Waking me from a dead sleep like a nightmare – An Elon Musk tweet has surfaced announcing a new Starlink high-performance antenna and Premium package.
The new low-earth-orbit satellite internet option web page claims that speeds range between 150-500 Mbps, with latency around 20-40ms. It further mentions that this could be a good option for businesses. The regular Starlink dish is only rated for around 100-200 Mbps and similar latency on Starlink’s website.
Starlink high performance antenna https://t.co/83kIQSNV3l
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 2, 2022
Starlink Premium is more than just a stronger antenna with faster speeds. It also comes with 24/7 support, a detachable 23-metre power-over-ethernet cable and a 1.8-metre power cable. Both of these cables are slightly shorter than what comes with the standard ‘Circular’ Starlink pack, but since the new model has a detachable wire, you can buy longer lengths in the Starlink Shop. As far as I can tell, the shop is only available to people with Starlink accounts, so at this time, we’re unsure of how much it costs.
The new unit is expected to begin shipping to customers sometime in Q2 2022.
As for the cost of the new dish itself. Starlink Premium is not cheap:
- Deposit – $635 CAD
- Hardware – $3,1700 CAD
- Service – $635/month
- Shipping & Handling $65
- Est tax – $420
- Total ——— $4,925
If you have a remote business and need internet, I guess the upfront cost of this is something you could swallow, but it’s incredibly expensive for regular people. Even the ludicrously expensive $635 per month for data service targets this at businesses, not families, which is disappointing.
Regular people instead are pushed towards the Circular dish, which costs:
- Hardware – $650
- Service – $130/month
- Shipping & Handling – $65
- Est. Tax – $92.82
- Total ———– $937.82
It should also be noted that Starlink isn’t available everywhere yet, so you’ll need to have your address approved before your unit will ship to you. Furthering that, since the service uses satellites to beam internet down at Earth, some areas with heavy tree coverage can experience slow times and other issues when the satellites and the planet aren’t perfectly aligned.
The new Starlink Premium may solve that problem with its larger dish, but since it’s so expensive, it likely won’t be helping many existing Starlink owners.
If you’re interested in how Starlink performs, there is an interesting speed test/comparison that a community of owners has created on Reddit.
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