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Let’s Talk STARLINK

Discussion in 'General Yachting Discussion' started by DOCKMASTER, Jun 19, 2022.

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  1. ychtcptn

    ychtcptn Senior Member

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    And now to confuse everything: This just in from our electronics guy-

    Now with that being said something else very interesting has come on the radar.

    OneWeb is offering $5,000 hardware and data rates of up to 150 MBPS download x 40 MBPS upload.

    The advantages include guaranteed bandwidth you don’t get with Starlink, plans down to $100.00 a month depending in your bandwidth order and best thing is no data caps like Starlink limits you to.

    We have not done any testing and are just starting to explore this but depending in how fast you wants to upgrade the system onboard.

    This is starting to look like a possibly superior product to Starlink due to better administrative policies.

    We are going to continue with the SL install
  2. Ken Bracewell

    Ken Bracewell Senior Member

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    According to a recent article:

    OneWeb is only planning to operate 648 satellites at an altitude of 1,200 km versus Starlink's planned 12,000 satellites at 550km altitude. Less birds at a higher distance sounds like less reliability to me... sure, the higher elevation will allow a larger footprint (thus less satellites), but it won't be as vertical as SL (so tracking could be tougher). And as a layman, my logic says higher altitudes may cause greater latency.

    I tried to add the link, but it's from a banned yacht publisher. One could google "the lowdown on Elon Musk's Starlink internet system"
  3. German Yachting

    German Yachting Senior Member

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    Well I would hope they would, it’s not really a secret. There are multiple groups, threads, etc. out there on this topic. Personally, I don’t believe it will change within a certain distance off shore. I think it would be better if they came out with data caps/speed pricing for maritime for the non-volume user. That is likely the best way to extract the most amount of revenue here.
  4. DOCKMASTER

    DOCKMASTER Senior Member

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    What is the difference between the maritime service and the in-motion RV service? Why is one $5k/month and the other $150/month? Why don’t they just offer a similar version for boats? For me, I’ll use the same, or less data on my boat than my RV.
  5. Ken Bracewell

    Ken Bracewell Senior Member

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    Have you ever had free samples given to you? This is about the same- show you what it can do, get you addicted, then shut off the RV service to boats so they can justify the Maritime version.
    As I said above, the resellers are able to sell you a lesser data package for less money. We have a captain's group, sharing Starlink info, and the yesterday a fellow YF member posted on the group asking (a very good question) how much data everyone is using per month. Based on a half-dozen responses stating the size boat and number of crew, I made some assumptions of how many guests would be aboard during the month. I estimate that 133GB/mo/person is about what you'll consume.
  6. DOCKMASTER

    DOCKMASTER Senior Member

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    I’m active on several RV forums. There are lots of folks using STARLINK so they can work on the road and/or live full-time in their RV’s. I also know where large groups go to places and create a camp circle with their RV’s. One person has STARLINK and the entire group logs in and uses it. So again, I don’t see how RV’s and boats use this service so differently. And let’s keep in mind, we’re not talking about paying a little more per month or even double. We’re talking about orders of magnitude more from$150 to $5000.
  7. ychtcptn

    ychtcptn Senior Member

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    "One person has STARLINK and the entire group logs in and uses it."

    And there is the problem that will likely get sorted with data caps etc.

    Your typical home/RV might be 2-4 users, using maybe a few 100 gigs a month, right now I could have 10 crew and 6-8 guests all using my RV plan for $150 a month, how is that fair?

    I see this as a moving target and I don't think they know how its all going pan out.

    So far for us, the RV has worked out, I have other sources I can use, so it has been an addition to, we are going to install the full Maritime and move it to a primary source for streaming etc.

    As Ken said, 40-60M yachts are using anywhere from 2-5 Tb a month, that is a lot of data!
  8. German Yachting

    German Yachting Senior Member

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    If anything, I think they will delineate between private and commercial use. There’s no doubt that the cruise ships using these and the large yacht sector use more data and would need to pay more. There was some talk about a marine fee upgrade for the RV version when they implemented the global RV plan. This will just be an ever evolving realm.
  9. DOCKMASTER

    DOCKMASTER Senior Member

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    I just hope they come up with something reasonable for those of us that just need a reasonable amount of data for private use. That is, if they shut us off.
  10. Pascal

    Pascal Senior Member

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    Haven’t they caped data on regular accounts already ? I thought I read that somewhere. Oddly enough I can’t find how much data we use on the app

    that would be the solution though, charge more when you exceed certain limits but wonder they seem to have played the unlimited data card to get customers.
  11. MBevins

    MBevins Senior Member

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    Yes high speed data is capped at 1tb after which it's degraded
  12. Ken Bracewell

    Ken Bracewell Senior Member

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    On the home page of the app you should have a little person icon on the top left. Tap that and you should see your account name/number and below that a graph of usage with a total data used.

    Data Caps are for peak hours of 7AM-11PM, so the data usage only shows for those hours.

    Data cap for Maritime is 5TB/mo
  13. Pascal

    Pascal Senior Member

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    I checked there… not showing data usage.
  14. MBevins

    MBevins Senior Member

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  15. Pascal

    Pascal Senior Member

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    For many the size isn’t the issue… smaller is nice obviously. The problem is power as existing systems need AC power. The article doesn’t mention whether the smaller version will have built in batteries, a must for portability
  16. MBevins

    MBevins Senior Member

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    No it doesn't but it does say they are being built for cars, boats and RVs, that to me says 12vdc powered.
  17. DOCKMASTER

    DOCKMASTER Senior Member

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    Received my Starlink package a few days ago. Starting the install soon. I'm going to remove my old back-up Furuno radar array, make a 6" extension and put the antenna there. This will get it above the plane of my Simrad array including the 6 degree max angle. I haven't used the old Furuno since I bought the boat 11 years ago now so I think it's time for it to go anyway.
  18. rtrafford

    rtrafford Senior Member

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    I mounted perhaps a foot or 18" above the 12kw open array, and the radar blew me offline. I raised it another 2 feet, and I cleared the radar spray. I was able to use it in every corner of the Bahamas, and no issue in the crossings.

    Be generous with your radar clearance.
  19. DOCKMASTER

    DOCKMASTER Senior Member

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    Good input - thanks! I'll verify it will be well above.
  20. TahoeJohn

    TahoeJohn Member

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    My vertical spacing, fwiw. Works just fine with both on. I suppose it matters how close the two are, horizontally.
    sl mount.jpg

    Enjoy!!