Starlink roam - is it really geo-fenced?

[srhawk454]

Starlink defines their new Roam plan (RV plan replacement) as land use only, wondering if any RV plan owners can share their experience with this change. Are you getting geo-fenced to land use only with this change?

 

[SJI Sailor]

The best guess seems to be "probably not" blocked within a couple of miles of shore, and no one has reported outages yet, but that could conceivably change at any time at Starlink's whim. There is an assumption this is more about pushing farther offshore usage into their (commercial, expensive) marine plan. That would match their coverage map.

There is discussion on several forums including Trawler Forum here: https://www.trawlerforum.com/forums/s3/starlink-rv-now-starlink-roam-67269.html

Worst case, I would imagine it would continue to work at marinas and anchorages. Even with GPS geofencing many of those have RV parking pretty close to slips!

 

[dbsea]

There's a lot of discussion on this on the various Starlink forums. If you look at the coverage map, they use those hexagons to highlight where there is and isn't coverage. I think that's about the same level of detail that's in the code for the GPS monitoring as well. It's not completely clear on how close they can get, but I'll report back what my experiences are as we're cruising around Puget Sound and Canada. I do not use mine under way (I go to fast most of the time), so hopefully i'll not have that issue.

 

[Submariner]

I suspect this change has a lot more to do with ocean crossings. Starlink for RV has been reported to be fully functional crossing oceans. That competes with their Maritime Starlink solution.

In addition to them saying "Starlink Roam is meant for land", the other change they made was to tie your subscriptions to the contentment you ordered it.

It's doubtful that they could actually look at an area such as the San Juan Islands and geo-fence to land, and have it not work in an anchorage or even in the waterways between the islands. I suspect that inter-coastal waterways will be included for Starlink Roam. But to venture off-shore expect it to stop working.

 

[srhawk454]

Thanks guys. I had high hopes for Starlink being a fallback plan when LTE is not available, e.g. cruising Desolation Sound or Alaska. Wondering if they allow any "grace" distance from the shore. Even a mile would make it somewhat useful (i.e. better than nothing).

 

[Submariner]

Thanks guys. I had high hopes for Starlink being a fallback plan when LTE is not available, e.g. cruising Desolation Sound or Alaska. Wondering if they allow any "grace" distance from the shore. Even a mile would make it somewhat useful (i.e. better than nothing).

We're headed to SE Alaska in a few months. Taking 5G and Starlink Roam with us. I'll report back on how well everything works from Everett, WA up to Juneau, Glacier Bay, and probably Haines Junction. I've looked at the Starlink coverage map and it appears I'll have full coverage the entire way. I plan on using 5G when I'm at Ketchikan, Petersburg, Juneau... Starlink is all that I expect to work in Glacier bay.

 

[SJI Sailor]

Agree 100% with all above. There is another question about in-motion usage and at what speed they might turn off the standard dish and only serve the high priced flat dish for anyone in motion at more than (say) 5 or 10 knots.

Again it is only a guess but the in-motion limit seems like a more likely change than 1-2 mile near shore geofencing. It gets to both FCC issues as well as their selling a 4x more expensive dish.

The larger problem of course is a general lack of trust in them (and most/all tech companies) to have any consistency in a market where we expect 5-10 or even 20 year solutions.

 

[dbsea]

Agree 100% with all above. There is another question about in-motion usage and at what speed they might turn off the standard dish and only serve the high priced flat dish for anyone in motion at more than (say) 5 or 10 knots.

This is already implemented on my dish and on others i've seen. Mine will go offline above 8.4 knots.

 

[SJI Sailor]

Interesting, thanks for the report, dbsea!