What is Starlink satellite internet?

Traditional satellite internet used geostationary satellites roughly 36,000 kilometres above the equator. The signal had to travel that distance twice for every request, which added enormous latency and made video calls and interactive work painful regardless of how much bandwidth you paid for.

Low-earth-orbit constellations place satellites a few hundred kilometres up instead. The round trip is far shorter, so latency drops from something unusable to something comparable with a mobile connection. That single change is what turned satellite internet from a last resort into a genuine broadband alternative.

The trade-off is that a low satellite moves across the sky quickly, so the service needs many satellites and a terminal that can track and hand over between them continuously. That is why the dish is an electronically steered phased array rather than a simple parabolic reflector, and why it needs mains power to work.

A clear view of the sky is the non-negotiable requirement. The terminal needs an unobstructed field of view in the portion of sky it uses, and a single mature tree or a neighbouring three-storey building inside that cone will cause repeated short dropouts that are extremely frustrating to diagnose after installation.

Continuous power is the second requirement. The terminal draws considerably more than a mobile router, so a small router UPS will not carry it. Plan for a properly sized inverter or power station if outages are common at your location, and check the runtime figures against the terminal's real draw rather than its idle draw.

The third requirement is a secure, rigid mount. A dish that shifts in harmattan wind is a dish that loses alignment and drops the connection, and roof mounting also keeps expensive equipment out of easy reach. Budget for a proper mount and weatherproofed cable entry from the start.

• Unobstructed sky view across the terminal's full field of view, checked at the exact mounting position.
• Mains or generator power, with backup sized for the terminal's actual draw.
• A rigid mount rated for wind, plus a weatherproofed cable entry into the building.
• An active service subscription — the hardware alone does not provide connectivity.
• Somewhere sensible indoors for the router and any onward switch or mesh system.

Satellite earns its cost where there is no usable mobile signal at all, or where the mobile signal is so congested or unstable that no antenna will fix it. Mining and farming operations, remote lodges, research sites, construction camps and rural clinics are the classic cases.

It is also a strong choice as a diverse backup for a business that cannot tolerate downtime. Because it does not depend on the terrestrial mobile network, it fails independently of your primary link, which is the entire point of a backup.

Where a good 4G or 5G signal exists, satellite is usually the more expensive way to achieve a similar result. Check what a properly installed antenna would do for your mobile signal before assuming satellite is the only option.

Compact portable terminals trade some capability for the ability to pack up and move, which suits field teams, temporary sites, events and anyone who needs connectivity to follow the work rather than stay at an address.

Fixed standard terminals are the better choice for a permanent site. They are designed to be mounted once, aligned once and left, and pairing them with a mesh Wi-Fi system distributes the connection properly across a building rather than leaving it stranded near the cable entry.

Whichever you choose, the terminal provides the internet connection and not the in-building network. Plan the Wi-Fi side as a separate exercise, exactly as you would with any other broadband service.