Our Starlink dishy arrived a week ago. We weren’t the only ones either. Our postie said she had so many to deliver that day that she couldn’t fit them all in her vehicle. Within an hour I had it on the roof and powered up.
I’m planning to write a detailed review at some stage, but here’s a few facts.
If I said it was 1000x faster than our old internet you might think I was exaggerating. Actually it was better than a 1000x faster than our old internet at peak usage times.
Download are speeds typically 200-300Mbps. Sometimes in the low 300s. More than enough for everyone in the household to each watch Netflix or work.
What went really well:
- General web browsing
- Netflix, Youtube, Apple TV+
- Apple FaceTime, Discord, Snapchat, TikTok, Facebook
- Minecraft server
What went not so well:
- TVNZ ondemand (occasionally the website thought we were located in Australia and refused to play. The issue was raised with Starlink+TVNZ and will be resolved eventually. You can check what country your IP address is for here. Note that this is unrelated to the PoP being in Australia).
- After installing it took a few days for dishy to automatically get a software update. Before that there were some 30 second outages caused by “obstructions”. Worked great after the update.
- The android Starlink app “obstruction checker” points in the wrong direction. Perhaps borrow an Iphone. You need a clear view south.
Yet to fully test:
- Vodafone SureSignal (although we understand that Vodafone may have now have enabled it for Starlink). SureSignal is due to be replaced by WiFi calling
- 2Degrees WiFi Calling
Vodafone WiFi calling. Vodafone announced that they will start rolling out WiFi Calling to some phones starting September.
Power consumption is high, at the moment its using 92 watts of power (thats around $0.60 per day). Hopefully they will be able to improve on that with software updates.
We’ve got 30 days to send it back for a refund, but I don’t think that will be happening
There is some general information on our Starlink page. Also see our News section.
Sounds like the answer to a maiden’s prayer! We have a wireless set up with Vodafone which works fine during the day but come evening the capacity is overloaded to such an extent that we can’t watch anything.
I will sign up for Starlink which will cost less than $50.00 a month extra.
How far from the house can the dish be erected?
The cable attached to the dish is 30 metres long. There are some work arounds if thats not long enough.
How long did you wait for the setup to arrive, I’ve been reading online but nothing i thought i would ask here.
It was 12 days (ordered on 24/7/21, received 5/8/21). The quickest I’ve heard of was 9 days. Seems to be variable, I believe some people have waited a few weeks. You could post the question on the “Starlink NZ Users” Facebook group.
Thanks Tim I got mine within a week was really impressed