SpaceX Starlink beta users are starting to share their experiences, confirming that the satellite service can provide fast broadband speeds and low latencies in remote areas. A beta tester who goes by the Reddit username Wandering-coder brought his new Starlink equipment and a portable power supply to a national forest in Idaho, where he connected to the Internet with 120Mbps download speeds.
Starlink “works beautifully,” he wrote yesterday. “I did a real-time video call and some tests. My power supply is max 300w, and the drain for the whole system while active was around 116w.” Starlink pulled that off in a place where Wandering-coder couldn’t get any cellular service from Google Fi, which relies on the T-Mobile and US Cellular networks. “There is no cell here with any carrier,” he wrote.
Wandering-coder used Starlink connectivity in the forest to make that post on Reddit and to upload a series of pictures to Imgur. Wandering-coder told Ars that he uses Starlink at home in North Idaho and that he conducted his test at the Hayden Creek Shooting Range in the Idaho panhandle’s Coeur d’Alene National Forest.
Here are some pictures from Wandering-coder’s test in the forest and shots of the user terminal outside his home: