RV On The Road Yet?

Just received our Starlink satellite package and it’s only the first 24 hours, but I love this thing. It’s replacing my Verizon Jetpack which was 150 gigs per month for $80. Starlink is slightly more per month, but you get up to 1 Tb/mo at higher speeds, 24/7. This means we can now go back to streaming TV, quit calculating how much bandwidth I can use in a given day before my allotment runs out, and use Dropbox the way it was meant to be used. In general, It is much faster than Verizon and lightyears beyond most RV parks for speed. I will say, that Elon went a little light on the instructions, but the mandatory app does all the real work and set-up was less than a half hour, including 20 minutes of fumbling. There is a Facebook Group for RVers – https://www.facebook.com/groups/starlinkrv. This is the first place I would look for help. Supposedly, the company’s support is next to non-existent.

Starlink Plan – RV

There are two types of subscriber plans that apply to most RVers: Residential & RV. Both use the same equipment. There is also an In-Motion satellite dish that permanently affixes to the roof of your RV and constantly moves to track the satellites so you can have Internet while you are driving. . The bad side to this is: if you park under trees, no service. It costs $2500 one time. Ouch!

• RV service ($135/mo) is NOT assigned to a home address to ship to and use (you can get it in about a week at ANY location)
• You can get updates to firmware anywhere
• You can get de-prioritized (speed throttled) if the area gets too busy
• You can temporarily suspend your account i.e. you are staying at a place for a while with good internet

Starlink Plan – Residential

• Residential ($110/mo) is assigned to a home address to ship to and use (shipping to that address may, or may not, be available right at this moment). You can get satellite service damned near anywhere, but getting the devices (especially in the Southeast) can be a lengthy and frustrating wait. Look at their wait time map on their site for more info.
• Residential ONLY updates the firmware when in your home area. You cannot update your firmware outside of your Residential home address.
• When in your home area, you can’t be de-prioritized (speed throttled).
• Residential customers can opt to add Portability if they want to use their satellite service somewhere else. This option takes it to the same price as the RV plan and can get their service de-prioritized just like an RV plan.
• You cannot suspend your account

Pros: Easy to use and set up 24/7 high-speed internet 1 Tb of bandwidth /mo – way more than most people need More than enough bandwidth to stream TV 30-day money-back guarantee No contracts

Cons: Slightly more costly per month than Verizon 150Gb MiFi plan $600 initial one-time equipment purchase Customer support is supposed to be horrendous No phone number to call AT ALL! RV subscribers may get de-prioritized if area bandwidth gets too inundated

The Decision

Factors that made it easy for us to select the RV plan:

• We don’t have a home base since we are full-timers and will never really spend any time near our mailing address
• There was no price differential between the Residential w/ Portability and the RV plan.
• Our mailing address is in a Wait Zone, so it could take months to get Starlink
• We liked the idea of being able to suspend our service for a few months if need be
• We wanted/needed Starlink NOW, so getting it shipped to our RV address was great

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RVonTheRoadYet.com is a blog to keep our friends and family informed of our latest adventures or misadventures. We are NOT RV professionals, doctors, lawyers, or travel guides. We are a couple of people who have decided to embrace the full-time RV lifestyle of idiots and gypsies.