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Starlink has kept a promise made for decades: to get high-speed Internet access in rural parts of the country. None were able to deliver the goods. Until now. Elon Musk’s rather bold proposal to put thousands of satellites in the air to reach remote clients is already paying off according to our tests of the Starlink service still in beta.
In our initial review of Starkink, we found it to be simple to set up and not only faster than DSL lines, but also faster than what many basic cable packages are actually capable of delivering. As the only option for sparsely populated areas, Starlink could prove to be a godsend, albeit an expensive one. The basic hardware plan is $ 499, plus $ 99 per month for the service (shipping and taxes bring the initial total to $ 581.94).
Based on several weeks of testing, here’s what we like 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 in parts of the developing world – there are no or very few high-speed internet options. In our bucolic Vermont test spot, for example, there is no cell service, no cable service, and no fiber optic. And 5G won’t help. There must be too many laps to bounce signals around mountains, and the low-frequency version of 5G that gives you more distance just isn’t fast enough. Enter the Starlink service.
Starlink uses a network of satellites in low earth orbit to transmit the signal to you. Currently there are over 1,000 small Starlink satellites aloft, but thousands more are needed before the system is complete (each SpaceX Falcon 9 launch carries 60 satellites).
Unlike the Dish or DirecTV birds, these are not geosynchronous or geostationary satellites, so the Starlink antenna used by consumers must be able to move automatically when needed to realign to pick up a new satellite. But the big advantage of Starlink is that lower Earth orbit satellites, which are about 340 miles above Earth, significantly reduce signal delay or latency, especially compared to DirecTV satellites, which are located over 22,000 miles above the planet.
Starlink review: pricing and plans
There are no official Starlink data plans announced yet. Starlink only offers the fixed service of $ 99 per month at the moment during the beta period. It is not known if this will change when the service goes live.
Starlink Review: Coverage
There is no official coverage map, but Starlink plans to eventually offer its service worldwide. In one FCC deposit, the company revealed that it would initially offer “commercial service in the northern United States and southern Canada, and then expand rapidly to achieve near-global coverage of the populated world in 2021.” Our tests were conducted in southern Vermont.
Starlink review: what’s included
Everything you need to operate Starlink comes in one package: the large pizza box-sized flat dish, a temporary tripod for the dish, a 100ft connection cable, and a router / controller Wi-Fi that connects to 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 display board with a large 3-step graphical setup guide.
The dish is motorized to automatically adjust its aim and heated to keep it clear of snow and ice. To perform these tricks, it uses a special cable which is permanently attached to the antenna and carries not only the signal to the router, but also the power to the antenna. So if the cable is damaged, you can’t just disconnect it from the antenna and get a new one or use a basic coaxial cable.
Starlink Review: Installation
Unlike installing and aiming a satellite dish TV, getting the Starlink system up and running is a snap. Simply push the candlestick into the tripod and place it on the lawn outside where the view of the sky is clear. Plug the Wi-Fi router inside, then just run the Starlink app to connect. (Note: If you don’t have an internet connection where you live, remember to go to town first so you can download the Starlink app.) If you’re quick, everything can be accomplished in 10 minutes .
This assumes that everything is going well. We encountered a few snags.
The first issue was the length of the supplied cable. The power over Ethernet cable is only 100 feet long, so if you have a large house (for a rooftop installation) or need to place the dish away from the house. house to get a tree-less look to heaven, you’re going to be in trouble. And since it’s permanently attached to the dish, you can’t just swap it out for a longer cable.
The second problem was that checking for obstructions can be a tricky process. We placed the dish in an open area but found the dish aimed at a northern part of the sky (relative to the south, where the satellite dishes should be aimed). It is therefore not surprising that we received a message “Obstacles are blocking your Internet connection for approximately 9 hours a day”. It was accompanied by a graph showing the direction of the obstructions. The culprit: trees that are hundreds of meters away but manage to obscure the view.
The Starlink smartphone app has an option to check for obstructions when you move it using the phone’s camera. But placing the phone exactly in the proposed dish position and following the on-screen instructions to aim the camera up or down is tricky, if not impossible, since the camera has to be at knee height. We tried to lie down on the ground to see better.
Once you have found the ideal position for the Starlink dish, the idea is to install it permanently. The location of the roof will require additional brackets and hardware, which can be found online starting at around $ 15. If you need a pole mount adapter, Starlink sells one for $ 24.
Starlink Review: Overall Speeds and Performance
We tested Starlink for several weeks in all kinds of weather conditions and subjected it to typical internet chores, from streaming 4K movies and participating in Zoom conference calls to uploading and downloading large videos. In general, we have seen impressive speeds, but we have found that Starlink is still a beta work in progress. Nonetheless, anyone who has suffered from downloads of hundreds of emails in pokey countries or waited for an episode of Bridgerton to finish buffering will be happy to see Starlink handle such tasks in fractions of a second.
While our speed test results varied widely, typically from around 15 Mbps to around 50 Mbps, we hit highs of 89.48 Mbps on Speedtest.net. We received similar results on Fast.com. Download speeds were generally slower, from 5Mbps to 32Mbps, and latency was typically around 32ms.
So why the large variation in speeds? Some of the results depended on the time of day. We have checked and found that the number and Starlink satellite location varied. Most seem to be clustered in the northwestern United States and those we were targeting were further north in southern Quebec.
For its part, Starlink is warning beta users to expect speeds ranging from 50 Mbps to 150 Mbps – and to expect dropouts. Indeed, the biggest downside to this beta testing period is that the Starlink service will drop out without warning – only to reconnect a few milliseconds later.
In our Zoom obsessed world, video calling presents a great test app. We did numerous Skype, Zoom, Facetime, and Microsoft Teams sessions to see how Starlink performed on these critical applications. Skype calls, for example, initially seemed crisp and crystal clear – until they didn’t and people on the other side couldn’t hear half of what we said. We had the same experience with VoIP calls and even ran into some issues with streaming services. In one case. after playing a 4K movie for half an hour, it suddenly stopped and had to be recharged. The same comments apply to games: Starlink can be pretty snappy, but dropouts during the beta period mean you won’t be winning any Call of Duty battles just yet.
Considering these conditions, Starlink shows huge potential and was still incredibly fast, especially when comparing it to DSL in the same place. The best landline DSL could do on Fast.com was 1.2 Mbps upload, 320 Kbps uploads, and 182ms latency.
Finally, satellite service can be vulnerable to snow and rain. Starlink foils the snow by heating the dish and melting the flakes as they land. During several heavy snowstorms this worked well, especially compared to a TV satellite dish that we sometimes have to clean. However, we have seen a reduction in bandwidth during blizzards and heavy rains. Bandwidth would typically be cut in half during these times to achieve download speeds of around 20 Mbps.
Starlink review: early verdict
Anyone who has lived for a while in an area that does not have fast internet access will find Starlink worth the price. It’s the only game in town until Amazon and others launch competing services (when it does). Starlink is also called upon to improve and eliminate its beta dropouts as the company places thousands of additional satellites above Earth.
In a recent Tweet, Elon Musk promised that Starlink would hit speeds of around 300 Mbps later this year, when more satellites are in place. It might seem trivial to city dwellers with fiber cables on the street, but for locals it is an internet dream come true.
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