introduced him to Cloudflare tunnels so managed to work round that issue.
He also goes away in his camper and takes the dish with him, which adds to the versatility of it.

[asmethurst99]

Lovely house btw

[dern]

My initial contact with support has been excellent. I thought I'd signed up for a free trial (on the connection, not the dish) so was surprised when I was charged £75. I contacted support but then realised I'd made a mistake and had misunderstood the web page as it was actually a money back if unsatisfied offer. So I followed up my question to make it clear that the misunderstanding was on my part and not to worry about the question. They then came back to me and understood that I'd paid £75 just to try it out ahead of moving in a month or so and credited me 2 months (£150) which is pretty good. I appreciate that it costs them nothing in effect to do that but given I'd made the mistake I was pretty happy with the outcome.

[dern]

Holy f*ck, we've only just moved in. That was an experience I never want to repeat, nightmare.

Anyway I installed the dish half way up the right hand side of the garage eves. On a test it seemed to want to point in a direction where the view of the sky was clearest in that direction. The obstruction map looks really good...

starlink.PNG (295.51 KiB) Viewed 562 times

Speeds seem be ok. Starlink itself reports that it's getting 175Mbps down, 25 Mbps up and the latency is 28ms. I've had to build a mesh with 5 tplink nodes as the walls are pretty thick but wifi performance is excellent. The tv is wired to the hub and doesn't have any problem with 4k streaming. The only thing I've not yet tried is online gaming but I need to hard wire the office to the hub for that but it should be good.

Verdict is that it's expensive but if your only alternative is carrier pigeon then it's worth it.

[Mr. Dazzle]

They use Starlink for SpaceX now, hence why they can show onboard HD footage from their rockets (including the new Starship stuff) for the entire flight.

Bet they ain't got one of them little dishes strapped to the rocket though.

[Pirahna]

I've been using it for a couple of months and am pleased with the purchase. The monthly amount is cheaper here, I pay €38.

[dern]

Played online gaming with a mate tonight for the first time since we moved and very pleased. Pubg and Sea of thieves both worked very well indeed. Didn't want to lose touch with that piece of live so very happy that this works.

[silver991]

Wanted to try StarLink on my dad's remote farm, It worked suprisingly well, and got my dad an internet speed faster than he has seen in his life