![]() We had the same experience with VoIP calls, and even encountered a few hiccups with streaming services. Skype calls, for example, initially looked sharp and crystal clear - until they didn't and people on the other end couldn't hear half of what we said. ![]() We did numerous Skype, Zoom, Facetime and Microsoft Teams sessions to see how Starlink did on such critical applications. In our Zoom-obsessed world, video calls present an excellent test application. Indeed, the greatest annoyance in this beta testing period is that the Starlink service will drop out without warning -only to reconnect milliseconds later. and the ones we were aiming at were farther north over southern Quebec.įor its part, Starlink does warn beta users to expect speeds anywhere from 50 Mbps to 150 Mbps - and to expect some drop outs. Most seem to be clustered over the northwest U.S. We checked and found that the number and location of Starlink's satellites varied. So why the variation in speeds? Some of the results depended on the time of day. Although, according to Ooka, speeds have started to flatten slightly. In an earlier Tweet, Elon Musk promised speeds of over 300 Mbps by the end of the year. As of April 12, those numbers more than doubled with top download speeds of 200 Mbps. Initially, we saw top download rates of just under 90 Mbps. While dropouts are still too frequent, speeds have steadily picked up. So far, in our tests, Starlink is definitely improving. There's no user manual or instructions, just a piece of poster board with a large 3-step graphic setup guide. You don't even have to plug things in everything is already connected. Starlink review: What’s includedĮverything you need to get Starlink up and running comes in a single package: the flat, large pizza box-sized dish, a temporary tripod stand for the dish, 100-foot connecting cable, and a Wi-Fi router/controller that connects to the dish. In the future, Starlink plans to allow systems to automatically and "seamlessly" switch to a different satellite in the event of a service interruption. Today, the dishes typical lock into a single assigned satellite and can only connect with one satellite at a time. Furthermore, in a recent bulletin sent to beta testers, Starlink said it was working on ground-based gateways and software to reduce the number of dropouts, as well as make changes in the way the dish systems connect to the satellites themselves. This should help expand and improve coverage. SpaceX continues to launch new satellites into orbit for the Starlink service, topping over 1,300 as of the beginning of April. In late February, published Starlink coverage maps from Ookla Speedtest and PCMag found the higest concentration of Starlink users in the Northwest United States, California and upper Midwest, as well as Vermont. There are reportedly 10,000 Starlink users thus far and counting. In an FCC filing, the company revealed that it would initially offer "commercial service in the northern United States and southern Canada, and then will rapidly expand to near global coverage of the populated world in 2021." Our tests were conducted in southern Vermont. There is no official coverage map, but Starlink plans to eventually offer its service around the world. Starlink review: Coverage and availability Whether that will change when the service goes live is unknown. Starlink only offers the flat $99-a-month service at the moment during the beta period. There are no official Starlink data plans yet announced. But the big advantage Starlink has is that the lower earth orbit satellites, which are about 340 miles above the earth, substantially reduce the signal delay or latency, especially compared to DirecTV satellites, which are sitting over 22,000 miles above the planet. Unlike Dish or DirecTV birds, these are not geosynchronous or geostationary satellites, so the Starlink dish consumers use has to be able to move automatically should it need to realign itself to pick up a new satellite.
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