Starlink

Mrs.Z and I are (still) trying to move.

Decent internet is a requirement, my wife works from home. We have spotted a property that is ticking many boxes … BUT … the available broadband is awful. VDSL 20 down 2 up. FTTP is not shown as in the next year or less.

Starlink, is it a usable service ? It is expensive in comparison. I have a strong dislike for Mr.Musk, and am loathe to line his already replete pockets. But beggars might have to be choosers.

Does anyone have any genuine relatable experience of using the product ?

Yep. It's very good in my experience.

The worst aspect is the unpredictability in the pricing model.

Sadly also they seem to still be on a rental model with the hardware (they adopted this approach a few months ago). I've had all three main hardware generations; the OG round dish, the motorised and v4 fixed rectangular and also a Mini.

No comment on Musk. He's an (expletive deleted), but Starlink is very good for those that need it.

Fire off any specific questions you want or shoot me a PM

Thank you for a thorough answer Pheasant. 😊

How is 5G coverage?

You're very welcome.

That was the short and sweet version.

As said if you want specifics on anything I'll do my best. I currently have this V4 rectangular hanging off the top of a pole on the side of the house and also a Mini which I keep for travel. Both are kept on Standby Mode (currently £9 a month, was £4.50 a month not that long ago. See what I'm saying about pricing). The fixed V4 is our backup connection and the Mini gets fired up for when there little no mobile signal (which seems too be a lot of rural places these days) on trips and holidays.

I've successfully run VoIP over it. No problems with WiFi Calling on mobile here in the UK or just using a SIP client for fixed line telephony. The latency is perfectly respectable - I average around 30ms. Throughput is on par with a decent fibre connection.

I saw a little note somewhere the other day that heavy users were being throttled to 10mbps so if Mrs Z works from home it might be a consideration.

In reply to a post by Banger:

I saw a little note somewhere the other day that heavy users were being throttled to 10mbps so if Mrs Z works from home it might be a consideration.

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2026/09/starli...

"However, according to feedback on social media (examples here and here – credits PC Mag), some customers who have frequently been exceeding around 5 TeraBytes (TB) of data usage in a month (sometimes up to 8-9TB), as well as somebody else who had daily usage exceeding 500GB for several days, have recently found their download speeds capped to c.10Mbps (Megabits per second) after receiving a “Terms of Service Violation” notice."

That's really caning it...

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

In reply to a post by Banger:

I saw a little note somewhere the other day that heavy users were being throttled to 10mbps so if Mrs Z works from home it might be a consideration.

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2026/09/starli...

"However, according to feedback on social media (examples here and here – credits PC Mag), some customers who have frequently been exceeding around 5 TeraBytes (TB) of data usage in a month (sometimes up to 8-9TB), as well as somebody else who had daily usage exceeding 500GB for several days, have recently found their download speeds capped to c.10Mbps (Megabits per second) after receiving a “Terms of Service Violation” notice."

That's really caning it...

Yep, I seriously doubt she’s horsing through it like that.

Poor. 😔

whats the mobile like around the house you are interested in? I know this is a hard Q, because as you know you need check every room and ty multiple providers..

Also if you are in a tourist area - then that will cause variability in speeds (note that just like vdsl the speeds can change anyway)