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I could 100% work my balls off for 6 months if I got the chance of 6 months living on a canal boat.
Starlink - anyone using it?
- Thread starter Dirk Diggler
- Start date
I could 100% work my balls off for 6 months if I got the chance of 6 months living on a canal boat.
Starlink is not designed for this. It's not a satellite phone that does internet, it's meant to supply a home that can't get decent internet from any hard line or mobile telephony supplier. Just like you wouldn't take your home satellite dish with you to get television, you wouldn't take a Starlink dish with you, likely because it would be screwed to the outside of your house and plugged into mains power.
There is a LTT video on the first page of this thread showing the size of the dish and installation.
Soldato
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Just been out to my boat today, took my 5G/4G router with me.
You got a canal boat?
Soldato
Yes.
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You live on it full time or you only on it certain times of the year? I would love to live on one rather than a house.
Soldato
Nah, just a day boat, and holiday boat. Family use it too when I let them.
I've done a month, and six-weeks at a time, could probably live on it if I made some adjustments and adapted it to sleep less people and give more living space.
Back to the topic, I wouldn't spend £90 per month on an internet connection unless i was moored in the middle of nowhere, mist of the time you can get good 4G signal, for streaming etc. Just need to have a good outdoor omni direction antenna.
What if you live in a semi rural area and you only have a FTTC connection which is hit and miss at the best of times and the 4G connection doesn't offer any more than a 10Mb connection and the only options you have to get above 50/60MB connection are 10/15K+ (FTTPoD / EAD etc... ) or buy a new house then Star Link becomes a very compelling option.
Soldato
Not sure why you are quoting me? I've been all for Starlink from, like, page 1 of this thread. I just said I wouldn't get it for my boat...
My bad I miss read it.
Sadly no news yet on the Starlink front 
The speed hit on VF via VM is ridiculous at this time of day:
Gone from this when it used EE:
https://www.speedtest.net/result/11103971512.png
To:
https://www.speedtest.net/result/11343569544.png
My phone on VF directly is still managing 15 down, 5 up. Hopefully once the EE sim arrives back to 30+Mbit on the 4G connection.
The speed hit on VF via VM is ridiculous at this time of day:
Gone from this when it used EE:
https://www.speedtest.net/result/11103971512.png
To:
https://www.speedtest.net/result/11343569544.png
My phone on VF directly is still managing 15 down, 5 up. Hopefully once the EE sim arrives back to 30+Mbit on the 4G connection.
Sorry to spam with non-Starlink stuff - but that is more like it:
https://www.speedtest.net/result/11346682492.png
The difference in how snappily a web-page loads is huge.
Be interesting to compare to what we get with Starlink whenever that turns up.
https://www.speedtest.net/result/11346682492.png
The difference in how snappily a web-page loads is huge.
Be interesting to compare to what we get with Starlink whenever that turns up.
Associate
That looks a lot more useable. When did you order Starlink? Ours was 6 days from order confirmed to delivery which was a lot quicker than expected. First email after ordering said 2-3 weeks.
Had a 'Intermittent service' message on the app last night, but it was still managing 100Mbps down and getting to 250Mbps at some points.
Near the end of Feb - it is still giving an estimated date of being available "sometime" within the first half of this year. Given the area I wouldn't be surprised if a few people didn't jump on it earlier than we did though, quite a few around here only have sub 10Mbit ADSL still, and probably before us in the queue with the current phased availability.
Associate
Ouch, that's nearly as bad as waiting for a GPU! I know that feeling with ADSL, we can get FTTC, but it's estimated at 3-7Mbps down so never bothered with it. Got a quote for FTTP that came back at £19k, so that wasn't really an option.
4G has been great here for the last year or so since we moved in but with all the caravan sites opening up again, daytime speeds have plummeted. Think we are lucky that most people around here have no idea what Starlink is so there wasn't really a queue for it.
I'm relatively lucky - I'm one of 4 houses in a row on this side of the village which gets FTTC (~30/5) we connect to the exchange the next village over - all the rest in the village and outlying houses/farms connect to a different village the other way and get like 3MBit ADSL on a good day and poor mobile coverage to boot.
I suspect a good few have jumped on Starlink the very moment orders opened up as I know several are constantly checking what they can get. There have been a few efforts to organise some kind of community faster connection but the costs have been astronomical.
Associate
That FTTC connection will be a nice backup when you get Starlink. According to the app we are getting about 2 minutes of downtime a day but haven't noticed it as it's bonded with the 4G connections.
I know Starlink isn't in any way cheap compared to FTTC/FTTP that most people can get but when your only other option for a fast connection is paying for a new fibre line it doesn't seem that crazy.
Basically we leave the FTTC connection for latency sensitive applications - gaming, remote desktop, etc. and everyone then uses their own connection and/or shares 4G, etc. for general stuff (we have a bunch of different connections here). Starlink would just be another addition to the pool.
Was much easier where we lived before with a couple of full speed FTTC lines :s
Currently syncing at 80/20 FTTC on EE for £27 each month, I'm not prepared to pay £89 monthly (+setup costs) for Starlink, even if it is 300Mb/Sec. I am however wondering if it will encourage Openreach to speed up the roll-out of FTTP.
As others have mentioned, even if costs do drop once more people sign up what will then happen with latency and speed? This happens in all different markets, but could the providers get greedy and oversubscribe without spending the necessary to maintain the possible speeds?
As others have mentioned, even if costs do drop once more people sign up what will then happen with latency and speed? This happens in all different markets, but could the providers get greedy and oversubscribe without spending the necessary to maintain the possible speeds?
Soldato
Considering Starlink is targeted towards those who either can't get broadband or get very little in terms of broadband/speeds (well below UK average), think farmer in the middle of nowhere syncing at 1/2Mbps (on a good day) and expensive GEO sat providers are the only real option, I doubt it'll happen as i suspect it wouldn't be profitable for them to do so.
Same as any other ISP, contention ratios are in place and arguably LEO sat providers will fling more satellites into LEO, build more ground stations and upgrade tech (laser interlinks etc) to help with latency and capacity/bandwidth.
But there's still a finite amount available so I wouldn't be surprised if they restrict who can get Starlink (OneWeb, Kuiper etc) if it does become excessively popular, ie - if you're in an FTTP, FTTC, 4/5G area then no bueno.
You would like to think they wouldn't but....