Starlink Launch New Dish and Router for Satellite Broadband Service
Starlink’s (SpaceX) global constellation of ultrafast broadband satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) are in the process of introducing new (third-generation) terminal hardware for homes, which promises higher performance (speeds) and more durability for new customers taking their standard plans. But it’s not all good news.
Firstly, the usual recap. Starlink’s network currently consists of around 5,077 LEO satellites in orbit around the Earth (altitude of c. 500km+) and they have approval to add roughly 7,500 more by the end of 2027. Customers in the UK pay from £75 per month, plus £449 for the regular home kit (standard dish, router etc.) and £20 for shipping on the ‘Standard’ Starlink package, which promises fast latency times of 25-50ms, downloads of c. 25-100Mbps and uploads of c. 5-10Mbps.
The good news this week is that the service has updated its website to introduce their third-generation of terminal equipment (dish, broadband router etc.) which, as well as being cheaper to manufacturer, should also produce better performance for new customers.
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The headline changes start with the bigger dish, which now includes an IP67 rating for environmental protection (up from IP54), a wider 110° field of view (up from 100°) and a default configuration that replaces automatic motorised rotation with a simple manually orientated kickstand (i.e. the new antenna / dish only needs to face the sky – unobstructed – in order to receive a signal); other mounting options (e.g. pipe adapter) also exist.
On top of that, their new router now includes Wi-Fi 6 support (up from Wi-Fi 5) and it’s also a tri-band device (up from dual-band), but oddly they’re only listing support for WPA2 encryption instead of the latest WPA3 (usually common with WiFi 6 kit). The router now also features two Gigabit Ethernet ports (i.e. no more fiddling with an annoying adapter) and is IP56 rated for water resistance (up from IP54) – making it fairly durable.
However, Starlink does stress that the new router is “not compatible with 3rd party mesh [WiFi] systems” (you’re stuck with their Gen 2 and Gen 3 Mesh nodes), while their new dish also increases power consumption to between 75-100 Watts (up from 50-75W). The latter is not particularly helpful for your electricity bill. Just for a rough comparison, a single traditional router on a fixed line broadband connection will use around 7-15 Watts.
Starlink Kit Specifications
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| New GEN3 Dish | Old GEN2 Dish |
| Antenna: Electronic Phased Array Field of View: 110 ° Orientation: Software Assisted Manual Orienting Weight: 2.9 kg (6.4 lb), 3.2 kg (7 lb) with Kickstand Environmental Rating: IP67 Type 4 Operating Temperature: -30°C to 50°C (-22°F to 122°F) Wind Speed: Operational: 96 kph+ (60 mph+) Snow Melt Capability: Up to 40 mm / hour (1.5 in / hour) Power Consumption: Average: 75 – 100 W |
Antenna: Electronic Phased Array Orientation: Motorized Self Orienting Environmental Rating: IP54 Snow Melt Capability: Up to 40mm / hour (1.5in / hour) Operating Temperature: -30°C to 50°C (-22°F to 122°F) Field of View: 100° Average Power Usage: 50-75W |
| New GEN3 Router | Old GEN2 Router |
| Product Dimensions: 43.4 x 298.6 x 120.4 mm (1.7 in x 11.76 in x 4.74 in) Wi-Fi Technology: 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/ax Generation: Wi-Fi 6 Radio: Tri Band 4 x 4 MU-MIMO Ethernet Ports: Two (2) Latching Ethernet LAN ports with removable cover Range: Up to 297 m² (3,200 ft²) Operating Temperature: -30°C to 50°C (-22°F to 122°F) Weight: 0.57 kg (1.25 lbs) Security: WPA2 Environmental Rating: IP56 Rated (Water Resistant), configured for indoor use Power Indicator: LED | face plate, lower left corner of router Mesh Compatibility: Compatible with Starlink Gen 2 and Gen 3 Mesh nodes, up to 3 Starlink Mesh Nodes. *Not compatible with 3rd party mesh systems Devices: Connect up to 235 devices |
Wi-Fi Technology: IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n/ac standards Chipset: Wi-Fi 5 Radio: Dual Band – 3 x 3 MIMO Security: WPA2 Environmental Rating: IP54, configured for indoor use Range: Up to 185m² (2000sqft) Operating Temperature: -30°C to 50°C (-22°F to 122°F) Mesh: Compatible with up to 3 Starlink Mesh nodes – Available to customers in shop Ethernet Adapter: Available to customers in shop |
Speaking of SpaceX, the company will today attempt to loft their prototype Starship rocket for a second time. In the future, this vehicle could be used to launch their full sized GEN2 Starlink satellites, rather than the current GEN2 minis that feature fewer enhancements in order to save space and weight. Keep an eye on this stream for that later today:
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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This is awesome can’t wait as this will be easy to mount for roam.
Interesting how it’s only 40 euros per month in France, that’s about £35, less than half of the UK price of £75.
Is it because of this?:
“The pilot in France thus comes alongside the introduction of a new Fair Usage Policy (FUP) and yes, you guessed it, that policy warns that customers who eat more than 250GB (GigaBytes) of data in a month may experience slower speeds due to network congestion (i.e. usage above 250GB will be given a lower priority on the network). But fear not, for you can “recover priority” by paying €10 per 100GB of data used.”
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2022/08/caveats-as-spacex-trial-cheaper-starlink-satellite-broadband-plan.html
More likely, it’s another example of “rip-off Britain”. People in this country will sit still for anything because there’s nothing them foreigners can teach us. Wake up people.
DaveZ – really? The French version totally sucks. 250GB per month and 10 euros per 100 gig? That’s insanely bad and a huge rip off. Try reigning a family of 4 streamers and Internet users down to 250GB. It’s cheap because it’s basically a Facebook-machine contract.
@ Jez – If you’re in the market for Starlink you probably have ADSL or worse currently (or want mobile connectivity) and are unlikely to have developed a 250GB+ a month data habbit.
@Winston Smith
This is a flawed argument, for example, as the quality of a video stream improves so does the amount of data used, looking it up, Netflix can go from approximately 300MB per hour for SD to 3GB per hour for HD.
I also presume you’re just thinking of streaming and casual downloads, add something like a few AAA video game downloads and 250GB can go fairly quickly.
I know someone who is stuck with ADSL, they primarily rely on streaming and both him and the kid play games, so I could easily see them breaking 250GB if given the chance.
An extra 25W running 24/7 is around £7 a month at current prices. That’s probably a worst case scenario, but it’s significant.
I get better latency from my home broadband and higher speeds for £40 per month. Star link is really only for those who can’t get Internet.
A constant 24/7/365 load of 75 to 100 W with electricity at 30p per kWh is £197 to £263 a year..
How much of a market is there now for it hen FTTP is becoming widespread?
Still many rural areas that won’t have FTTP for some time.
Still LOTS of us without decent Internet. I’m 3mins from M62 near Halifax/Huddersfield- there’s 150 houses on my street built about 30yrs ago. Best download anyone gets is 13mbps, and 3mbps upload.
Had an email saying superfast broadband is coming end of 2025.
There’s now 5 houses with starlink!
I’m in a village 3.5 miles outside of Hamilton with unreliable aluminum telephone lines installed in 1965 which run through some blocked ducts. The town and suburbs are connected with the original coax cable installed by the United Artists service (now VM) therefore there is no urgency for BT to serve this area with FTTP anytime soon due to the expected low take up by the majority of the residents.
If FTTP doesn’t come to our village in the next year I would be signing up for Starlink.
“Still many rural areas that won’t have FTTP for some time.”
Ok, but how many don’t have FTTC too, which would certainly beat starlink on price and on consistency of performance.
“Still LOTS of us without decent Internet.”
People do like to exaggerate the issue based on their own personal circumstances.
Some actual data – Ofcom says 52% of premises can get “full fibre” as of Sept, with 97% being able to get 30Mbps or more. A mere 433k can’t get at least 10Mbps via fixed line, and that drops further to 62k if FWA/cellular is included. https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0033/267594/SummerUpdate2023Final.pdf
“how many don’t have FTTC too”
Probably more than you think, due to FTTC cabinets that have run out of capacity in areas where there’s no FTTP or cable. The Ofcom statistics don’t take that into account.
“The Ofcom statistics don’t take that into account.”
Do you think there’s some great number of FTTC cabinets that are full and bursting? Why do you think Ofcom doesn’t take that into account when compiling a statistic for *access* to services?
“The new GEN3 kit is currently only available to new customers who take their “Standard” residential plan, as above.”
Just placed an order and it looks like I’m still getting the older Gen2 kit?
So my order arrived today and its the Gen2 kit, I queried this with Starlink and they have confirmed that the Gen3 is only availble to customers that have received an invite.
Not sure if I’m going to return it and wait for the Gen3, its mainly for travel use next summer.
@mark Need to update your article that says its availble.
I would rather have no internet or stay on dial up than use anything to do with Musk.
Indeed. Too little too late.
I’m sure Elon is in tears reading that.
Musk could be the devil incarnate but some people need access to decent internet for work/kids/school. Starlink has been an absolute lifesaver for us, who would be stuck with <1mb/s fixed line otherwise.
Tri-Band but not Wi-Fi 6E?
I would assume it is Wi-Fi 6E, since there is no other “third band” supported by consumer Wi-Fi equipment.
Which in turn would also mandate support for WPA3.
Just plain 6 requires WPA3.
Tri-band has been used for years to refer to routers with 2 5 GHz radios.
“Just plain 6 requires WPA3.”
Nope. I’m running WiFi 6 on OpenWRT with WPA2.
Tri-band 802.11ax is called WiFi 6E
Dual band 802.11ax is called WiFi 6
lol no. no it isn’t.
you can have 1 single AX band at 6GHz and guess what we call it? WiFi 6E.
I really wish kids who hooked up their parents DSL didn’t all pretend to be network engineers.
New dish doesn’t move? That seems like a step backwards to me. Surely it can’t be as good as one that can actually track.
There is a lot of hacking of current dishes to mount them flat on RVs. Performance doesn’t seem to be affected. It is something we are going to do to our Motorhome. Starlink, RUT-X50 AppleTV and a 32″ TV. Being able to watch our usual streaming services while on the move, rather than FreeSat seems like a better choice than FreeSat. Starlink allow you stop and start the service once you have bought the kit. So we wouldn’t be paying for it during the Winter.
Have a friend who just broke and bought Starlink. Sitting in a large town, but was in a road that didn’t seem to be getting decent broadband any time soon, and 16Mbps wasn’t handling working from home (16 was the max he could buy).
As far as he was concerned, when the road gets fibre, then he will be signing up. For now Starlink works, and it’s seamless.
Only 2km from a Scottish town and exchange and my adsl bb is fading away now I’m down to 1.7mb with bt after being kicked of ee and no other isp wanting to give me a connection because my line is so poor looks like starlink for Xmas latest offer is £200 for a refurbished gen2 dish
The Starlink dish me of a BSB squarial from the early 90s that you sometimes till see on the rooftop of some houses more than 30 years since they went out of fashion.