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My struggle to secure reasonable internet speeds in rural Alberta has been quite the journey.
One which I am finally optimistic about. For the past year, my cabin on the southwestern shores of
Pigeon Lake, has been receiving internet from my Telus Smart Hub. I'll get more into how it's been
a lackluster experience a little later, but at the very least... I do have an internet connection.
But recently, I got offered the opportunity to sign up for Starlink through their "Better than
Nothing Beta". And though I won't be enjoying a permanent installation of the equipment until
later in the year, I was eager to give it a try. The setup is an absolute breeze. Open the box,
and the instructions presented could not be more simple. The box contains the tri-star shaped base,
the power supply, and router, and of course the starlink antenna. Commonly referred to by many
as the starlink dish. As mentioned, my current provider is through the Telus Smart Hub for rural
internet. It uses the Telus cellular towers to provide an internet connection, the same way you
get internet on your cell phone using mobile data. However, my installation has never given me great
results. For one, the signal I would get on their LTE network was dismal, despite their coverage
map suggesting otherwise. The hub itself didn't come equipped with external antennas, so after
experiencing one to two bars of signal, I tried connecting some aftermarket antennas to the hub.
I didn't expect much, and that's exactly what I got. Eventually through some digging online I
found that if you force non-LTE connections, the reception was a bit better. However,
this only solved one problem. The next was that the smart hub freezes up once every two to
ten days, and the only way to fix it is to power cycle. That is, unplug it and replug it back in.
Since this network connection is for my cabin, and is largely used for monitoring the premises
when I'm not there, having an internet connection this unreliable was a pain, to say the least. My
internet would drop out and it would be days, or even weeks before I got back out there to
unplug it and re-plug it back in. So, my current setup is so gracefully powered on a timer, which
powers off the network every night for half an hour. It's less than ideal but I guess it works.
I'll reiterate that this Starlink setup is temporary, and for testing purposes only.
I will, someday, have this properly mounted on the roof. Step 1. Attach the antenna to its stand.
Step 2. Simply place the antenna somewhere with good exposure to the sky.
Again, a rooftop installation would do the trick quite well,
but so does this. Step 3. Run the Ethernet cable back inside your home or business, and connect it
to the power supply, which itself is connected to the included router. Then, simply plug the power
supply into the wall and wait 30 seconds. Note the accumulation of snow on the dish already.
In a few seconds the dish automatically aligns and locates a satellite to point to.
The app then asks you to create a wireless network, and you're good to go.
It really is just that easy. A few minutes later, and all that snow is melted away.
The antenna has a built-in heater which melts away snow accumulation on top of it.
You can feel the warmth. Alright, let's get to the speeds. The Telus Smart Hub as I have it
configured has only ever gotten me as good as 10 megabytes per second download, and
but that's a rarity. I'm often seeing speeds in the three to four megabits range.
But, to be completely fair, I took several speed tests of the Telus hub over the weekend, before
setting up the Starlink dish on Sunday. Telus was getting around 6 megabits per second download,
but the upload is always dismal, usually around half a megabit per second. I will add that the
area that I'm in right now is pretty dead, but if you're out here on a long weekend in the summer,
these speeds are less than half. And god forbid there's a sudden thunderstorm,
where everyone runs inside and uses the internet at one time, the speeds become literally unusable.
Now, let's take a look at the Starlink speeds, when I first connected to the Starlink router,
I saw over 100 megabits per second download and 10 megabits per second upload. But again, in order
to be fair, I connected the Starlink connection to my existing wi-fi setup, the same one I had
used with Telus. After doing this I saw the speeds dropped to about 55 megabits per second, but the
upload doubled to over 20 megabits per second. And subsequent tests yielded similar results.
Here's a little bonus, I recently switched cell phone providers, so here's what my phone offered
on its Bell LTE connection. Much better speeds than Telus, but still underwhelming latency
and slower speeds overall versus Starlink. What gets me is that Starlink is in beta.
They've made it clear right now that speed variations and downtime will be expected,
and yet they're already providing faster speeds than anything else I've experienced. And I would
note that before I was a Telus Smart Hub user, I had the unfortunate experience of being an
Xplornet customer. For two years my connection would drop out multiple times a day in the summer,
and stop working all together for extended periods in the winter. Speeds were as bad, or worse, than
what I have with the Smart Hub. So, for as bad as all my Telus issues have been, Xplornet was much,
much worse. Starlink, being in beta, expects even faster speeds and lower latency by as early
as this coming summer. So even if Telus ups their game in my area, I doubt they'll touch the speeds
of the current Starlink offering, but, I could be wrong. However, there is something to consider:
cost. The Smart Hub from Telus is 270 plus a 45 sign up fee. Starlink's upfront costs are
much higher. 650 for the antenna as shown, plus extra if you need any more hardware.
Telus plans start at 60 monthly, though you only get 100 gigabytes per month at that rate.
A monthly terabyte of use would cost you 110 a month. Starlink on the other hand as it stands
today, and this may change, has no bandwidth caps at all. Their service is 129 a month. So,
yes, Starlink is far more expensive up front, and can be considerably more expensive month to month,
depending on what plan you might be comparing it to. So, when you consider the topic of this video,
Starlink vs Telus, in my experience, there's a clear winner. I'm looking for performance
and speed in my internet connection, and I'm willing to pay a premium to get that. However,
if you happen to be in a location where Telus offers a better signal,
I would expect you'd see speeds more in line with maybe what I saw in my bell mobile connection.
And if you're more concerned about price, then Telus Smart Hub might be a win for you,
and I'll grant you this, this comparison is based on a single day's use of Starlink,
versus a year-long and frustrating experience I've had with Telus. So, it's completely possible that
over time I may end up seeing more downsides to Starlink, similar to what I've seen with Telus.
If I've come out of the gate sounding like I'm already leaning away from Telus, it's because
I've fought with this smart hub for a year. I was able to get it to work for me, but only at
the minimum level that I wanted and nothing more. Starlink offered a quick setup and fast speeds for
rural internet on day one directly out of the box. So, even with a year left on my Telus contract,
I'm more than happy to say goodbye to the Smart Hub, and hello to fast speeds, and low latency.
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