To Starlink or not to Starlink...

Burmarc has been testing various scenarios using its own Starlink, installing systems on a variety of client vessels and would summarise the experience as a very useful addition but not a standalone solution.

When would you consider using Starlink?

• Rural locations where no usable cellular connection is possible (even after careful investigation).
• To provide connectivity during events where high densities of mobile phone users consume all the available cellular bandwidth making usually good cellular connection unreliable
• To add bandwidth to available cellular and or VSAT connections

What are Starlink’s limitations?

• Like most satellite communications, line of site is critical, however, unlike services like VSAT that use geostationary satellites you cannot plan to point the dish at a specific location in the sky, the LEO (Low Earth Orbit) satellites used for Starlink pass overhead so need as much view of the sky as possible for best performance making wooded & urban locations potentially more challenging.
• The network is still immature with approx 3200 satellites in service from as many as 42000 planned meaning that not all the coverage nor network capacity exists yet.  
• The bandwidth during a speediest can be impressive but for some latency & jitter critical applications such as Video calling; Zoom/Teams/Skype/FaceTime etc. the user experience isn’t as good as with other more developed networks.
• Formal marine service offerings have been launched since we started working with Starlink products and that has led to some early-adopters feeling hard-done-by as the goalposts moved and the cost gap to conventional offshore services narrowed; the biggest impact was for mainly US consumers who were on the RV/Roam plans and having to change to marine to avoid breaching their contracts with Starlink.
• The longevitiy of the Starlink hardware is as yet unknown - it is manufactured to a very keen price point and this could result in limitations especially in harsh maritime environments over time; having said that so far we have only encountered one unit failure and that was a system deployed for rural application.

How can I fulfil my connectivity need most effectively?

• This is a question where each application will have differences; some minor, some major and we’d be happy to discuss individual requirements with you…
• Our approach in most cases would not be to rely on a single link solution and depending on the project we’d scale link number and type to suit but the fundamental principle will be to combine 2 or more links via a Peplink router to deliver the optimal connection even for static users.
• Mobile users will often encounter a wide variety of environments in which they will need their connection and some of these users will even need that link available on-the-move. Solutions such as multiple 4G/5G modems with application appropriate Poynting antennae offering connections to different network operators and SIM cards that can roam to any available operator are a great starting point for these users but there may be times when they travel to locations with no cellular coverage or to an event where the capacity cannot meet the demand when a satellite based failover will provide the next level of performance.
• Marine users are more familiar with this approach as for some years both in commercial shipping and leisure yachting we have provided these least-cost-routing options from shore Wi-Fi, to Cellular data, to Satellite link and this has been taken a step further by KVH to include all of these links in a single antenna package with the New TracNet series (separate blog focusing on TracNet in the works).
• Even now that Starlink has the marine service is authorised and available in many regions we don’t expect a wholesale switch to Starlink-only users but rather we will be adding Starink and TracNet type products to Peplink solutions to provide clients with the combination of all of these links optimised to suit specific client needs both now and looking to their growing future demands.
• Treating Starlink as a cellular network from the sky is the best analogy; it has many of the benefits and limitations of cellular networks including bandwidth contention issues when high densities of users are in the same region as we demonstrated in the Caribbean during the Christmass of 2022
• What about OneWeb…? Another service we expect to see adding capacity and strength to our portfolio of connectivity in the exciting near future.