Setting up Starlink Internet for the RV

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For an additional monthly fee, the Portability feature enables users to temporarily move their Starlink to new locations in order to receive service anywhere within the same continent Starlink provides active coverage. To see active coverage areas, please view the Starlink Availability Map. Portable users are served best effort and can expect lower service levels than fixed users, particularly in areas marked as "Waitlist" on the Availability Map.

Add Portability on Your Account:

  • If you are an active customer, you can enable Portability from your account page and it will take effect immediately.
  • If you purchased Portability before receiving your Starlink as a new customer, you must first power on your new Starlink at the Service Address listed in your account so your Starlink can update its software. Once updated, the Starlink will then be configured for Portability.
  • If you have multiple Starlinks, Portability must be selected and purchased for each location.
  • When you enable Portability, you are charged on your next monthly invoice. Portability is charged in full monthly increments and cannot be pro-rated. The Portability feature and billing charges will be ongoing until you decide to disable it. Once you disable Portability, the recurring charge will stop after your next monthly invoice and Portability will only remain active for the remainder of the current billing cycle. For example, if you enable Portability on March 12th and your next billing date is on April 1st, you will be charged $25 on April 1st for the full previous month.
Limitations:

  • Best Effort Service: Portability service is provided on a best effort basis. Stated speeds and uninterrupted use of services are not guaranteed. Starlink prioritizes network resources for users at their registered service address. When you bring your Starlink to a new location, this prioritization may result in degraded service, particularly at times of peak usage or network congestion.
  • International Travel: Starlink can only be used within the same continent as the registered Service Address. If you use Starlink in a foreign country for more than two months, you will be required to move your registered service address to your new location or purchase an additional Starlink to maintain service.
  • No In-Motion Use: We do not support Starlink use in motion at this time. Using the Starlink Kit in motion will void the limited warranty of your Kit. While our teams are actively working to make it possible to use Starlink on moving vehicles (e.g., automobiles, RVs, boats), Starlink is not yet configured to be safely used in this way.
    Lou Schneider said:
    Welcome to The RV Forum, Robb!

    The problem is all of Starlink's account specific components are in the dish itself, not like satellite TV where the dish is mostly passive and the account resides on the inside receiver you carry back and forth from the house to the RV. Starlink's inside unit only supplies power to Dishy and acts as a router to distribute the signal to your devices.

    You can have multiple units at a single address but I believe each dish requires it's own subscription. If you don't want to move Dishy back and forth the best you can do is to have two accounts, one for the house and one for the RV and turn them on and off depending on which one you'll be using.
    Click to expand...
    You can have multiple dishes on a single account.
  • Once you have set up your first account, and dish, you can easily add a second dish, and sign it up for RV portability.
 
What are the limitations on Starlink for RVs? (e.g., international travel)
  • Best Effort Service: Network resources are always de-prioritized for Starlink for RVs users compared to other Starlink services, resulting in degraded service and slower speeds in congested areas and during peak hours. Stated speeds and uninterrupted use of the service are not guaranteed. Service degradation will be most extreme in "Waitlist" areas on the Starlink Availability Map during peak hours. See Starlink Specification for expected performance here.
  • International Travel: Starlink can only be used within the same continent as the registered Shipping Address. If you use Starlink in a foreign country for more than two months, you will be required to move your account to your new location or purchase an additional Starlink to maintain service.
  • No In-Motion Use: We do not support Starlink use in motion at this time. Using the Starlink Kit in motion will void the limited warranty of your Kit. While our teams are actively working to make it possible to use Starlink on moving vehicles, Starlink is not yet configured to be safely used in this way.
 
LarsMac said:
You can have multiple dishes on a single account.
  • Once you have set up your first account, and dish, you can easily add a second dish, and sign it up for RV portability.
Click to expand...
Right, but each dish will be charged its own $110 or $135 a month subscription unless paused. Not like satellite TV where you can move the receiver with a single subscription back and forth between a dish on the house and a dish on the motorhome. If a single subscription covered multiple dishes, what would stop someone from ordering multiple systems and reselling them?
 
Lou Schneider said:
Right, but each dish will be charged its own $110 or $135 a month subscription unless paused. Not like satellite TV where you can move the receiver with a single subscription back and forth between a dish on the house and a dish on the motorhome. If a single subscription covered multiple dishes, what would stop someone from ordering multiple systems and reselling them?
Click to expand...
I was not speaking to the costs. simply the capability.

What I did was fairly simple. I have the dish sitting on the roof of our RV when at home, and I use a WiFi Extender (Netgear EX6200) connecting to it and feeding into my home network.
At 600 bucks a pop, I will not be buying a second dish in the near future.
But it can be done.
I am considering getting a new extender to replace the EX6200, But so far, I am happy with performance of this setup. I regularly clock 120-160 Down and 25-60 Up
 
Thanks to all who responded to my question. When I asked about running two dishes under a single account, I WAS actually talking about the monthly subscription amount :). But I understand the situation now.
 
Users are reporting about 90 ms latency. Their satellites are only about 600 miles up, not 22.300 miles away in geosynchronous orbit. For comparison, AT&T 4G wireless has about 42 ms latency here in Pahrump.
 
Has anyone ever been in a congested, restricted area and had your service priority lowered? I am very interested in Starlink, but I am interested in knowing how it behaves in congested areas. I know they deprioritize mobile accounts under those circumstances but does that mean 0 service or does it just drop down to 2-3GB? I am particularly interested in areas like Quartzsite where the cell towers can’t even begin to keep up with the congestion.
 
UTTransplant said:
Has anyone ever been in a congested, restricted area and had your service priority lowered? I am very interested in Starlink, but I am interested in knowing how it behaves in congested areas. I know they deprioritize mobile accounts under those circumstances but does that mean 0 service or does it just drop down to 2-3GB? I am particularly interested in areas like Quartzsite where the cell towers can’t even begin to keep up with the congestion.
Click to expand...
I have the same questions/concerns. My uneducated guess is that it's a moving target what with the infrastructure being constantly upgraded (new sats) and more & more users coming online.
 
I am in Show Low right now, a fairly remote area 3-4 hours from Phoenix and at about 6000' elevation, so not heavily populated. I just did a speed test and Starlink showed 31 meg down and 3 up. We have been streaming for the last 6 hours due to being inside because of rain and thunder. My Starlink app shows 7 devices currently connected, and no issues with signal.

It can slow down due to congestion in a heavily populated area, but it has never prevented me from streaming and being on line.
 
We have two Starlink systems - a residential Starlink and an RV Starlink. Our Residential system is not portable, but you can pay an extra monthly fee and make it portable if you'd like (like Marty did) but you cannot revert it back to non-portable. Portable systems have lesser priority than Residential systems.

Our RV system is portable, so it does not get the same priority as Residential systems, but we have never noticed any de-prioritization that affected our ability to stream HD movies, make wifi calls or surf the web.

Our two systems are billed separately. When we're not using our RV Starlink, we can us the app to deactivate it if we're not going to be using it. That's done on a monthly billing cycle. We can activate it with the app when we want to use it again. You can't deactivate Residential Starlink. You're billed monthly whether you use it or not, unless you cancel your subscription completely.

We've been RVing for decades , and this is by far the best way we've found to stay connected with high speed internet and streaming HD programming, simultaneously - all with no usage caps. Is it perfect? No, but I don't know of another system that is, and which does everything Starlink does.

Kev
 
Kev, if you don't mind sharing, how much do you pay for the RV Starlink. We have Verizon MiFi and while not expensive at $30 a month, since we only use it maybe 3 or 4 months a year, it's works out to $90 to $120 a month for the time we're using it. Worse, that's for only 30 gigs of data which goes pretty fast. Usually if I'm conservative, I'll be lucky to get 10 to 15 days before being throttled. At that point, it's almost worthless.
 
We converted our SL unit to roaming this month.
Took it to KC with us. We had no issues with connections, even while in KC. (Well, near KC.) we were camped just South of the city.
Will have to see how the next couple of trips go.
Next week, headed over to the Telluride area.
 
Home Starlink is $110 a month with no data cap. Adding portability is $25 a month for each month you keep it activated. I can deactivate it in the App when I get back to the stick house. RV Starlink is $135 a month, no data cap. You can pause it for the months that you are not using it.

Home Starlink cannot be paused, because when I get back to the home area I will still maintain my position as a "resident" user and my usage position will reflect that. If I were to pause or stop the home Starlink, I would go to the bottom of the list when I reactivated it.
 
What Marty said Gary. We pay $110 a month th for Residential Starlink and $135 a month for RV Starlink.

Here’s something else we’ve heard questions about - reliability during inclement weather. Our new place is at an elevation of a little more than 5000’ in southern Arizona, and it’s monsoon season right now. The locals here telli us that they’ve never seen such violent monsoons as this year.

Cyndi and I are staying in our RV while the final touches are put in/in the building, and we both agree that two of those storms were the worst storms either one of us had ever experienced. Wind, hail, rain and lightning for an hour straight. Flooded roads, toppled trees etc. During each storm, our Starlink antenna went to a flat position (facing straight up) presumably to protect itself. We lost the signal until most of the storm had passed, then it came back online.

A “normal” thunderstorm doesn’t seem to affect it at all, nor does heavy rain. The antenna even has a built in warmer to melt snow.

Kev
 
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