Traveling with Starlink - “Your Moment In Tech”

Tom decided to use Starlink for his winter home in Arizona and his cottage on the East Coast. He chose it because of the cost savings compared to his previous internet provider. He also found it convenient for his RV trips, as it provided reliable internet and access to TV shows and news networks. Setting up Starlink at home was easy, but on the road, they had to find unobstructed areas and sometimes had to move the satellite. They drilled holes in their RV for cable access, but a bulkhead connector would have been more convenient. They had good signal reception in most locations, except for one heavily wooded area. Tom would definitely use Starlink again for its convenience and speed. The Starlink Roam option allows them to move it around without a contract. Overall, Starlink is a great addition to their travel plans. The following interview took place on October 23rd, 2023, and is a copyrighted production of the Call Radio Communications Group. So you want to take Starlink with you. Your moment in tech is next. Thanks to Elon Musk, the Starlink Internet System has opened up access where there was none before, so much so that people are bringing it along with them. Tom has a winter home in southern Arizona, and last spring he purchased Starlink to take with him for the trip back to his cottage on the East Coast. Tom, why did you decide on Starlink? That's a great question, and there are several reasons why my wife and I had decided to go with Starlink. One of them is cost, another one is convenience, and another one is safety. The cost situation on Starlink is, first you have to understand, in our New England cottage, we have little access, so we tied up with a dish network to be online as such. This network up there was costing us around $300 per month, and we were able to get rid of it. So there's big savings there. Now, do realize that the price of the Starlink is around $599 up front cost, plus $150 per month, but versus if we're paying up there $300 a month versus Starlink at $150, it's a savings of course of $150, that goes against the up front cost of $599. So within a year, based on that calculation, it will be paid off. The other thing is convenience. We do have a RV that we take up, and after driving three to six hours, I really want to just relax and be able to tie into some TV shows, and as well, not only that, but news networks that have the local weather reports on. We do indeed go through areas that do have pretty bad weather, such as tornadoes, etc., and it's easier for us to chart our path on the 10 to 11 day trip across country. The convenience, again, is just known after three to five hours of traveling, we're going to have excellent reception rather than tying up with a RV company or the RV place we're staying at with coaxial cables. What do you guys mainly use the internet for? The internet we use for mostly streaming shows, but as well, of course, with the modem, we have the Wi-Fi, so that helps. A lot of the shows are just normal shows that you watch on TV. We stream, if there's, my wife likes to watch different shows than myself. Let's talk about setting up Starlink, the initial setting up of Starlink at your home, and then setting it up on your RV, as well as on the road. Setting up Starlink is actually quite easy. It has a dish, a stand, a cable, it goes into the modem, and from the modem, it plugs into regular household current. So all you have to do is work with those three or four items. It does run off of the app, and you set it up based on using that app. It takes approximately 10 minutes or so at home, and once you set it up at home, without moving it, that's it. You don't have to worry about other issues. Now, there are tree issues, however, in the Southwest, we don't have any trees or any blockage to the satellite. The actual dish on it will go off and it actually finds the satellite, so it does move around a bit, and usually, once it's settled with it, it just stays at that position. When we're on the road, though, it's a different situation. We might have trees, since we do have an RV, we have a pole that we put it up with on the ladder on the RV, so it will be up higher and be able to access much better. Again, 10 to 15 minutes. The RV is a little different, though, setting it up than home. Of course, you're going to have to set it up and bring it down every time you do move on to a next area. Since we take our time, we take around 10 or 11 days, we go through this process every time, the process being that we need household current, which isn't a problem in most of the RV, because they supply them. We need to have an unobstructed area for the satellite to look at, so we have to just be cautious on where we set it up, make sure that there are minimal trees, etc. Sometimes, even though it's on top of the RV, we find out that we may have to move the actual satellite to a different position. Usually, what I do is put it on the back of our truck or actually on a picnic table, any place that it has freedom to look into the sky. The problems, though, that we have, and again, it's a time problem, is that there is only one cable that goes from the satellite in towards the modem, and from the modem, it plugs in to the outlet. Problem is, when you have walls on the RV, then you have to go through areas for accessibility, and it creates a little issue. What we did is we actually had holes drilled in the side of the RV, so we have access to the power line to the Starlink. But that is a very inconvenience. What we really need, in my opinion, is something that we can go off and plug it after we set the Starlink outside, and run the cable to a port going into the RV, and just plug it in there. That would be much more convenient, and have a course from that port or area, link it back into the RV where the modem is plugged in. I think that's usually called a bulkhead connector. Yes, that is correct. Thank you. If we had that option, it would save a lot of time on the set-up when we're on the road. What about signal reception at your various locations? There was only one place that we couldn't get a signal, because it was fairly densely populated with trees. However, on the other 10 areas, we really didn't have any problems at all, and the speed on that does vary from place to place, but it's way faster than what we actually need for our needs, and phones, and Wi-Fi, and the TV. And my last question, will you do it again? Oh, I would definitely do it again. This is really exciting. It gives us that convenience when we go into the RV that we're going to have communication with the so-called outside world, even though we actually go into some pretty places in boondocks, and for safety purposes as well. The speed on that is just incredible. We do have the Starlink Roam, which used to be called the Starlink RV, and it allows you to move it around from one place to the other, versus getting one for the household, which you cannot do that. It doesn't have a contract. If we don't use it, we don't get billed for it. So there's some pretty nifty really things going on here. So is this Starlink in your travel plans? For Your Moment in Tech, this is Jay Melnick.