Starlink Satellite Internet Gold Coast Queensland Australia

Starlink Satellite Internet Gold Coast Queensland Australia

My Starlink satellite internet order arrived a couple of days ago, February 2022, after a wait of about nine months. I think the wait was due to my location being serviced by Starlink. I set it up in the driveway temporarily and it worked very well, up to 250 Mb/s downloads. The antenna is now installed with a view of the sky above the house roof and connected as the main internet, replacing the slow NBN FTTN (Fibre to the node, VDSL).

Cost

The cost in Australia is about $800 for the hardware, then $139 per month. The monthly cost is reasonable given that we pay $100 for Telstra NBN FTTN. I will continue the NBN for a month or so, to make sure the Skylink is reliable enough.

Mounting

The Skylink antenna needs a clear view of the sky as the low earth orbit satellites can be anywhere in the sky. While the antenna is a circle and looks like a dish, it is made up of about 1000 small electronically steerable antennas using beamforming.

I bought the Skylink antenna pole mount, AU$69 and mounted the dish on an existing pole on the roof that supports a shade sail. The combined length is about 2400 mm. The mount needs to be quite rigid. Some recommend using a bolt rather than the push clip attachment of the antenna to the pole mount.

Setup

The Skylink system is set up using an app on a phone. Very easy to do. The first step is to check for obstructions with the app using the camera. The other step is then to do the main setup. I think the setup needs to be repeated if the antenna is moved.

The Starlink dashboard can be viewed via the app or with a browser pointed at its IP address. The dashboard shows the system stats and allows a speed check. The view of the sky is shown, although it takes about 12 hours for the antenna to scan the whole sky when it is first used.

I have the second version of the basic Skylink rather than the premium. The system consists of the antenna, a power supply and a WiFi router, all connected by network cables. It only needs mains power, but can be connected to other network devices through an auxiliary network port.

To use the Skylink internet, just connect to its wifi.

Performance

The speed is very good, up to 250 Mb/s download and 50 Mb/s upload, way faster than the NBN FTTN 5=25 Mb/s down and 5 Mb/s up. However, the upload is affected by rain and clouds. In heavy rain, it dropped to 50 up and 10 down.

The supplied Starlink router is not that good for wifi range and needs a network switch to connect more than one other network device, something I need to do. However, the Skylink router can be replaced with a third-party conventional router, something I have now done.

Third-party wifi router

The network connection on the Skylink router is the modem output for the device and can connect to the modem input of a conventional third-party router. The modem input of the router is the single separate network port. The other bank of four network connectors are for other network devices. The two sets of ports are usually different colours.