Are Starlink antennas portable for use across the globe during travel?

score:5

Accepted answer

Update: As of April 2020, Musk tweeted that the service will be "fully mobile later this year." The company has announced, but not yet released, a terminal that permits use on moving vehicles. At this time, the terms of service restrict use to one location: "for use exclusively at the address you provided in your Order." Given the terminal's size and power requirements, there are still likely to be a number of constraints on portability for travel use, though service for RVs seems likely once this is available.

This was addressed in the Q&A Starlink recently did on Reddit:

Right now, we can only deliver service at the address you sign up with on starlink.com You might get lucky if you try to use Starlink in nearby locations, but service quality may be worse.

Mobility options - including moving your Starlink to different service addresses (or places that don't even have addresses!) - is coming once we are able to increase our coverage by launching more satellites & rolling out new software.

The beta service is currently only offered to people "between 44 and 52 degrees north latitude, which excludes a good portion of the United States. I believe this is supposed to expand as the constellation reaches its full size.

There are also some pretty stringent requirements around avoiding obstructions between the dish and the satellites, and the terminal equipment doesn't look particularly portable, so there would be some practical issues around trying to transport it and finding a suitable place to set it up with a view of the sky that meets the requirements.

In short, it may not work for a number of reasons right now. They say they plan to support more portability in the future, which may or may not work out.

It is possible to get portable satellite internet service on networks like HughesNet (purchased through specialized resellers that cater to RVers I believe, and not really in Canada) or (more portable with a vast coverage area but at extraordinary cost) with a BGAN terminal, Inmarsat, and there are vendors that will rent them out with service for travelers, but the costs are high and the speeds quite slow.

Upvote:1

Tesla’s have a 70-100kWh battery in them.
Should power the base station for a good long time. Good for camping.
Not so much for hiking, though.

Upvote:2

Are Starlink antennas portable for use across the globe during travel?

Yes for sea travel: SpaceX's Starlink launches $5,000-per-month satellite internet for yachts

More info on https://www.starlink.com/maritime:

High-speed, low-latency internet with up to 350 Mbps download while at sea. US$5,000/mo with a one-time hardware cost of US$10,000 for two high performance terminals.

Coverage: https://api.starlink.com/public-files/maritime-coverage-map.pdf.

Satellites: https://satellitemap.space/

Upvote:3

If I decide to travel to the US for a holiday, can I take the equipment with me

Yes but it has an extra monthly fee https://www.starlink.com/rv USD 25 at the time of this writing. It doesn't work while moving, at this time that is yet another special service, aimed at boats and requires entirely different equipment and different monthly fees -- 10 000 USD one time fee and 5000 USD monthly.

and use the same service there?

Almost but not quite. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/05/spacex-adds-25-portability-monthly-fee-for-starlink-service.html says “Starlink prioritizes network resources for users at their registered service address. When you bring your Starlink to a new location, this prioritization may result in degraded service, particularly at times of peak usage or network congestion,” so you will get service on a best effort basis, ”with the company’s advertised speeds of 100 Mbps to 200 Mbps not guaranteed”.

More generally, once Starlink spreads globally, would it be possible to take my local product wherever I go and hook into their internet service wherever I land?

My understanding the above is global.

Or is there something in their contract/setup that prohibits that kind of global travel use?

There is as the other answers show but some people tweeted they moved their equipment and it worked. While this was in breach of their contract SpaceX just decided to ignore it. I can think of two reasons:

  1. at a "remote state park" which is so remote there's no cell reception there are just not enough customers whom such rogue roaming would disturb.
  2. at the time there was no "RV" option yet.

Upvote:4

In addition to Zach's answer that referenced the Q&A on Reddit, the Starlink Beta FAQ has this to say about moving the base station

Can I travel with Starlink, or move it to a different address?

Starlink satellites are scheduled to send internet down to all users within a designated area on the ground. This designated area is referred to as a cell.

Your Starlink is assigned to a single cell. If you move your Starlink outside of its assigned cell, a satellite will not be scheduled to serve your Starlink and you will not receive internet. This is constrained by geometry and is not arbitrary geofencing.

Edit - New information from SpaceX

This week (8th March 2021) SpaceX filed that a Starlink terminal could be deployed on vehicles. See this story about that filing.

However a lot of people took this to mean even on things as small as passenger cars, however Elon corrected this is a tweet saying:

Not connecting Tesla cars to Starlink, as our terminal is much too big. This is for aircraft, ships, large trucks & RVs.

So in the future you will be able to use your starlink device on your RV as you drive across the US, or on your boat as you cruise the intercostal waterway. But no indication was given as to when this might be possible.

Edit - More information from Elon Musk

I saw in this article that Elon tweeted this week (15th of April 2021)

Yeah, should be fully mobile later this year, so you can move it anywhere or use it on an RV or truck in motion. We need a few more satellite launches to achieve compete coverage & some key software upgrades.

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