Digital nomad/satellite internet questions

I've been telecommuting the last decade. It works well for me & my employer, and I don't see that changing(unless there's a societal collapse, but that's another topic for somewhere else). I'm ready to be physically on the move more though. So I have a few questions:

• Is Starlink the only realistic option for coverage across North America?
• If yes, how do you figure out what plan you need? Their site details aren't that clear & what people are saying on Reddit contradicts what they have published. 
• If there are other options, which ones should I look into?

I think Starlink is the only option for coverage in remote areas. Closer to civilisation, 5G based solutions are likely going to work as well. 

We use starlink when we travel to events, and it's basically magic. The price/terms/etc. change constantly, but it's the only game in town.

In reply to Tom Suddard :

Thanks Tom.

Are you using a business or personal plan for it? Do you have a vehicle mounted antenna, or just one on the ground? Have you had many problems with losing signal and/or bandwidth?

Starlink is the only reliable game in town once you're out of 5G range, and there's no real knowing how much 5G service will allow you to roam.. I haven't seen anyone really testing it out to see if the little mobile routers are ok with it. 

Starlink is a known quantity, work while moving and works in the middle of nowhere. 

speeds vary greatly.. but you can do calls with minimal bandwidth as long as camera are off. 

In reply to spacecadet (Forum Supporter) :

Thankfully we don't do video calls & our daily Teams calls are less than 15min. 
 

For most things except e-mail I'm RDP'd into our server over VPN, although sometimes I do receive some fairly large spreadsheets via email that I then need to upload. 
 

I really doubt I'd ever need to use the service in motion, as I have debilitating motion-sickness. Plus I'm not sure who/what would be driving the motorhome. However, having a consistent & reliable connection is paramount. I don't expect 100% connection - I don't even get that with the commercial broadband service I have at home now - but it needs to be fairly close to that. 

If you're traveling in well populated areas then tethering to your cell may be all you need.  I find it's often faster then the free wifi in hotels.

I use Starlink at home, and it is solid enough I can stream online games via twitch at a respectable 720p with the home variant, while some one else is also watching Netflix. 

Downloads are pretty fast depending on size. I think when installing GTA V (110gb) it was an hour or so to download and install, I can't remember I was busy with other things and wasn't constantly checking it. 

Uploads can take a bit of time. Larger videos (1hr and up, 10-40gb size) take about 4-5 hours to YouTube. 

Connection stability is really good. There have been times that it goes offline but other than one instance for some kind of a satellite update / reposition thing they can usually be measured in seconds. Any other outages I have suffered have been during really terrible storms that have knocked out the power as well. 

Hope this helps. YMMV depending on location of course.

Hughsnet and Viasat are a couple possibilities.  I don't know anything about Viasat, I have known a couple people who used Hughsnet and it was pretty slow, but that may have improved in the last couple years.

APEowner said:

If you're traveling in well populated areas then tethering to your cell may be all you need.  I find it's often faster then the free wifi in hotels.

There will be times, but the goal is to avoid them more often than not. 

We have Starlink at home. It really is the only game in town for where I live. There is fiber running through/under my yard, but I can't access it. The only reason I don't have something else is because there aren't enough people on my road to make it worthwhile for anyone to hook up something else.

Push comes to shove, I'll take my my pad and travel elsewhere with it. Be just like Cleetus and FDRM plus he has when covering sick week.

stuart in mn said:

Hughsnet and Viasat are a couple possibilities.  I don't know anything about Viasat, I have known a couple people who used Hughsnet and it was pretty slow, but that may have improved in the last couple years.

IIRC those both use geostationary satellites or at least did when I looked into that years ago.

The one big advantage Starlink has is that they use LEO (low earth orbit, not the ticket kind) satellites so your data doesn't have to travel that far and thus the connection feels a lot more responsive when you're dealing with anything interactive.

Plus, I don't think the solutions for the other two providers are mobile as their antennas are much larger whereas Starlink does specifically offers a roaming solution.

I might happen to work for a company who might just happen to make the highest performance 5G-based mobile routers you can buy. Right now Starlink is pretty much the only reliable option for use cases like this, but rest assured that others are trying to figure out how to crack this nut and offer alternative options.

In reply to pointofdeparture :

That's awesome to know. I'd not even got to the point of considering routers, so I'd happily take any advice there too. 

I had WilBlue/ ViaSat years ago 

The Verizon hotspot we use now is substantially faster

For Starlink, pretty sure if you plan to use it from multiple locations, they require you to have the RV plan which costs more.

And be aware that you need a clear view of the sky where they have satellites. You can download the Starlink app to your phone before you buy to "estimate" how well it will work at your location.

I bought a Starlink for our cabin, and it was not able to maintain a consistent connection due to a mountain ridge adjacent to our property and tree coverage. And I tested in winter before the leaves came out, so I ended up returning it.

So, if you are planning to be camping in wooded or mountainous areas, it may not work very well if at all.

The satellites are not geosynchronous, and watching the connection stats, the connection and its quality was quite dynamic, going from excellent to nada pretty frequently. My experience was that it would work pretty well for short periods but had many disconnects. Again, this was at my location with a subpar view of the sky. I think that would be a problem if you're trying to stay connected to a work VPN or similar

In reply to sevenracer :

Thanks, I really appreciate that info. 
 

I'd read several comments about needing a clear line of sight of the sky, but never considered that sight line might be closer to horizontal than vertical. 

We live in an internet black hole and we had hughes and viasat. The one thing those have in common is that they both suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. We ditched that garbage as soon as ol' Elon came round and said " so, ya wanna have some innerwebs" and I would not stop to relieve myself on Hughes/viasat's grave if it was on fire. Your only other real option is a random mifi box, or maybe Sprint's cellular setup but that is going to be very hit and miss depending on your location. 

Here's a short list of why those socalled "services" are garbage. 30 gigs a month bandwidth limit unless you pay more, a lot more extra. Exceed the limit and they throttle you to dialup.  They totally cheat when it comes to measuring that bandwidth. Their customer service is abysmal. ten, fifteen *years* we had to put up with that crap..

I see now that hughes is claiming 1 or 200 gigs a month as a data limit instead of 30 or 50 but the cost is basically starlink. And since they use geostationary birds, the lag will be half a second or more if that matters to you. But I'd bet money that they still cheat on how much data you use. ooo I dislike them fellers! 

Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to Tom Suddard :

Thanks Tom.

Are you using a business or personal plan for it? Do you have a vehicle mounted antenna, or just one on the ground? Have you had many problems with losing signal and/or bandwidth?

I don't have Starlink, but watching vanlifers/ cargo trailer videos many I have one that is at least detachable as sometimes they park in a spot where the ground antenna needs to be placed a short distance from the LSU.