Heat is the New Enemy of Starlink’s Satellite Broadband Service

Some customers of SpaceX’s new Starlink ISP, which operates a growing mega constellation of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) based ultrafast broadband satellites, are finding that high winds, visibility of the sky and power usage aren’t the only issues they’ll have to contend with, as the dish can also shut down during very hot weather.

At present SpaceX has upwards of 1,600 active LEOs in orbit (space) around the earth and their initial ambition is to deploy a total of 4,425 by 2024, which could potentially be followed by as many as 12,000 at a later date (possibly late 2026). The service has already gone live in the USA, Canada, the UK and is now extending into Europe and other parts of the world, albeit still technically in a pre-launch beta phase.

Customers in the UK have to pay £89 a month for the beta service, plus £54 for shipping and £439 for the kit (dish, router etc.). But for that you can expect to receive unlimited usage, fast latency times of 20-40ms, download speeds of between 50-150Mbps and uploads of c.20Mbps, which may reach c.300Mbps by the end of the year as more LEOs go live (here).

So far, the new service has been generally quite well-received and represents a huge, if still fairly expensive, improvement over the performance of larger geo stationary communication satellites in high earth orbit. However, the service is not without fault, and Starlink’s beta phase has identified a number of issues. Some of these may resolve themselves naturally as the network grows, but others could be harder to fix.

Starlink Issues Identified During Beta

— It’s Power Hungry

A regular fixed line broadband router may only gobble a handful of Watts or so, but Starlink’s kit tends to use about 89 Watts when idle and then bumps up to around 110w during normal usage (average of c.100w). The occasional peak, reaching at most 175.7w (the Power Supply Unit is rated for 180w), can also occur (here).

— You Need a Very Clear View of the Sky

Starlink isn’t designed for urban environments, as there will often be too many buildings around that could partially obstruct your view of the sky. But in rural areas, which is more the company’s focus, a bigger problem is often trees. If even part of a few trees are encroaching upon the dish’s wide viewing requirements of the Sky then it can result in connection drops (it’s easy to fall foul of this issue).

You can often improve this by professionally mounting the dish higher up on your roof, but over the medium-term this may become less of a problem as Starlink launches ever more LEOs (i.e. making it easier to hold a connection, even with some obstruction to your view).

— Beware Heavy Wind and Rain

Not unlike other Satellite broadband services, Starlink states that “heavy rain or wind can also affect your satellite internet connection, potentially leading to slower speeds or a rare outage.” As a result, those who come to depend upon it may want to try professionally mounting the dish in a location that is less likely to be buffered by the wind (not so easy, given that issue with needing a clear view of the sky). However, by the sounds of it, you’d only really have to worry about the extreme hurricane force winds or similar gusts and that’s less of an issue in the UK.

As for snow, Starlink can detect and melt snow that falls directly on the dish.

However, this isn’t the end of the story, because as the temperatures creep up a number of customers have complained that Starlink’s system will shut down once the dish itself reaches around 48-50c (118-122 Fahrenheit). Once this occurs, the Starlink App will often report that the system has gone into a “Thermal shutdown” and it won’t always return to life until the dish falls to around 40c (104 Fahrenheit).

Now this is less of a problem in the UK, although it should be said that the surface temperature of the dish may be higher than the air temperature (radiating heat from the ground won’t help), and we do sometimes get extreme heatwaves that could test such limits. But it’s a much bigger problem if you live in a naturally hot location, such as Arizona in the USA (examples from Reddit).

Such things may become more common with climate change, as temperatures are expected to rise and that in turn will result in more extreme weather conditions (heat waves etc.). The good news is that if consumers are aware of all these caveats then they can make an informed decision about the purchase and dish placement (wind protection, unobstructed view and shade – a difficult balancing act), which could mitigate the problems.

Officially, Starlink has only said that their dish is certified to operate from -22 below zero and up to 104 Fahrenheit. But clearly, they could have done a bit more work to ensure that it was more durable in hotter climates. We suspect that the final commercial product may need a few design tweaks to achieve a better outcome.

Starlink are of course well aware of all these reliability issues, but as they rarely respond to media hails, then we don’t know what their plan is for addressing them in the final product.