Editor’s Note, October 2024: This article was written in 2021 when our author performed his first test. We have updated it to reflect the current pricing and speeds and added additional links to articles that have since been published. Otherwise, it remains largely unchanged.
Back in October 2020, SpaceX announced that it would be Recruitment of beta testers for its Satellite broadband Offshoot Starlinks “Better than Nothing” service. As soon as the message was made, I signed up to be notified when a place opened up my area – Walnut Creek, about 30 minutes east of San Francisco. Fring until February 2021 and I forked over $ 594.30 (tax, shipping and a month of service) to see how it is Starlink.
Beta starts kit, arriving in a 30-pound box at my door, included Starlink-Antenna dish, a Wi-Fi router, a power adapter, cables and a mounting rack. For $ 120 a month, you can expect download speeds anywhere between 25 to 100 megabits per second with a latency (the time it takes to get a response to information sent) of about 20 to 40 milliseconds. The right kicker is that there are no data capsules.
Triple-digit download speeds and latency less than 40 ms are both basically unheard of in the satellite internet industry. But note that Starlink is taken into account those who live in remote or rural society with limited access to ISPs. Those who live in several urban areas, like me, tend to have more ISP choices, so Starlink probably wouldn’t be the first to think about.
My Starlink bowl sitting on top of Mount Diablo.
Spacex CEO Elon Musk tweeted in February that Starlink expects to double speeds By the end of 2021, as the company continues to launch more satellites. (Editor’s Note: Speed of 40-220 Mbps is available with a StarLink priority plan that costs $ 140- $ 500 monthly.) From May, SpaceX has launched approx. 1,600 satellites of a planned 12,000. The company has also stated that it may launch as many as 30,000 satellites in the constellation cost.
So what is it like to use Starlink? Setup is actually quite easy: It’s basically plug and play. As long as the antenna has a clear overview of the sky, the bowl automatically adjusts with satellites overhead and you need to be connected to the Internet. Sounds pretty simple, don’t? The first week Starlink underwent an intermittent service interruption in my area, which meant I did not have a consistent Internet connection.
I controlled Starlink Subbreddit and it seemed like a wider problem that affected customers in several regions. My internet connection continued to dropping to the point where it was useless. It took about four days before the power cut was in my case and when it did, Starlink worked flawlessly. My average download speeds hovered at about 78 Mbps at a latency of 36ms. Download speeds and latency looked very promising. Watch the video on this page for more of my experience using Starlink (and click here if it doesn’t play).