Starlink Anyone?

[Gary Hatt - Publisher BCM]

How many people on here use Starlink?   I see more and more people using it in campgrounds and some of my friends have it.

The $600 hardware fee is a bit steep for what you get in my opinion and I can probably afford that if I save my pennies. But when I consider the monthly fee of $150, which seems to keep ratcheting up every few months, it can cost a lot to use this system.

At $150/month, that comes out to $1,800/year to be connected.

If I get it, I will probably use it for at least 10 years, good lord willing, and that comes to $18,000, and that is assuming no price hikes, which will happen, guaranteed.

My Verizon and T-Mobile hotspots come in about 95% of the places I travel, so I figure it will cost me $18,000 to get connected 5% of the time that I can't connect any other way.

Also, because I travel and live full time in my bus, if I park someplace that I cannot get a cell phone connection, then I have a choice. I can either not check my email and the Forum for 2 or 3 days until I can get to a place where I can get a connection, or I can continue driving until I can reach cell phone service, maybe at the next rest area.

There have been very few times that I felt I needed Starlink to be connected.

That being said, I was parked on a beach in Mexico last February where there were no cell phone towers nearby.  The connection was very spotty. Luckily my neighbor had Starlink and he let me connect to his system and I was able to get connected and get my work done.  However, I could have easily driven about a mile towards town and connected with my hot spot.

Now if I was stationary in a remote mountain cabin in the middle of Colorado, then yes, I would get Starlink in a heartbeat, but in my current situation, it is hard to justify the $18,000 price tag to stay connected for 10 years.

The other thing about Starlink, unless you mount the antenna on your roof, you have to get it out of a packaged box and set it up and run the cable and connect it every time you stop.  Then when you get ready to leave, you have to take it down, box it up with the cable and store in your bus. Yes, one more thing to have to make room for in your bus.

If I were to stop in a rest area for the night in the middle of nowhere for a day or two, is it really worth it? Besides it may get run over or stolen. 

You also need a clear view of the sky in the direction the satellites are, and if you like to park under trees, a roof mount system is not ideal. 

Sometimes it is nice to have my hotspots and just turn on my laptop and be connected 24/7 without haveing to even get out of the bus.

What are your thoughts?  Do you have Starlink?  Are you considering getting it?

BTW, there are a couple of Facebook pages dedicated to Starlink, and if you read those, you will see that there are problems now and then with those units, which seem to be quite brittle and they get blown off roofs and damaged all the time, then it takes a while to get a replacement unit.  This can be a problem especially if you are traveling around the country.  But if you are considering one of these units, I encourage you to start following one of the Facebook pages on these to learn all you can before you buy one.

Here is one of the pages I follow that deal with traveling around with one of these units.  https://www.facebook.com/groups/214109926791586


So the question is, do you have Starlink or are you planning on ordering it soon?

[bobofthenorth]

We had it in our rental house in Melaque last winter - its great but I'm too cheap to pay the $150/month.

Something you may want to look into though, I can't remember where I read it but the mobile systems don't have as high a bandwidth as the home systems AND they can be selectively degraded further depending on the load in the area where they are situated.  For $150/month I'd want to be 100% sure I was always getting my 100+ MB down

For Mexican data its simple to get a Telcel phone and use Carlos' data.  Its so cheap we actually use it in the US and Canada as well but the Canadian roaming is pretty sketchy. 

[windtrader]

I got one last year, a couple months after release. It was in use for a few months last season as there was zero reliable data service nearby. There was good service in the park but that was a half mile away. It was not a necessity but a huge luxury to have high speed 24x7 inside and around the bus. Stream just like home and wifi cell service was great.

Purchase price is a one time sunk cost. Just another bill to pay being a bus owner. The monthly charge is not trivial so the price depends 100% on what it is worth to you. If you were a remote worker, 40 hours a week online in your bus, most would probably see sufficient benefit for the cost. On the other end, if you camp a couple weekends a month where there is no service, then it probably is more a luxury if just for personal use. But if you need to stay connected for business then it may very well be offer sufficient value. Closing one business deal might easily pay for years of service.
As to the setup. Mounting permanently makes it harder to get clear sky. you park under the tree for shade, well, you get no starlink. Placing the dish outside where there is clear sky is very simple. It's not anywhere the nuiance made out earlier. There is one cord and the dish and stand. big deal. unwind the cord, put the dish down, hook up inside, and you're done.
Now, all that said. This season, I have still not hooked it up. Everywhere the bus goes, there has been good 5g cell service. Stream away and hotspot, all good. Service is month to month but there is a 30 day cycle and if you miss the window, you're facing another month's charge. Again, it all depends on the value it offer to you.

[Van]

Been a year and a half now and no complaints, works great! We have the mobil plan with Dishy mounted on a pole. Getting ready to wire the coach so I can plug the cord in down in the bay. I heard you can pause service if its a mobile plan, I dunno... again works for us as we are fulltimers.

[luvrbus]

I don't have Star Link, I don't work from home, don't watch many movies or do Utube so don't need it.I have friend with a good income plus his S/S and asked why he didn't have the service ,he told me it would cost him 1 month a year of his S/S and he had other things to spend the money on.I checked into StarLink per Van but could not see where it be a cost I could justify, plus I can see where the price will keep going up and with more subscribers the speeds are slowing down. I am signed up for a new high speed internet service from the power co. when it reaches our area and it only going to cost me $19.00 a month unlimited with cell phone service because of our age I can live with it.I have Frontier now it sucks and cost me a $104.00 a month   

[rusty]

When we went to Alaaka this summer I looked into a sat phone because I don't like being out of touch for a couple of reasons.  After comparing the price of rental or buying a sat phone it worked out that starlink was not that much more and we were connected  to the net. We bought starlink and was happy with the service. A little pain in the butt to set up and tear down  but at no time were we out of touch. Now We have to decide if we want to replace our service at home for 40 dollars a month more or put starlink on stand by for 4 bucks a month until we need it in the bus.[
Wayne

[chessie4905]

The monthly is not that big a deal, since millions of people blow more that that on Dish subscriptions. 500 channels and nothing to watch. If Starlink works that great, from what I've heard, just cut back on booze and cbd.
I finally dumped our Dish, along with land line last spring. Not missed. Do have Sirius-Xm lifetime though, until it goes bankrupt.

[lvmci]

The house in Williams,  AZ has no reliable cell service, especially when the families come up from phoenix to get out of the heat. The bandwidth is used up by the kids on their cell phones, board with the forest. Hugesnet was bad from the begining and also unreliable and costly.  And even worse on cloudy and rainy days. Starlink has less problems with the rain and snow. And now she can use it to do zooms all over the world or teach her classes from home when needed...

[lostagain]

We have two houses and the bus. Starlink replaces the subscription at both houses. That comes out cheaper. And we have great service at the bus anywhere. Only takes 10 minutes to set up. Zip tie the antenna to the top of the ladder. Router in a baggage bay with a 110V outlet. Internet in another 5 minutes. Win win. Yea Elon!

[luvrbus]

When we were traveling  a lot internet and Tv was something we never thought about we enjoyed the ride and sights along with taggled fishing reels, Musk the richest man in world won't miss my $150.00 a month     

[Dave5Cs]

Don't have Star-link. We use our t Mobil phones or 100 gig t mobil hotspots to include cabling it to the TV for streaming. We pay 50 a month added to our t Mobil bill. No setup and works below trees too.

Gary maybe if you sold the plane, the Yacht and the Cabin in the mountains you could afford Star-link, Just sayin! 

[freds]

You can flat mount it on the top of the bus so you don't have to mess with it.

Maybe look at it another way and say hey I can Boone dock a few days a month to offset the cost.

[chadspeer]

I've had the original Starlink antenna running at home for two and a half years.  It has been increasingly reliable, and the speeds and bandwidth are more than adequate for a few HDTV streams at a time.

For on-the-road use, I have a T-Mobile 5G hotspot from Calyx Institute.  Unlimited data for $750 the first year, then $500 per year after.  I just renewed today.  I don't often find myself staying anywhere that doesn't have a good T-Mobile or Sprint signal, so it has been a fantastic mobile solution.  It's a bonus that it is available at home for brief Starlink outages.  The speeds are usually quite a bit faster than Starlink.  I've seen well over 400 Gbps in urban areas or along highways.

https://members.calyxinstitute.org/enroll/membership

[Gary Hatt - Publisher BCM]

Don't have Star-link. We use our t Mobil phones or 100 gig t mobil hotspots to include cabling it to the TV for streaming. We pay 50 a month added to our t Mobil bill. No setup and works below trees too.

Gary maybe if you sold the plane, the Yacht and the Cabin in the mountains you could afford Star-link, Just sayin! 

[chessie4905]

I saw on the news a while back that Amazon is planning their own version of Starlink. I'm stocked with popcorn to see how this works out.
Imagine in 30 years, these rusting cell towers everywhere no more in use, abandoned. Years back when I first started seeing them that was a dumb idea; why couldnt they use a satellite system like maybe Hughes but 100 times better. I considered Huges years back, but too slow, too limited, and way out of my price range.