Should You Consider Starlink?

A few LCWA users are getting Starlink internet service. That’s the Elon Musk satellite internet service that has been slowly rolling out around the US and world and advertises up to 200Mbps service. Two LCWA board members recently got Starlink and are using it as a backup for LCWA internet service. They have some thoughts for those of you who wonder if you should get it too. The gist is that it is not at all what it was advertised to be. But it still might be a good backup source for you.

We Always Recommend Backup. In almost every newsletter we issue, LCWA sings the praises of having backup internet for those who feel uninterrupted internet service is critical to their business or life. Even the best services will be interrupted, so yes, consider Starlink for backup.

Things to Keep in Mind

But is Starlink your best choice? That depends. Here are some things to think about.

Data Caps. In November 2022, Starlink implemented a data cap of 1TB per month. We’ve got many members who would have their internet dialed way back by the first week of each month due to that cap.

Rapidly Decreasing Speeds. In the November 2022 Starlink also decreased their standard account speeds. They are now advertising 20-100 Mbps downloads. Many people joined thinking they were going to get 200Mbps consistent downloads. Those days are over unless you pay extra for a business account.

High Expense. The equipment costs $599, uninstalled, and the current monthly fee is $110. And if you are not tool handy, you’ll need to pay someone to install it.

New Product that is Changing Rapidly. Starlink is a brand new technology and it is a moving target, both performance wise and cost wise, and you may end up disappointed. For example this article states that Starlink may only operate part of the day in the near future. And while performance was high when it had few initial subscribers, it is clearly dropping now as subscribers join (see below). And how will it perform when even more subscribers come on board? That’s an unknown and a very valid question. Starlink does not promise any given level of performance, by the way.

Rapidly changing prices. When I applied for Starlink, it was a $499 for equipment, and $99 a month. Six months later it was $599 for equipment and $110 a month, and they completely changed the equipment set. Where will the changes end? It’s not like you can return the $599 in equipment if the monthly price keeps going up every 6 months. You might want to wait a bit until the prices and speeds stabilize, to see where they are.

Long Wait for Install Possible. Starlink is still in a very limited rollout; only a few of those who ask for it are able to get it. For example, I ordered it a year ago to use as backup internet, and I was still waiting for it until this last May when they finally said I could have it. By that time I had changed my mind, given the other points in this article so I cancelled the order. Same with two other LCWA members I know who ordered it at the same time. But other county residents got it fast, so it’s hit or miss. If you have a deadline for when you must have it, be careful.

LCWA Is Currently Better for Most Applications

LCWA is currently more reliable. One of our board members who uses both LCWA and Starlink found LCWA to be better for Zoom sessions, because he said the Starlink connection would cut out approximately every 30 minutes, interrupting and cutting off his Zoom sessions; he’d have to reconnect each time. So after many frustrating meetings, he now uses LCWA during the day for business, and uses Starlink primarily for television streaming in the evening, which he said it’s pretty good at. He considers Starlink as his Internet backup for LCWA during the day. But he says if he had other, cheaper, backup services available, given what he knows now, he never would have ordered Starlink.

Latency: LCWA is much better. We hooked a Starlink account up to one of our every-ten-minute automated speed-test boxes for several months. We measured lots of different internet measures, mainly these: upload speed, download speed, and latency. And we saw issues.

Our main issue with any satellite internet service is latency. Latency is the lag you feel when you interact over internet waiting for a response. If you are a gamer or a stock day trader, latency is very important. But for even average users using average websites, if you do a lot of back-and-forth exchanges (like on a software app website, or in a Zoom session), those websites can feel slow if latency is high. We measured latency on Starlink over a long period of time, and we got an 80 to 100ms average range, which is at the upper limit of acceptable latency for gamers and high-interaction websites. LCWA’s latency is typically around 10ms, which is excellent.

Data Cap: In November 2022, Starlink implemented a data cap of 1TB per month. We’ve got many members who would have their internet dialed way back by the first or second week of each month due to that cap. LCWA has no data cap. The interesting thing about this is that Starlink never mentioned before that they were even considering a data cap, so a lot of users are pretty upset about this. See this article for example.

Slow Uploads. While Starlink’s downloads can be fast, its upload speeds are much slower than LCWA, usually well less than 10Mbps. That can affect Zoom video sessions where you are streaming the video up to others. Or if you upload big work files it will feel very slow. LCWA’s upload speeds are typically very good: the same as our download speeds, which is unusual in the internet world.

Variable, often slow, Download Speeds. Next, while Starlink’s download speeds can be very fast, that speed is quite variable—it can be slow. Yes, you’ll often get better download speeds than even the top LWCA 25Mbps tier, but not all the time. This graph shows how variable the speed is over 24 hours.

The above chart is from June of 2022. Here is an update to that chart from December of 2002, after the data cap was implemented.

Starlink’s Decreasing Speed and Moving Data Cap

When Starlink first came out, they bragged about getting 200Mbps and having no data cap. But the current trend is definitely toward slower speeds and significant caps, as the graphs above show. In November 2022, they lowered their speed rating to 20-100Mbps, which clearly shows in the second graph.

One LCWA member switched to Starlink at the start of 2022, but then switched back to LCWA in July 2022, saying: “These days, Starlink is quite inconsistent. Sometimes we get as much as 70 download. But a few hours later it might be 10-12. Crazy.”

Moving Target. All of this is a moving target since Starlink is launching more satellites every month. So measures may improve over time. But currently, as more subscribers saturate its network, the opposite is happening, the speed has been steadily going down over time. Plus, who knows when they’ll decrease the newly implemented data cap

One user has an automatic speed test set up to run four times a day and he created an average speed table shown below. It started out fairly fast in November 2021 at 166Mbps average. But as you can see, over time, his average download speed steadily dropped, reaching 50Mbps in May 2022. Here in July he is reporting even slower average download speeds (not shown on this table).

By the way, this is not just in the Santa Fe area, it’s dropping all over the country. See this article.

Conclusion

Should you get Starlink? If you have the funds, we definitely think it could be a logical backup source for LCWA. And if you do a lot of entertainment streaming, especially at 4K, it’s probably a better solution for multiroom streaming in the evenings, however, keep an eye on that new data cap—you may use it all up before the end of the month.

But for Zoom meetings and other typical non-streaming uses, LCWA is better as your primary internet due to the faster upload speeds and lower latency. And of course, you have to consider costs—Starlink isn’t cheap. There might be much less expensive backup options at your location.

As a community nonprofit service, we’ve always felt that if some other internet service delivers better and more reliable performance and cost than LCWA, you should go with it as your main internet source. We want the community to have good internet, that’s our goal. But other than for very high-volume entertainment streaming, we don’t think Starlink is your main internet solution yet. For backup—yes—since over a range of important measures, it’s almost as good as LCWA for typical day-to-day use, and so we recommend it for that if you can afford the price.

And if you do end up using Starlink as your primary internet service, perhaps don’t cancel your LCWA internet. Rather consider keeping it as a backup, say at the $40 a month level. Any and all internet providers will go down periodically. Given the predictions in this article, and other unknowns, Starlink will be no exception.