SpaceX’s popular Starlink service, which harnesses a mega constellation of compact satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) to deliver low latency ultrafast broadband speeds to homes, has been given approval to test up to 200 models of its “next-generation phased array antennas” (i.e. the dish that goes on your home) to improve connectivity.
Customers in the UK typically pay from £75 per month, plus £460 for the regular home kit (standard dish, router etc.) and £40 for shipping on the ‘Standard‘ Starlink package, which gets you unlimited usage, fast latency times of 25-50ms, advertised downloads of c. 50-200Mbps and uploads of c.5-15Mbps (speeds may change as the network grows).
The terminal (dish) that you receive with their standard package is a rectangular 303mm x 513mm one (rising to 511m x 575mm for the ‘High Performance’ plan), although early adopters of the service received a circular unit that has since been discontinued. But according to PC Mag and this FCC document, “new user-terminal hardware” may be on the horizon.
Starlink plans on testing up to 200 models, which will be a little bit larger than the standard dish at up to 385mm x 586mm and all will be designed to receive downloads and uploads over the 10.7GHz to 12.7GHZ and 14GHz radio spectrum bands. The testing itself has been approved to take place in 5 locations, including Los Angeles, Mountain View (California), Redmond (Washington), Riverton (Wyoming) and Cape Canaveral (Florida).
A larger dish could help to improve connection reliability and performance, although we can’t help but wonder what impact it might have on hardware costs. Starlink’s goal has generally been to bring down the cost of their hardware, so hopefully they’ve found a good compromise that enables them to improve the kit without raising setup costs.