Starlink!
There’s no need to cover Starlink in too much detail as a concept. It’s been written about exhaustively and its as interesting to discuss philosophically as it is technically. Today, however, I’m just penning some feedback based on the first installation using it purely as an ISP like Xfinity or Spectrum and leaving its own WiFi router out of the design.
Just in case you’re not familiar with Starlink, it’s a satellite based ISP that delivers internet to your house via a smallish satellite dish and comes with everything you need to get your laptop or tablet logged on including a WiFi router for $499 and $99/mo. You have to order it online and there’s likely to be a wait as they launch more satellites to offer more coverage. When I checked my own address in central Massachusetts it estimated mid to late 2021.
Overall this installation went beautifully. It took me longer to staple up wire in the basement of this home than to get the dish up and running.
To start I unpacked the contents and got everything plugged in. Because it’s pulling service right out of the sky I only needed an outlet. From there the PoE Modem powers both the satellite dish and the router. To my surprise, the dish moved on its own! It made about 3 minutes of adjustments and I was online. I didn’t have to enter any username or password or really anything. It’s one of the easiest on-boarding experiences I’ve encountered.
From there it was just a matter of getting the installation set, which presented a few issues…
First is that there’s a long cable - 100’ I believe - that’s attached to the dish and can’t be disconnected. The other end has a ferrite core a few inches from the head that requires a 7/8” hold to fish through. Anyone who’s ever pulled wire can immediately see the challenges. Fortunately it was an easy drill into the unfinished basement in this instance, but any complicated architecture to deal with and this could have become an issue. It doesn’t appear that you can extend the cable either. I connected it to a pre-terminated Cat6 patch cable that was 5’ long and it wouldn’t complete its power-up cycle.
Of course the other major issue is whether you can get it installed somewhere with a clear 360º view of the sky. In this particular instance, again, I got lucky. I was able to mount it at the very top of the roofline and the house was at a naturally high elevation without any trees close enough to interfere.
Once set up I was reliably getting about 75-80Mbps, which is what Starlink promises. The latency was fairly stable, but your mileage may vary on this.
All in all this was a fun product to work with, but it’s almost as though it wasn’t meant to be professionally installed. Any one of the peculiarities, whether the wire diameter or length, or the visibility could have made this installation impossible. My advice prior to placing an order is to really walk through in detail where you’ll install it and how you’ll wire to it. You’ll want to have a firm plan before the package even arrives.
If you’re in Massachusetts, of course, you can have me come take a look!