New Starlink performance dish plan options?

Reedith

I'm moving to a place in Northern Idaho where Starlink and 5g will be my only ISP options.

I run. A few small businesses as well as remote tech some podcasts / live streaming. So network Reliability is key.

I'll likely be bonding T Mobile, and Starlink with a Peplink BR2 pro Something ive been Doing for live streaming for a while now and works great.

My question to you guys is, does this Starling high performance dish offer more reliability than the standard? Does it connect to more satellites at once? Etc etc.'cause in my experience with the standard DISH it will drop out sometimes for a few seconds, which in a big network can be a few minutes. As devices scramble to get back online.

And I'm happy to pay the 2K for the dish if it will actually net me. Some more reliability/ performance. Of course, one gig next year. So they say.

And then my second question about it is, if I purchase it. I know that when you purchase it, you're only offered either Rome or Priority Gigabyte plans. Is there a way to cancel those plans and just get back onto an unlimited residential plan?

Honestly I would be happy to pay for a priority plan for 160 gigs or something like that if it dropped down to non prioritized residential style unlimited after that. But as I read it now, it looks like once you use your 160 gigs, you're stuck at one megabyte download, which is ridiculous. Couldn't imagine that happening in the middle of working remoting a live stream. Or remoted into a podcast and suddenly I can't control their DAW.

I mean that's the way all the cell phone companies do it, right? you have 50 or 100 gigs of unlimited 5G, but after you use that they drop you down to 4G unlimited, which is fine. Most people don't even notice.

So those of you in here who know way more than I do about this tech. If I purchase the Performance dish, will it actually do anything for me? Here. And am I able to get a reasonable plan on it that doesn't drop out after you use a certain amount of data? Would hate to accidentally leave the whole Star Wars trilogy torrenting. Overnight. To eat up that hundred or 200 gigs immediately, LOLJK. who would do that. That's illegal.!!!

Psychopote

Reedith

Hello Reedith,

Since I’m in Europe (France), I’ll give you my point of view, but maybe Colby can correct and/or add to it afterward.

The High-Performance antenna allows for slightly faster satellite acquisition compared to the standard version (in addition to providing better bandwidth). But it doesn’t prevent the “micro-outages” that you may experience at times during the day. The only real outage I notice happens about once a week, when Starlink assigns a new public IP address to my router and it resets the connection with the satellites during that period (on average 1 to 1.5 minutes).

The micro-outages you may experience with the standard antenna (I have V2) are no different than those with the High-Performance antenna—at least in France.

As for the plans, in France / Europe, when you have a plan with, for example, priority data and X GB available, if you reach the end of your data, your speed will be severely throttled until your plan resets for the following month—or unless you buy (expensive) extra data… but you cannot change your plan mid-month (unfortunately).

Starlink already offers the lowest per-GB price via satellite on the market (other operators have been overcharging for years), but Starlink’s technology is not yet mature/established/profitable enough to allow switching plans on the fly or offering higher speeds once you’ve used up your priority data quota.

Reedith

Psychopote Thanks so much for your reply. No one had answered the question yet, so I just decided to purchase the High Performance dish and try it out on my own. I was able to get ahold of. Someone competent at Starlink customer support and have them call me and they were able to give me a residential plan for 120 attached to the high performance dish. So that's what I just activated and I'm trying out right now. And it's working and it's pretty cool 'cause it's not something you can get off the website. Eventually I may try the high priority business plan. I don't love that it's not unlimited, but I feel like for 500 gigs the price is pretty fair. I just have to make sure that I'm not gonna be needing more than that. With some of the uploading and downloading my server does.

Now what I'm most curious about is if anyone has done any back to back. Standard priority and high priority testing. Is the high priority really high priority? Does it really matter? Can you actually feel it or is it just a gimmick? In a heartbeat I would switch to a plan that was high priority 100 or 500 gigs, but after that meters out it just switches you to unlimited standard priority. That would be ideal. Hopefully they offer that in the future. That's basically what every cellular carrier does.

Psychopote

Reedith

High priority only matters if Starlink Internet traffic in your "region" becomes congested (too many people using the same satellites around you, which could slow down the speeds that the satellites can deliver to you for X seconds/minutes/hours... but very rarely for long hours).

As for me, here in France and where I live, between the standard Residential plan vs the Residential Lite plan, the only difference is the maximum speed (250 Mbps for Lite vs 350 Mbps for Standard). Normally, with my Lite plan, I’m not supposed to have high priority during periods of heavy usage around me (I should experience a bit more slowdown, especially in the evenings, for streaming, etc.), but that has NEVER happened to me. A neighbor a few kilometers away has the Standard plan, and the only thing he gets more than me is that he can download faster 24/7, and nothing else.

It all depends on which region you live in and how many people around you (I don’t know the exact radius in kilometers) are also using Starlink and in what capacity. If everyone is just surfing the web and/or watching Netflix, the connection is unlikely to get saturated. On the other hand, if you have a company nearby that uses Starlink 24/7 to transfer data, run surveillance cameras, etc., then it’s possible that in the evening your connection will be less prioritized compared to theirs (with their Business Priority plan).

For me, the priority plan should only be reserved for professionals who need to be connected 24/7, who constantly exchange large files, and who run a large security camera system with continuous video streaming. Otherwise, for regular users and/or small professional businesses, it has no real benefit.

This is just my opinion, and in France things might be different compared to the USA (subscription rules are not always the same depending on the country or region, and it’s possible that some technical details change as well… but sadly, nobody can guarantee this in advance).