starlink satellite internet for rvs is official and it's available right now
spacex the operator of the low earth orbiting satellite internet service known as starlink
made a quiet major update to their website today with a plan specifically for rvers and unlike the
residential service it's available for immediate order starlink offers lightning fast data
everywhere you have a clear view of the northern sky but until now you had to order starlink
service for a fixed address and you were put on a waiting list to get the equipment sent to you when
service opened up in your home area many people have been waiting for well over a year and others
have been circumventing the system by ordering at a random address in an open area and having
it shipped elsewhere a portability feature which allows you to move it around the country without
changing your address every time was only made official a couple weeks ago and i think starling
for rvers is the next iteration of that as far as we can tell the starlink for rv equipment
is exactly the same you get the rectangular dish a stand a router a 75 foot proprietary cable that
goes between the dish and the router and a power cord for the router besides immediate availability
there are two major differences between the fixed location service which is what we have and the new
starlink for rvs first the data is deprioritized meaning that when you're camping in an area
all the people with fixed location service in that area get access to the network before you your
data is a best attempt to provide you with good service if you look at the map of availability for
starling stationary service you'll see which areas are on wait list which means they're currently
full starlink for rv users can expect high speed low latency internet in areas marked available and
notably slower speeds during hours of peak usage in areas marked as wait list at the moment that's
probably going to be completely unnoticeable for most people after all you can stream hd
movies in two different rooms on 10 megabits per second cellular service and starlink is offering
generally well over 10 times that but when tens of thousands of rvers start buying starlink four
rvs that may bog things down a bit especially when full-timers and snowbirds start to congregate in
places like quartzite in southern arizona and florida for the winter the portability feature
that folks are paying for on the residential service for an additional 25 dollars a month
comes with the same de-prioritization but those folks still get priority data in their home area
now if you're a full-time rv or and moving around you can still change your address which moves
your home area the other big difference is that starlink for rvs is paid for a month at a time
and can be paused with the stationary service you can only cancel and then start it up again if and
only if there's still availability in your area which is a big gamble with the starlink for rv
service you can stop your service at any time and then pick it back up at the moment starlink has
confirmed that you cannot convert the stationary residential plan to the starlink for rv's plan
but i would hope that eventually that will be possible now which is right for you if you're
a full-time rver it's actually probably best to get the stationary residential service because at
least in your home area you get priority data and you can update your address as you'll be staying
in a specific area for a while whenever you move around similarly if you're a part-time rver but
plan to use starlink as your at-home internet as well as on the road you may want the residential
version unless you plan on buying two dishes and paying for two sets of service the service does
follow the dish you cannot buy two dishes and move it back and forth between the two different dishes
but if you have different internet service at your home than on the road definitely get starlink for
rvs and of course if you want it now with no waiting you'll need to get the rv version
it's possible that with this new plan starlink will even get more strict about people using
a random address that's different from the shipping address for the stationary service
we've been using starlink for a few months now throughout the southeast and where it works
it's an absolute game changer but there are a few drawbacks first off it's useless in heavy
tree cover that's why it's sitting on this table right now our current campsite is 100
under a canopy of green and we cannot get service when you get pockets of open sky you can start to
get signal with significant outages several times an hour as the signal improves you may not notice
the outages as much when you're streaming video which has buffering but you will notice them
when you're using it for real-time communications like a zoom meeting
if you work from the road and spend a lot of time teleconferencing you'll definitely want
cellular options and to get as much open sky as possible when you're using starlink
you can move the dish around put it on your roof or bring it out toward the campground road to try
and get better visibility but we definitely still rely on cellular internet when we're in a forest
the equipment also just isn't ideal for rvs it takes a lot of power when you're off the
grid and it's hard to figure out running the router into your rv with that proprietary cable
the cables connector on the dish end is finicky and i have lots of frustration getting it back
in i usually have to shim it with a piece of thick paper that's really annoying to do every time you
arrive at a new campsite or especially if you're just overnighting somewhere it's something that
we don't even pull out when we're stopping for an overnight and the router doesn't have any ethernet
ports or any ports at all it's a very simple router that you can't connect to something else
unless you buy their ethernet adapter now many early adopters have been experimenting with
mounting the dish to their roof or on flagpoles and with making their own cable connectors
but these are all hacks that take some know-how some ingenuity and time to figure out
we recommend you just plug the thing in and run the cable inside through a slide seal or
through a hole in your pass-through and put the dish out on the ground instead of trying
to mount it that gives you the flexibility to move the dish where you can get the best signal
also starlink is not for use traveling down the road in motion so mounting it on your
roof isn't that beneficial i often put it up there anyway by climbing up a ladder which i
would also have to do if i was mounting it to a pole it will technically work in motion but
it's kind of a big thing to have there up on your roof i wouldn't really trust not hitting it i
wouldn't really trust the wind it'd be really hard to mount this thing people have mounted it flat
but regardless of that it's against starling's terms of service to use it in motion and starlink
says that they will shut you down if you're using it while driving i believe the inmotion issue has
to do with their fcc licensing approvals but you can bet it's coming someday very soon actually
probably with a dish that's meant specifically for mounting on rvs starlink service is 110
a month for stationary users with an additional 25 per month fee for portability for a total of
135 dollars a month starling for rvs is also 135 a month so there's no monetary savings other than
being able to pause and pick it back up when you want the equipment package is 599 dollars plus 50
for shipping and tax so all in you're looking at over 800 upfront which includes your first
month of service and then 135 dollars per month thereafter overall starlink opens up a lot of
opportunities for people who need internet wherever they go you can get internet in
the boondocking locations that are far from cell towers in the middle of national parks and even
into mexico and canada and honestly it's not much more expensive than most of the cellular options
out there for far superior service is starling something that you're considering let us know your
thoughts and any questions you might have in the comments about our service and if you think this
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