Starlink is a True Lifestyle Enabler

It's 2025 and yet, there still isn't terrestrial high-speed Internet access throughout the United States. Most cities are pretty well served with fiber or cable Internet, but even some suburbs are limited to DSL which typically maxes out at about 100mbps, with most DSL users getting substantially lower speeds. To make things worse, speed available depends on distance from ISP equipment. In rural areas there are also WISPs--Wireless Internet Service Providers which offer Internet access from tall towers or mountaintops. Speeds are comparable to DSL, but also require line-of-sight from the customer premises to their access point. Until recently, satellite Internet service was only from Geostationary satellites with limited capacity (speeds were typically 10mbps or less, often much less) and high latency (round trip from the ground to the satellite to a ground station and back) could be a quarter second or more. Simply, until recently, if your income depended on reliable and high-speed Internet access, you more or less had to live in or close to a city.

What is Starlink?

Starlink is a constellation of thousands of low earth orbiting satellites that delivers reliable, low-latency, high-speed Internet access to almost the entire world at a price that most can easily afford. Fiber to the home is the gold standard for residential Internet access. But where fiber or cable isn't available, Starlink is the next best thing. The network became available to a selet few beta testers in late 2020, and went into mainstream service in late 2021. Download speeds are typically in the 100mbps to 300mbps range, upload speeds between 10mbps and 30mbps, and latency is tyically between 20ms and 30ms. Starlink will work in an increasing number of countries and even while at sea and in air. This allows airlines, cruise ships and trains to offer high-speed Internet where it was previously unavailble or cost-prohibitive for many use cases.

Starlink can provide such low latencies because the satellites orbit the earth at much lower altitudes than geostationary satellites. But because the Starlink satellites are not stationary in the sky, the dishes must track the satellites as they move across the sky. The dish does't physically move, but rather uses a phased array antenna to steer the beams at the satellite it is tracking. Phased arrays used to be found only on satellites and military platforms, but SpaceX has been working hard to reduce the cost of manufacturing these phased arrays and user terminals now cost less than $500 USD. Ground stations all over the world connect Starlink users to the fiber backbones of the Internet. Lots of ground stations are required because the satellites orbit so close to the earth that their field of view does not reach more than a few hundren miles. You may wonder how Starlink can work over the ocean, where there are no ground stations in sight. This is where it gets interesting. Many of the Starlink satellites have lasers on board for communicating between each other, so users over or on the sea will have their Internet traffic travel from satellite to satellite until they reach one in sight of a ground station.

The starlink system was designed to service rural and other areas that are not economically feasible to connect with terrestrial Internet access. There is a limit to the number of user terminals that can be supported in a given area, so Starlink is not particularly suitable for metropolitan areas and their suburbs except for the occasional streets that aren't served by a terrestrial provider.

My experience with Starlink

For the last decade or so, I have lived in an area where several fiber routes converge. Despite this, ouside of the nearby small town, fiber Internet is not available to the public. DSL only extends about ten miles from the town, and byeond that, the only options are a cellular hotspot, a few WISPs, and satellite service. Before Starlink, none of the options were particularly great, though I was eventually able to get WISP service at my house by extending service from a neighbor's house. This allowed me to work from home instead of commuting a half hour to the nearest town for Internet access. But the service did not do so well once multiple people in the house started streaming video or performing bandwidth intensive tasks. As a software developer, I frequently download and upload large repositories.

Fortunately, the Starlink beta test happened in my area, so I was able to get in early. The beta test was marketed as "better than nothing." In my opinion, even with it's coverage gaps and frequent outages in the early days, it was significantly better than my previous ISP which I kept so I could fall back to it when there were outages. Our family was immediately able to do things we weren't able to do before. My wife could attend school while I was working, I could do operating sytem and software updates at home instead of having to drive to town. (Prior to Starlink, large downloads would take several hours to complete and would sometimes fail before completing. Metered access made such occurrences even more disadvantageous.) Phone and video calls didn't degrade when someone else accidentally started a download during a meeting. In short, the "better than nothing" service was bliss! Five years later, Starlink is as good as any other ISP, if not better!

What Starlink can enable you to do

So what can one do now that good Internet service is available virtually anywhere? How about:

• Live in an RV travelling the country all while working to pay your way
• Sail around the world while sharing your adventure with those dearest to you
• Have a mobile office that's connected no matter where you are
• Live anywhere you want without giving up your connectivity to the rest of the world

Cost/Benefit considerations

The monthly cost of standard residential Starlink service is $120USD at the time of writing. Plans for airplanes and maritime vessels cost more and require more expensive user terminals. There is also a mini terminal which can fit in a backpack and run from a battery for less than $500. Roaming plans that allow you to change location and operate while in motion start at $50 for 50 GB of data and go up to $165 for unlimited data. While not unreasonable, these prices are higher than most fiber or cable Internet service. However, most people who consider Starlink have no other reasonable options and need Internet access so they will happily pay this price.

I first used Starlink at an off-grid cabin. The first thing I noticed was how much power it used. The original terminals used over 75 watts and sometimes as much as 130 watts, while newer terminals use about half that. Depending on where you live, this could add $10/month or more to your utility bill. For my off-grid cabin, Starlink was the appliance using the most electricity by far--even more than my refrigerator! If you plan to run Starlink from solar power and batteries you may need to plan for this load unless you decide to use it only intermittently.

What do you think?

Is there a lifestyle that you have wanted and can now pursue with Starlink? Do you have any horror stories after embarking on a new journey with Starlink? Tell me your story in the comments section below! I would really like to hear your story!

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