New Starlink Plans: Which is best for RVers?

It's been quite a while since our last Starlink update. What's new in the world of space-based internet? Quite a lot, actually, and it's not all good news. So first of all, let's take a look at the positive side of things. We used Starlink on our winter trip to Baja, Mexico, and it worked great. It turned out to be pretty essential when staying in any of the large areas that have zero mobile coverage. At the time, we were on Starlink's residential with roaming plan. According to their terms, this allowed you to travel outside of your home country, but only for two months. We were a bit worried that we might get cut off in the middle of our trip, but the service continued to work perfectly without any interruption for the entire five months. It was fast and reliable and let us stay fully connected in many places where we'd otherwise be completely cut off from the rest of the world. Now for the bad news. Starlink prices have gone up and speeds have gone down. Sound familiar? Getting less for more seems to be the trend these days. Starlink internet used to give you completely unlimited fast data. Then, the base plan changed to include one terabyte of fast data before slowing down to best effort. Now, they've divided their service into a complex matrix of plans and speeds that I will attempt to make sense of. First, there's the residential plan. That's service designed for a single home in a fixed location, no roaming. It comes with standard data, which gives you a medium speed. The hardware for residential in the United States costs $599 US or less, and the monthly cost is $110 US or less. The cost actually varies based on your location. In Canada, the hardware can be purchased for as low as $199 Canadian in some rural locations, and the plan costs $140 Canadian per month. Remember, these are all prices for using Starlink in one permanent location. You can't move it. If you happen to need faster speeds at a fixed location, then you'll need the business plan. This requires a larger dish that costs you $2,500 US and plans start at $250 US a month. That gives you access to priority speeds that puts you ahead of everyone on residential plans using standard data on the network. So far, so good. Meanwhile, if like a lot of people, you want to be able to use Starlink at multiple locations, you'll need to upgrade to the roam plan available in regional and global flavors. Unlike residential, you can pause this service on a monthly basis, which is great for snowbirds like us, but you'll need to pay the full price for the receiver $599 US or $759 Canadian, and then your monthly charge for the regional flavor will be $150 US or $170 Canadian. For this price, you can roam anywhere on the continent, but you'll get Starlink's slowest network speed behind all the priority and standard users. You also have the option of global access, which works anywhere in the world except oceans. It's available for $200 a month US with the same deprioritized speed. But mind you, the roam service strangely is only available if you're not actually moving. To use Starlink while traveling any faster than 10 miles per hour, you'll need to get the mobility service. Getting confused yet? This requires buying a special larger receiver that costs $2,500 US and a plan that starts at $250 a month US. And even then, this still only includes the slowest network speed. If you want faster mobile speeds or the ability to use Starlink at sea, you'll need to opt in to the mobile priority option. This then gives you the privilege of being able to buy priority data on a per gigabyte basis. This data will be faster than mobile and standard, but slower than business priority data. Got all that? Wow. I'm glad I'm not the person at SpaceX in charge of keeping track of all these plans and options. And I haven't even touched on Starlink Maritime or Starlink Aviation. So long story short, the best option for most RV users right now will be Starlink Roam. You won't have the fastest speeds, but it'll likely be fast enough and you won't have to worry about usage quotas or cost per gigabyte. If you have a motor home or van and really want to be able to use Starlink while in motion, you'll need to get the mobility option. But honestly, it's significantly more expensive and I feel like if you're driving on a major highway in the US, you're likely to have good cell phone data coverage anyways. Speaking of which, how does Starlink stack First, how does it compare to campground Wi-Fi? Well, Starlink is probably the winner here. Campground Wi-Fi is usually pretty slow and terrible, if it works at all. And what about other satellite options? Starlink is really the only practical game in town when it comes to portable satellite internet. That's one of the reasons they can charge as much as they do. What about Starlink compared to traditional cell-based 4G, 5G services? This is a more difficult comparison. Those plans can also be expensive and often have quota limits. Plus, there can be significant roaming fees if you travel to another country. There's no clear winner here and it really depends on what your data usage looks like, what sort of deals you can manage to find, and where you plan to travel. Another thing to consider, can you actually use Starlink as your only internet provider while on the road? My feeling is no. I would always want to have some sort of 4G, 5G cell phone internet as a backup. Starlink is fairly reliable, but you won't be able to use it in forests, city centers, or anywhere you don't really have a clear view of the sky. One important thing to note about Starlink is that in a heavily treed situation, it's pretty much useless. And unless you have the most expensive mobility hardware, you won't be able to use it while driving for real-time navigation or traffic. So it just makes sense to have a phone or hotspot plan as well. Which begs the question, do you actually need Starlink at all? My honest feeling here is that a lot of people maybe don't. Unless you're really using a lot of data every month, or you consistently stay in very rural places with no cell coverage, it's probably cheaper and more practical to just use a mobile phone or a hotspot plan. For us personally, we're on the Rome plan, which is currently paused, but we will be reactivating it shortly before our winter snow burning trip. The reasons we're keeping it are, one, we'll be in some places with no cell service again, and two, we upload 4k videos to YouTube every week, and that adds up to a lot of data. To be honest, we might be able to scrape by without it, but it is really nice to have internet that's comparable to home service, where we get reasonable consistent speeds and don't have to worry about data quotas. So do you have Starlink? Are you planning on getting it? Did the information in this video change your mind about anything? I'm looking forward to discussing and debating all the different options with you in the comments. In the meantime, remember, when you roam, everywhere is home. Bet you haven't heard me say that in a while. Make sure you don't miss the next video by liking, subscribing, and turning on notifications. Oh, and don't forget to check out our website and sign up for our weekly email blast. Thanks for joining us and we'll see you in the next one.