Lincolnshire County Council trials Starlink broadband for rural farms
The Lincolnshire County Council (LCC) in England has launched a new pilot project that aims to address rural broadband “not spots” across the agricultural sector by helping farms deploy Starlink’s satellite based broadband service. If found to be successful, the initiative could be rolled out “across the county” to farms where fibre-based solutions are unlikely to be delivered in the near future.
Starlink currently has around 11,140 satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) – mostly at altitudes of between c.340-550km. Residential users in the UK usually pay from £40 a month for the 100Mbps unlimited data plan, which also promises uploads of c.15-35Mbps and low latency connectivity (c.20ms). Faster packages exist at greater cost, while more restrictive (data capped) options are available for roaming (e.g. £55pm for 100GB of data).
At this point a question arises, if farmers can already purchase Starlink directly then what does LCC’s pilot bring to the table? In short, the pilot will see the council fund the purchase and help to install Starlink facilities on properties without fibre broadband across the council’s County Farms estate. Farmers would then contract directly with Starlink for a subscription package and pay for that part themselves.
Advertisement
The above is interesting because Starlink’s residential package currently bundles the hardware for free (although you do have to return the kit if you cancel), although a professional installation would set you back £75 but is not strictly necessary. But farms can be a mix of residential and business, so it’s possible the council may be looking more at Starlink’s business plans, which start at at £30/m with a hardware cost of £299.
As part of the pilot, the county council will look to evaluate:
- satellite broadband reliability and resilience in rural areas.
- download and upload speeds achieved on participating farms.
- ease of installation and ongoing operation.
- the impact improved connectivity could have on farm businesses.
- the viability of satellite broadband as a wider solution for farms and rural properties across Lincolnshire.
Cllr Paul Lock, Executive Councillor for Economy and Investment, said:
“A lack of reliable broadband is a real issue for many rural businesses, especially farms. Today, so much farming depends on being connected, from paperwork and accounting to livestock management, or simply everyday communication.
In reality, it’s becoming harder and harder to run a business without good internet access. This pilot will help us see whether satellite broadband could offer a real practical solution for farms and other rural businesses that struggle with poor connectivity.”
The LCC is now working with the County Farms estate to gather expressions of interest in the pilot to help assess the benefits and performance of the technology.
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.
« Eutelsat buys further 229 OneWeb LEO broadband satellites from Airbus
Advertisement
Leave a Reply
Privacy Notice: Please note that news comments are anonymous, which means that we do NOT require you to enter any real personal details to post a message and display names can be almost anything you like (provided they do not contain offensive language or impersonate a real person's legal name). By clicking to submit a post you agree to storing your entries for comment content, display name, IP and email in our database, for as long as the post remains live.
Only the submitted name and comment will be displayed in public, while the rest will be kept private (we will never share this outside of ISPreview, regardless of whether the data is real or fake). This comment system uses submitted IP, email and website address data to spot abuse and spammers. All data is transferred via an encrypted (https secure) session.
Council with a big Reform UK majority finding a way to send public money to Elon Musk, shock!
I failed to see what LLC would be providing in terms over a farmer going to Starlink directly for the service anyway? I doubt the package would cheaper or much cheaper by LLC being involved.
I wonder if Ofcom would be involved at looking at this as it doesn’t form part of the usual tender/contract stuff going on for BB suppliers.
Too add onto what FANNY ADAMS said:
Elon is buds with Restore UK, not Reform UK! So I highly doubt its a back door deal.
I don’t think it’s any kind of brown envelope deal, Musk has bigger fish to fry than Lincolnshire Council, but I do think a lot of Reform councillors are the type of people who spend too much time in the dingy corners of X, and are now in charge of large council budgets and might genuinely think this a good idea through inexperience, lack of knowledge and too much time on social media.
Less about Starlink and perhaps more about a Reform council sending money in the direction of farmers.
If they were giving money to Olilo would you still be saying the same Miss? I highly doubt it.
Having just driven 1400 miles on full FSD in the USA I am very GLAD Elon Musk exists – But each to their own.
Surely this is a questionable use of public monies? Starlink is well established as an ultrafast broadband alternative to full-fibre, and is already widely adopted across rural parts of the country. It is commercially available, and as market pressures go, is very affordable as an altnet solution. How did this ‘pilot’ pass through subsidy control checks?
100%
It’s unclear why Starlink on a farm needs public subsidy. These are operations that are routinely able to finance £100k+ items of machinery, and Starlink would be a business expense.
I presume you have no idea what is going on with farms. They finance the machines because they have to, but so many farms are being lost. But it doesn’t matter; you can buy your fresh food from the U.S and other countries.
Saying that, I don’t agree with Musk being paid by public money
I don’t believe that there are farms where the ongoing Starlink costs are no issue for them, but the cost of the Starlink terminal and installation is too much and it needs county council subsidy. This is before you get into any costs involved with integrating the service with an existing network which I assume the council aren’t going to pay for.
A far better use of resources would be to encourage more 5G build, getting landowners to treat mast sites as service providers rather than rental revenue streams etc.
My brother-inlaw runs a small Dairy Farm (100 milking cows) in rural Suffolk with the Farmhouse about 1/2 mile from the main road and the Fibre Cabinet another 1/3 mile
He has received quotes in excess of £30k to lay fibre
County Broadband offered to lay fibre across a field to the main road, but in the contract he was locked in for 10 years unable to change ISP
This is subsistence farming and you obviously no nothing about the industry with ridiculous comments about owning £100k of machinery
He barely breaks even with Supermarkets constantly wanting to reduce their prices from their suppliers and make more profit
@Ad47uk I’m not sure that “fresh” and “food” belong in the same sentence If it’s coming from the US.
I’m not sure “food” and US belong in the same sentence to start with 🙂
I get what you mean, but if we lose more farms then that is what we will be eating.
Farmers = a business. If they want connectivity why are they just going out buying it, why on earth do they need taxpayers money to be spent/wasted over and above BDUK/OfCon, remits.
It certainly is something questionable for the Council tx payers to address with their council, and of course LCC will have clearly publisied this so that their ‘customers’ are aware of how their monies are being [miss]administered?
Seems a rathee dodgey use of public monies.
100%
I’d rather them spend the money on full fibre than anything satellite based, but i guess that would be considered too costly.
The likes of Starlink are ruining space with all these satellites. Did you know earth now has its own rings?
No it doesn’t wtf
I love how this upsets the Elon haters