Disclaimer: I am not a paid representative for Starlink and in no way am I representing their interests. We decided to try Starlink in the hopes it would allow us to travel to places that does not have cell coverage and this review is our experience based on the last few months.

For the last 10 years we have consistently used ATT for our internet coverage and despite some challenges largely we have been happy with the network. That being said even though the nationwide availability of ATT has improved significantly in the last 10 years there are still too many places we were not able to travel to unless I took vacation time. When we initially learned about Starlink I was pretty skeptical, but after talking to numerous people who work on the road we decided to give it a try.

Please keep in mind as you read this that our internet needs are significant. I work on video conference calls most of my day and we routinely stream movies and TV and videos. Our internet solution has to provide consistency for two heavy users throughout the day which is no small task for any solution that is not cable or fiber based.

In order to hedge our bets we started using Starlink while in Tucson and kept our ATT coverage for 6 weeks until we felt comfortable enough to eliminate our ATT hot spot. Since Starlink mobile is costing us $165 a month in addition to the initial equipment cost of $350 versus $100 a month for ATT we wanted to be sure we were getting our money’s worth and we were pleasantly surprised at how much faster our speeds were in town. 100m as opposed to 10m.

The real test though was getting out into the remote areas and our first stop was Radium Springs outside of Las Cruces. Although the download speeds were still very good I did notice some interruption in my Microsoft Teams calls. Coincidentally I also started using Microsoft Copilot for the first time and I thought the issue might be because of Copilot even though my company internet folks told me that wasn’t the issue. Lee went out and realigned the panel to the satellite at one point and ran a cable to my computer from the WIFI box and things got much better, but I was still grateful that I had an ATT cell signal I could use as a backup on my phone.

Next up we went to Big Bend Station down near the National Park and again I started having issues right away. Download speeds are still great at 120 MB but upload speeds were really struggling. Now this is where it gets interesting. Right out of the gate my upload speeds were much lower running from 2.7mb – 9mb depending on who knows what factors. After doing research it turns out that a MINIMUM of 4MB upload speeds are recommended for group Teams calls (all of mine are group) and I was getting disconnected when it dropped below 3.5. Things were better when I turned off my camera but unfortunately this company likes it when people are on camera and things got even worse when I turned Copilot on. Once again, I am relying on my Iphone as a backup, which frankly defeats the whole point of having the Starlink, obviously.

You might be thinking what is the big deal if you drop a call once in a while, but I pride myself on my traveling being a nonissue because people wouldn’t know I wasn’t in a standard house. When I talked to an IT person I trusted about it he said that cable internet upload speeds regularly run in the 30’s and that was probably my problem. I did verify that cable internet upload speeds run from 5 – 50MBs so obviously that could be a substantial difference. It’s frustrating though because I talked to several people who said they used Starlink for Teams meetings all the time, so it makes me wonder if there is something different in my particular computer. Since it is a work computer, I am limited to how much tinkering I can do and the IT departments general stance is it must be your internet.

Finally, out of desperation we tested Lee not being on internet at all during my work calls and that initially worked. Unfortunately, it didn’t work for long and throughout the day I found myself getting disconnected from Teams calls multiple times a session. So long story short Starink is not at all as advertised for our use case, which is disappointing, but not shocking.

Let me be clear, I have talked to numerous people who say it works fine, all I can say is it isn’t working for me and at the end of the day I need to be on teams calls consistently no matter where we are. It’s upsetting frankly after all the trouble Lee has gone to, and the truly outrageous expense, but it is what it is and will significantly impact our planned travel for the year.

Addendum – Trace is far too polite. The company flat out misrepresents the product. They claim uploads of 5-50 Mb which is absurd, that’s a massive spread.and we have never seen an upload speed over 9Mb, after trying the service in three different locations. It is outrageously priced at $165 per month for nonprioritized traffic, which is the same end result as the fine print in phone service where they reserve the right to manage the network if it’s overloaded. Starlink has the same language they just use different words so they can say they don’t throttle the speeds. They just call it something else. And while it might be fine for some, we actually need consistent bandwidth which frankly most people do not. Think of it this way. If you have to wait 30 seconds for a web page to load no big deal. If you have to wait 5 seconds to hear the answer to a question you asked on a phone call that is a big deal and that is what is happening for Trace- Lee

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