The Stovebolt Site Forums The Back Office IT Short Bus Anyone made the switch to Starlink?

Here at HQ, we're reviewing our options:

1. Breezeline (current broadband provider) -- which absolutely STINKS
2. Verizon (current cell service) Not crazy about
3. Starlink .... Hmmmmm

Having had satisfactory Verizon cel service forever I was convinced to switch our company phones (cable connected landlines) to the Verizon wireless business plan. What a mistake. Although there are a few benefits, it doesn’t offset the dropped calls, bad connections and crappy phones. One year left on our contract and I can’t wait for it to end.

Choose wisely.

John

I know two people personally who have Starlink. If you have specific questions, I can pass them on.

More generally, they seem reasonably happy with it. One of them has had it for almost 2 years and has not switched away.

The downside is that using Starlink give Elon Musk money and influence. That is an issue for some people.

I'll let you know after I install them. 2 each on late model Suburbans, 3 each on brand new Ram commercial vans and 2 each on Kentucky 53' box trailers. Waiting on the project leaders to say "go." With that many for our emergency/support type of vehicles, they must've already proven themselves. I hear some of our trouble shooters have them installed but they need to foot the bill themselves. Needless to say, mobile versions.

Elon gained a lot of credibility as he pretty much solved the rural internet issues here in Canada. No other telecom company is able to touch the speed, reliability and ease of use of Starlink. Literally 10-20x the speed for the same price per month, and less downtime. Wish we had more billionaires working on solving the worlds problems.

I tried StarLink. A huge plus is it’s easy to set up. A package shows up containing a fairly rectangular receiver, it’s happy sitting on the ground in a appropriately large spot with a clear (zero obstructions) 100 deg. cone space when looking straight up.

Next connect the provided cable to the receiver and router. Plug the router in to 120v outlet. Once everything is hooked up the equipment goes into auto pilot mode, finding satellites, establishing communications and tracking. After a while you have really good broadband. We had 100 meg down and about the same up.

Our problem was we didn’t have enough clear sky for continuous coverage. Sometimes coverage would drop every minute. Sometimes it would be great for 15 minutes.

We returned the hardware in its original packaging within the 30 day window and got an immediate refund. No questions or problems.

Starlink didn’t work for us. If we had fewer trees (not happening) or more satellites (that is happening) I think it would have been great. That said, I believe the best service is with a fiber optic provider and in our rural area I don’t expect that to happen anytime soon.

Good Luck!

RonR

With my poor experience with Verizon business phone service, I'm glad I kept our cable internet provider.

John

At the risk of approaching the political side, he makes a lot of waves and has defintitely improved some things. Many of those improvements come with costs in other areas that he might or might not have taken into consideration.

Whether those side effects matter to anyone is a personal preference.

@John: I checked with the guys I know here that have it and they are both consistently very happy with it past the intial install price.

Unless Starlink works thru snow (horizontal antenna with 2-6 inches of snow on top for half of the year) that's not an option here. We have copper DSL service thru our local phone company and it's pretty decent.

quote from a user. and i do know it has a snow melt mode as he says

I just endured a full-on Idaho winter with my Starlink dish as my primary connection to the outside world. Verdict: Not only is Starlink ready to handle winter weather, but it stayed stable all winter long. It turns out that Starlink's basic equipment is rated to handle nasty weather, and there's even a Snow Melt Mode that keeps snow and ice from accumulating on the dish.

We're on Day 2 of Starlink...

Peggy's desktop computer is wireless. Mine is not. Mine has to use one of the Starlink router's two ethernet ports. Ok. Both computers back online.

We use a Network Attached Storage device that isn't wireless so it took the other port on the router. Remapping it to a drive on both computers was a PITA but doable. THAT took most of the evening.

Then came the printer. The HQ printer is only a couple of years old. Its a multi function (printer, copier, scanner). And wireless. Yeah right. The Starlink system would not see the printer. So I sent a message to the Starlink customer service. About 6 hours later, I got a response telling me to do all the basic stuff I already knew how to do and had done. Thanks alot. A second note submitted to Starlink Customer support. I got a response back over night telling me to split the network into a 5 GHz and a 2.4 GHz network. Apparently, some third party devices (i.e., not Starlink) aren't on the 5 gig standard yet. Ok, tried that. no joy.

So finally, they tell me to connect it via ethernet cables. THAT worked. But it seems a couple of steps backwards.

The jury is still out on whether Starlink is an improvement over Breezeline. But I'm not impressed yet.

Sounds like what you need is a small ethernet switch to give you some more hardline ports.

Jason, he did put a gizmo there on the table that gives me connection to the Synology box (our shared device). Maybe over the weekend, he can get back to it. We are still trying to figure out what *advantage* we have using Starlink. We don't do streaming anything. We don't do TV or cable. It doesn't appear to be faster. Breezline is usually available unless there is a broken line (like from a storm). Occasionally Breezeline has been down but with so many people who work for or with the base, and are working from home, they have to be on their game.

The cost saving per month with Starlink is $20/month ... but there was that initial outlay for the hardware.

Peggy the advantage is it makes you really cool. Especially for party chit chat. 😀😁😁.

Gee thanks. As you can tell, I'd really floor them with my grasps on all this. "Gizmo" will be a real head-turner in a conversation. You need to hear what John and Paul have to put up with when talking tech with me. I need to be able to point!!

No hablo Englais.


At any rate, we finally have everything up and running. The 20-year old ethernet switch was the key to getting the printer on line (Yay for Old School!!). And before the torandoes get here ... or hurricanes ... I need to decide what to do about the dish thing. At the moment its just sitting on top of the sea container out back. A good stiff gust and it could be off into the corn field across the street ... I'm probably going to attach it to a 4x4 set at the corner of the sea container. But I'm not doing that until Peggy gives me a thumbs up on keeping Starlink... neither of us are particularly wowed yet ...

We've decided to end the experiment, box everything up and send it back. It was not a significant difference over our existing service. In fact, the difference was ... zero. I still had to figure a long-term home for the dish thing, bury the cable, blah, blah, blah.

And then, yesterday, trying to get the grass cut before the rain sets in for the rest of the week ... you guess it -- I cut the cable with the mower. Settled! Back it goes. We're already back up on our existing provider (never turned it off).

It was pretty easy, although I had some trouble trying to figure out some non-standard 3rd party stuff (our printer, the NAS, etc). I think people who just stream a lot (movies, games, etc.) and do a lot of stuff on line, probably see more of an improvement. We are pretty WiFi/local network heavy here. So, the PITA factor tipped the scales back toward our existing provider.

Case closed.

I tried it as well. We have too many trees. I do believe Starlink is a great option for those with no landline or cellular options. That was us until a few weeks ago. Now fiber is coming to our house from a neighboring county, totally unexpected. The first year, 1 gigabit speed, no caps for less than $40 monthly. Next year increases to $60ish. We should be connected in early July.

RonR

John, I'm wondering if your experience with Starlink was affected by the recent solar flare activity and Aurora. News stories said that both Starlink and GPS satellites were somewhat affected by that.

Not second guessing your decision to bag it, just wondering.

I've been toying with getting Starlink, when we were in Seattle, I had Comcast, and got up to 250MB/s downloads. Here in Montana, it is Grizzly Broadband, with max of 33 MB/s, and normally, more like 12-15 when I do an internet speed test.

We did return the Starlink equipment and got the credit within a few days. We have a Synology for our NAS here and that was doing great 99% of the time. When we added the Starlink into the fix, we were constantly having to remap to the NAS on my computer, then on John's computer, back again to mine. Even the quick fix for mapping wasn't working any more.
And it just wasn't worth the hassle of a few extra gizmos to try to get the printer to work from John's computer. We don't stream, do online games, have any cable stuff, only us two are users.
We have Breezeline as our internet provider. The monthly price is about the same at Starlink (not factoring in the cost of the equipment, which was substantial). Our Internet speed is probably fine. We seem to have a lag because of the computer (mine really). I think there is just too much running in the background on mine any more. Some of the software updates must be adding a bunch of junk in there. When I look at my Task Manager screen ... it's a jungle. Even the search box has stuff I do not use. Sometimes the programs will ask you; other times they do not. There's a bunch of junk on my task bar that I do not want. I keep pulling it off. I have very few programs I use so I'm doing my best to fight them off. If we can get computers, Breezeline and Verizon (cell service) squared away, we'll be ... well, better off. (At one time, it was actually really good! That was a long time ago, tho. )


Oh ... bottom line on Starlink: not sure us.