Starlink for the Win
People often ask how we stay connected during our life on the road. In a word: Starlink. Starlink is part of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, the company sending rockets into orbit and plans to send man to Mars.
Starlink is a system of low Earth orbit satellites that circle the planet at much lower altitudes than other communication satellites, such as Hughes. There are currently about 5,000 of them up there with plans for at least 10,000. SpaceX has approval for about 40,000. They’re sending hundreds more up each month.
Initially planned for those in rural communities that have little to no access to the internet, Starlink has become a phenomenon for those living a nomad lifestyle, either in an RV or on a boat.
It’s incredibly easy to set up and take down. It comes with a rectangular dish that’s a little larger than a legal-size notepad, a router, and a 75’ cord that connects the two. There are several other mounting options available, such as mounts for rooftops and the sides of buildings. There are also third-party vendors that make things like poles and tripods.
When we get to a new site, I plug the router in, put the dish on the end of a flagpole, mount the flagpole to the ladder on the rear of the camper, and run the cable from the dish to the router. That’s it. That’s all I do. Once it has power, the dish does all the work of locating the satellite network. In about 15 minutes, we’re up and running with faster speeds than we had in our sticks and bricks just 7 miles west of Indy.
Our speeds typically run anywhere from 30 to 150 Mbps down, 5-20 Mbps up, and latency around 10-30ms. More than enough to work full time, use Teams, stream Hulu and Netflix, run 3 computers, and 2 phones. We use anywhere from 640GB to 750BG/month. Your speeds may vary.
When we’re tearing down to move, reverse the process. I store the router in a safe spot where it won’t bounce around going down the road. We put the dish in a garbage bag and put it on the bed. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.
We’ve been on the road full-time since June of 2022 and have used Starlink exclusively. I don’t even ask RV parks what their speeds are or what the password is to their internet.
Here are a couple of downsides: 1) cost; and 2) trees.
To get the dish, the router, the cable and the small stand costs about $599. There are several plans available, but we pay $145/month for the “Standard + Portability” plan. There are other plans for businesses and those who want to use it as they’re travelling down the road. These can get pretty pricey pretty quickly.
Starlink also needs a mostly clear view of the northern sky. Starlink does not play nice with trees. If you park under a bunch of trees, forget about getting any usable speeds. Won’t happen. But with a little planning and communication with the RV park, you should be golden. At least we have been.
There you have it. Our solution to being connected. Ask me questions in the comments section below.
