Giving Starlink the boot?

[SargeW]

I jumped on Starlink not after it came out. The promise of internet anywhere was too good to pass up. Even though it definitely was not cheap, the promise of advanced technology available anywhere seemed like a dream come true I was still RVing 9 months+ a year, and some were very remote locations. The service was fairly fast, no speed or data caps, 50-100 meg download speeds, but it could drop down quite a bit in urban areas but it was usually possible to stream video. The initial price after buying the equipment at $600 was $110 month.

That plan was a "Fixed Plan" that was assigned by your home billing address. Then they came out with "Portability" which allowed roaming with your dish for an additional $25 a month. Speeds and data were still unlimited. You could turn off portability from month to month when you returned to your home address. That's the plan I had for about a year. Then in June of 2023 the plan increased to $120 a month, plus portability if you used it. Speeds in other than your home area were a minimum of 20 GB download during peak times.

Recently when we went on a 10 day trip to Ca, we took the Starlink as we were going to stay in a few remote areas. While setting up the system and booting it up, I received a message that I was out of my home area, Portability was no longer offered, and the only choice other than go back home was "Mobile Regional". The cost was $150 a month, no speed guarantee, only what was called "best effort". During an evening of trying to stream a TV show, after continual buffering I did a speed check on the Starlink app to discover that their best effort was 1.9 meg of spotty service.

Once you changed, you could not change back to your previous fixed plan, if you wanted to have a minimum speed guarantee you would have to opt in to "Mobile Priority" for 50 GB maximum, for $250 a month. And then for heavy users, 1 Tera Byte of data is $1000 a month, and 5 Tera Byte is $5000 a month.

What once was a pretty good idea, is now kind of a joke. The only advantage to the "Mobile Regional" plan is that you can turn it off and on at will for 30 days at a time. I still have the system, but for now it's in a box, deciding if it has any value at all for us. As a side note, we are using a T-Mobile home internet whole house router. The plan is $40 a month, no data caps, no throttle, and no speed caps.

 

[Kevin Means]

Really sorry to hear you're having those problems Marty. Starlink has changed their service plans and prices so often that it's difficult to keep up. Do you have a "Residential" Starlink system that you converted to "Portable?" I just heard that they've done away with the Portability option and RV Starlink altogether. If you want to travel and use Starlink in different places, you'll have to buy into one of their Roam options - Regional or Global. Their cheapest Regional plan (the one we have) claims download speeds of between 20 and 50 mbps, but we routinely see speeds over 100 and sometimes over 200. And like you said, luckily, we can pause service when we're not using it.

On October 1st, Starlink is also going to clamp down on people using Starlink while in motion. They've been looking the other way for a couple of years, but now they're going to limit in motion speeds to 10 mph on land, and 0 mph at sea, UNLESS you purchase their Network Priority service plan. I don't have a boat, and in motion use is not important to us, so we'll stick with their el-cheapo plan. Works fine for us.

I feel bad for the folks who forked over $2500.00 for Starlink's new high performance dish. One of its selling points was that it could be used while in motion, but even those folks are going to have to start paying for Network Priority if they want to continue to use it in motion.

 

[UTTransplant]

Starlink is not a panacea, but it is the only option for limited cell service locations. If someone travels to more urban areas or major highways almost always, a hotspot with an unlimited

 

[PaulBates]

This is part of the evolution of a data network. Not sure if anyone remembers when the iphone 5 came out.. hailed for 4g network. many bought it and it overwhelmed ATT 4g networks in major metro areas. Over time more towers were installed. A similar thing going on here, and especially depending where you are for the currently deployed sat network. Short answer... growth spurts and network spurts not always going to line up.

Is it worth it?? Personal decision. We don't need the internet that badly. I use the hotspot on my AT&T phone; more than enough capacity for the phone itself, an additional phone and my ipad. Most places have some signal, but we just went through 3+ days of pretty much non existent service and we got along fine, plenty to do outdoors.

Prior to a trip we'll discuss what we'd like to see on rainy down days, pretty much the only time we need to watch something. I go on the appropriate streaming app and download the movies / shows so no service is needed. This process can be repeated and planned around places with mobile service at stops; the passenger can do it while on the move.

 

[LarsMac]

So far, using the fixed service, I have been able to change address, and connect at new location, without issue, and change back, with equal ease.
But then, I don't relocate into very high use areas very often.

 

[SargeW]

Do you have a "Residential" Starlink system that you converted to "Portable?" I just heard that they've done away with the Portability option and RV Starlink altogether. If you want to travel and use Starlink in different places, you'll have to buy into one of their Roam options - Regional or Global. Their cheapest Regional plan (the one we have) claims download speeds of between 20 and 50 mbps, but we routinely see speeds over 100 and sometimes over 200. And like you said, luckily, we can pause service when we're not using it.

I had the residential plan since I signed up, and used portability for a few months at a time while traveling. But since it was not active when they made the switch, it didn't exist any longer for me. I didn't find out about that until I tried to set up the dish in a CA campground.

The only plan available other than "residential" is "mobile regional". So I was stuck between a rock and a hard place, and had to switch to the mobile plan. One of the regulations is that once you switch to a mobile plan, you have no speed guarantee's on you may get, thus the "best effort" speeds which are terrible. And you cannot simply "switch back" to residential plans, due to congestion on the network. If you lived in a lightly populated rural area, it may be possible, but here in Havasu it is not.

So paying $150 a month for dial up speeds is not an option. However, network speeds increase as long as it is not "peak hours" which can vary widely.

 

[Tulecreeper]

The cost was $150 a month, no speed guarantee, only what was called "best effort". During an evening of trying to stream a TV show, after continual buffering I did a speed check on the Starlink app to discover that their best effort was 1.9 meg of spotty service.

I have Dish TV and internet...the big dishes on the roof of my house. On a good day, downhill with a tailwind, I get 5 - 7 MBs.

 

[Isaac-1]

The problem with Starlink is that too many people were gaming the system under the old portability rules.

 

[Gary RV_Wizard]

I figure the pricing was artificially low to attract users in the early days, and of course the system wasn't heavily loaded then either, so performance was superb. I suspect the initial pricing covered current operating costs but not amortization of the huge cost of deploying a satellite network, a common pricing methodology for a new product of that type. As the system & the market matures, they raise prices so as to get the revenue necessary to cover all the costs and, eventually, the desired profitability too. That's pretty much the textbook method of building a market for a totally new product.

 

[Lou Schneider]

I figure the pricing was artificially low to attract users in the early days, and of course the system wasn't heavily loaded then either, so performance was superb. I suspect the initial pricing covered current operating costs but not amortization of the huge cost of deploying a satellite network, a common pricing methodology for a new product of that type. As the system & the market matures, they raise prices so as to get the revenue necessary to cover all the costs and, eventually, the desired profitability too. That's pretty much the textbook method of building a market for a totally new product.

Starlink's problem (and advanage) is a satellite has to be within range of both the user and a ground station to transmit data back and forth. The low elevation of the satellites means they can only see a relatively small area at any given time, dividing the coverage into cell-like areas centered around ground stations in a similar way cellular coverage is centered around individual cell towers.

This differs from geosynchronous satellites where a single ground station can serve up to a third of the globe.

The problem mobile or portable users present to Starlink is the need to reserve capacity for them in all cells the user may venture into. As a simplified example, if 10% of the users are mobile Starlink has to reserve 10% of the capacity in every cell the user may venture into so they can only sell 90% of the system's capacity in a given area instead of 100% if there were no mobile users.

A cellular company can add capacity in an area by putting in more towers and shrinking the area (and number of users) covered by each tower. Starlink can't do this, every ground station covers the same area, where a satellite can see both the ground station and the user.

They do have the ability to bounce signals from satellite to satellite before sending them to a ground station. This extends coverage to places like ships at sea that are out of range of a ground station but isn't much help when a large number of users are overloading the spectrum in a single cell.

 

[SargeW]

It's not even the increase in cost as much as it is the elimination of a minimum speed guarantee. The whole pricing plan is designed to push mobile users, even those rarely being mobile, out of residential plans that have minimums, thus freeing up bandwidth, as Lou has just stated.

If I do keep the system, it will sit in the box for 90% of the year, just being used when absolutely necessary. If they ever do establish a "monthly fee" for non use of the system I will drop it like a hot rock.

 

[garyb1st]

Still using Starlink or have you found an alternatives that works.

 

[Isaac-1]

SargeW I suspect a lot of those fees were due to loosing money on every unit shipped out as they were selling them well below manufacture cost. As production costs drop, I doubt we will see new fees for inactive accounts.

 

[SargeW]

I have been using T-Mobile Home Internet for the last several months now. It works well at the house, and I take it in the RV for our trips out. I have been surprised how well the larger router works to pull in signal. And at $50 a month for unlimited data, I haven't missed SL a bit. I still have the equipment in a box, And I have taken it on a few trips but wound up not needing it.

My account is "paused" at the time, and allegedly I can restore it with a few clicks. Not planning to find out any time soon though.

For my streaming needs I have been using an App a buddy turned me on to. It's called "FOS" which stands for "Future of Streaming". One flat rate each month for movies, TV shows and live TV. Been using it for almost a year now, $44.95 a month. When the latest Tom Cruise movie came out a while back, I streamed it on FOS 3 days later. It works.

 

[John From Detroit]

Once you changed, you could not change back to your previous fixed plan, if you wanted to have a minimum speed guarantee you would have to opt in to "Mobile Priority" for 50 GB maximum, for $250 a month. And then for heavy users, 1 Tera Byte of data is $1000 a month, and 5 Tera Byte is $5000 a month.

You might want to check out "Bait and Switch" laws in your state Might apply as that is clearly a bait and switch scheme.

 

[Skookum]

We signed up with Starlink in 2022 and we are grandfathered in under the old portability option so we plan to keep it as long as it's useful. At our home, we are in an under-served area for broadband and do not have access to cable, fiber, or even good cellular signal. Starlink was (is) a game-changer for us as we were maxing out a 20/2 bonded pair DSL line between two connections for work.

Starlink does bog at peak usage hours, typically in the evening. The service has improved with the launch of more satellites, but then more users in our area signed on. It's still "very good" compared to DSL. Off-peak it's not uncommon to see anywhere from 100-250Mbit down and 10-20Mbit up. The "up" is what we really utilize.

In the same timeframe, cellular improved slightly. TMobile put in a tower nearby but we are on the very edge and only get 2-3 bars of service at the house on a cell phone. Their router/modem doesn't do any better. We also signed up for T-Mobile Home Internet as a secondary connection, and I'd rate it as "poor". It drops, it bogs to unusable speeds at peak hours. It's overloaded and T-Mobile doesn't seem to care about putting another tower in our area, heck, I'd lease them a spot on our property if I could.

Will be interesting to see what happens to Starlink. Elon received a bunch of money from the government to provide broadband to underserved areas. He recently missed target subscribership under that agreement. Launching satellites is not a cheap endeavor...the hardware costs for the dish are extremely high. Long term, I wonder if the service will be viable.

 

[Bobtop46]

I have been using T-Mobile Home Internet for the last several months now. It works well at the house, and I take it in the RV for our trips out. I have been surprised how well the larger router works to pull in signal. And at $50 a month for unlimited data, I haven't missed SL a bit. I still have the equipment in a box, And I have taken it on a few trips but wound up not needing it.

My account is "paused" at the time, and allegedly I can restore it with a few clicks. Not planning to find out any time soon though.

For my streaming needs I have been using an App a buddy turned me on to. It's called "FOS" which stands for "Future of Streaming". One flat rate each month for movies, TV shows and live TV. Been using it for almost a year now, $44.95 a month. When the latest Tom Cruise movie came out a while back, I streamed it on FOS 3 days later. It works.

Shhh, this will end up like Starlink with good reviews like this.

 

[garyb1st]

Sarge, please explain how T-Mobile Home Internet works while on the road? Our Spectrum Internet which cost more than twice your $40.00 monthly rate is firmly connected to a cable which comes into the house via a utility pole behind our yard. Even if we took the modem and router, what would we connect it to?

While on the road, we use Verizon for Internet. We have hot spots on both phone which gets us maybe 40 gigs. My phone is actually with Spectrum but they use Verizons towers. In addition we have a Verizon MiFI which, if memory serves, gets us another 100 gigs. The Verizon bill is close to $200. a month. With Spectrum, the total is over $300. Just seems ridiculous when you add in Netflix, Prime +++.

The wife insists she has looked at t-Mobile and says it doesn't compare to the Verizon Network. At the end of the day, we pay about $4,000 a year to watch TV, and use our phones. If that's not the definition of insanity I don't know what is.

How does the FOS system work. Is it tied to your T-Mobile service or is it an independent system. For $45. a month, sounds like a great deal. Not that I'm looking to spend another $500 a year to watch TV, but if it replaced Netflix etc., that would offset some of the cost. And if it includes regular TV, that would be something we don't get even at the house.

 

[SargeW]

The Home Internet is a large stand alone router with an imbedded 5G cellular modem Gary. It sits on the counter and all it takes is to plug it in, and it boots up and searches for signal. So it works much like a cell phone would, and it connects to the 5.0 and 2.4 ghz frequencies. I assume that the ability to connect better than the average cell phone is due to the large size and better internal antenna.


The FOS app is a downloaded app to a Amazon Firestick, Roku or smart TV. Here is the link Xtreme Player – The World's Most Powerful Media Player
It's pretty easy to use, and has an amazing amount of programing.

 

[LarsMac]

My phone is on Google Fi network. It goes almost anywhere.
One curiosity I have discovered, though:
Where Google Fi fails to connect, I also have difficulty connecting to Starlink. That seems an odd coincidence.