Elon Musk’s Starlink leaflet bombs NZ: Early adopters’ verdict

Magazine publisher Steve Vermeulen who lives in Waiuku south of Auckland, says Starlink's speed has allowed him to work from home for the first time. His only regret is that he got version one of “Dishy’ (pictured), which comes with an attached cable, meaning he can’t take it with him to a bach. New Starlink signups today get the more square “Dishy 2” with a detachable cable. Photo / Supplied

This week, many Kiwis, including households in Wellington and central Auckland, got leaflets in their letterbox (yes, ye olde fashioned printed flyers) promoting Starlink - a satellite broadband service operated by the Elon Musk-owned SpaceX.

So just what is it? How have early Kiwi adopters found it? And why are some local telcos grousing about it to the Government? Answers below.

What is Starlink?

Traditionally, satellite broadband has been expensive, subject to strict data limits, and very laggy with two-way connections - because a signal has to travel to and from a satellite in geosynchronous orbit some 36,000km up, effectively beaming a fixed spot because its orbit tracks the Earth's rotation.

SpaceX, by contrast, has so far launched around 3000 Starlink microsatellites that swarm around the planet at a low Earth orbit of about 600km (or the same as the International Space Station). That means it has much lower latency (or lag). The idea is that by the time a Starlink microsat zooms over the horizon, another one has appeared to take up the slack. Some 10,000 Starlink satellites are planned, which will provide better and better coverage (Musk ultimately wants to increase that to 40,000).

Another point of difference (though now matched by more satellite broadband traditional rivals, if at a higher price): Starlink offers unlimited data (although with the important caveat that the firm has yet to say whether it will remain unlimited long term.)

Signing up to Starlink involves shelling out $1049 for a satellite dish (roughly the same size as a Sky TV dish), cable and a special router, which are then couriered to you for a DIY install - using a smartphone app for DIY orientation. It costs $159 per month for unlimited data (not competitive with UFB fibre, but very keen pricing if you're in a rural area and used to traditional satellite broadband rates).

What's Starlink's NZ presence?

Like every satellite network, Starlink needs ground stations to connect it to the internet as a whole.

Its first was installed in Puwera, south of Whangārei last year (with a total of six dotted around the country; see map below). Details of the build were confidential, but resource consent documents revealed the ground station dishes were installed by Vocus NZ (part of the company later rebranded as Orcon Group, which recently merged with 2degrees).

But that's all behind the scenes. Starlink has no local office, and there's no crew who will help you with installation. In fact, there's not even an easily-discoverable email address on its website, let alone a phone number. So if you go the Starlink route, it's helpful to have a friend or family member who's a bit of a geek. It's also worth noting that a number of firms are now also offering an unofficial Starlink installation service, including Tauranga-based ISP Full Flavour as a cottage industry has sprung up.

Is it worth its salt?

Starlink says it offers speeds of up to 350 megabits per second (or comparable with most people's UFB fibre connections in the land-lubbing world) on its business plan - but that costs $840 per month, which requires a higher-gain satellite dish that will set you back $4200.

It's currently shy of advertising typical speeds for its residential plans, which will be variable by area as its satellite network expands, but a dozen users dotted around the country have reported excellent speeds.

Lilia Alexander, a community director for global entrepreneurial group Kiwi Landing Pad who lives in rural Wellington, beyond the reach of UFB fibre, went viral on TikTok with a September 2021 clip about her install - which saw her internet speed jump from a miserable 12Mbps from a copper line to more than 120Mbps.

That's all the bandwidth you need for the likes of Netflix, online gaming and cloud apps like Slack, Zoom and Microsoft 365.

This week, Alexander told the Herald, "Getting Starlink has enabled my family to work from home."

Her dad set it up, she said - copping a bit of good-natured flak on social media for the plank of wood he used to fix it to a tiled roof.

"At first it was a bit sketchy," she said.

"Sometimes it would cut out. I believe that was since it was still in Beta and they didn't have many satellites in the sky so sometimes there may have been gaps. It's a lot more reliable now though," she says.

Magazine publisher Steve Vermeulen, who lives in Waiuku south of Auckland, said Starlink's speed has allowed him to work from home for the first time. His only regret is that he got version one of Starlink's dish (nicknamed "Dishy"), which comes with an attached cable, meaning he can't take it with him to a bach to take advantage of the free-roaming option now offered by Starlink (Musk is now targeting boats and RVs - or camper vans, or motor homes as Kiwis would call them - as well as homes and businesses). New Starlink signups today get the more square "Dishy 2" with a detachable cable.

Where Alexander's dad went for a Kiwi DIY plank of wood, Vermeulen shelled out for Starlink's "Volcano" roof mount frame.

He's clocked speeds between 50Mbps and 230Mbps.

Vermeulen used to have to drive 35km to the city to upload big publishing files. Now he can do that from home.

"My son plays Fortnite and we were expecting latency issues [lag with multiplayer gaming and other two-way connections], but haven't experienced anything. Same for Zoom calls, these were always painful for us but now perfect."

This week, more than a year after his initial install, Vermeulen said, "I rave about it. Starlink has just been a really great experience for me. I would love to see a Rocket Lab alternative one day. Otherwise, I won't be changing." (Rocket Lab's Peter Beck has so far made no noises about internet from above, but Jeff Bezos has, with plans for Amazon's Project Kuiper network of 3200 satellites.)

Starlink now offers coverage of almost all of New Zealand, beyond a couple of gobs to the north and south of Auckland where it's "coming in 2023". Image / starlink.com/maps

Simon Ritchie - a retired telecoms optical engineer living in the Coromandel, who had no options for UFB fibre or fixed-wireless cellular broadband under the Rural Broadband Initiative - told the Herald he tested his Starlink connection every 30 minutes over 11 months and consistently clocked speeds between 100Mbps and 200Mbps - or quantumly better than the 2Mbps to 3Mbps he used to get from his property's old copper line.

Not everything's been perfect. Vermeulen was initially annoyed that Starlink's chunky router only features one ethernet jack so he couldn't plug in both his security camera and smart light system - but a simple and cheap ethernet splitter did the job. The router also supports Wi-Fi.

Ritchie faced a problem with the webcams around his property, which he used to be able to control and monitor from afar via a feature called port-forwarding on his old ADSL (copper) router.

But he found he could not do this with Starlink because, unlike most local ISPs, the company is using a technical feature called carrier-grade network address translation (CG-NAT) in its network which prevents port forwarding.

"It's a pain."

This week, he updated that while he'd found no direct fix for his webcam issue, "the other benefits of Starlink outweigh that inconvenience."

"There have been comments in the technical press that - in the US at least - Starlink speeds are decreasing as more people are connected to it," Ritchie said.

"I haven't noticed that and possibly that won't be an issue in New Zealand with so many people having access to UFB fibre." (And Musk is trying to address it by launching more and more Starlink satellites.)

Overall, "I'd recommend Starlink without hesitation for people living in 'difficult' parts of rural New Zealand because, despite all their talk, the telcos and [government] appear to have completely given up on us," Ritchie said.

Why did people in Auckland and other urban areas get Starlink's flyer in their letterbox this week?

Technology Users Association of NZ (Tuanz) head Craig Young says it beats him, despite the pamphlet emphasising that Starlink is available "everywhere" (if in fact for some on the fringes of Auckland, it won't be available until an un-named time in 2023).

"We also don't think it will impact on urban markets," Young says.

It would certainly be an uphill battle, given an unlimited data UFB fibre connection with similar speed and lower latency is roughly half the price, and fixed-wireless (broadband delivered over Spark, Vodafone or 2degrees' network) is cheaper still.

It looks a bit like marketing being steered from afar.

Young says Starlink sets a useful benchmark. Any expansion of public-private partnership rural broadband would have to be cheaper to roll out than Musk's setup.

But he qualifies that Starlink's ongoing cost of $159 per month will be out of reach for some.

"It won't help those who are already excluded because of affordability unless there is some external help offered such as government assistance."

Consulting telco engineer Jonathan Brewer said, "I see Starlink taking premium customers away from DSL [copper] and fixed-wireless plans from Spark and Vodafone. Starlink isn't cheap, but its performance is far better than anything you can get over copper or LTE mobile]. It has its downsides - support being the biggest one I see - but like any non-fibre technology, the experience will vary from user to user."

Only so much Starlink bandwidth to go around

Paul Brislen, head of the Telecommunications Forum, which represents telcos including Chorus, Vodafone, Spark and 2degrees, said he encouraged Starlink to join his organisation - which would bring it under the (free) Telecommunications Dispute Resolution service that referees and remedies customer complaints about broadband.

Is Starlink freeloading?

MBIE recently took submissions on the upcoming auction of 5G spectrum (there's no timeframe yet), in the context that Spark, Vodafone and 2degrees paid a collective $259m to secure spectrum at the 4G auction in 2014.

Vodafone NZ sniffed in its submission, "Currently, satellite broadband providers are effectively using radio spectrum for free".

The telco wanted "symmetric regulation" - which could be read as: If we're going to be whacked with huge fees for our spectrum, then Elon's company should be too".

Earlier, an MBIE spokesperson told the Herald that Starlink, which has six ground stations scattered across NZ, is paying $150 for each of its 47 licences, most of which are in the mmWave range, and all of which is paid up until June 2023. That's $7050 per year - or chump change next to the millions paid by the traditional telcos.

In its own submission, SpaceX says Starlink's ground station antenna should be exempt from licensing requirements, and that a big chunk of mmWave-friendly airwaves continue to be reserved for satellite broadband, "To ensure that consumers - especially those in the most rural and remote areas of New Zealand - reap the benefits of this new cutting-edge technology".

Spark countered in its submission that with "mmWave" 5G (the bands involved in the pending auction), telcos can now use the higher-frequency spectrum that's traditionally been the preserve of satellite broadband. It noted that in some overseas markets, including South Korea, regulators have clipped satellite operators' wings and reserved them less spectrum.

And 2degrees said that for the sake of fair competition "broadband providers should be on a level playing field in terms of spectrum costs".

This week, a senior telco figure - who did not want to be named - signalled a new line of attack on Starlink.

"Satellite services are a contested resource so the more people using them the slower the service gets," he said.

"It's ideal for rural and remote customers - offering the service in suburban New Zealand is a quick way to ruin it for those who really need it most."

Starlink did not respond to a request for comment.