Is anyone using Starlink Residential? Are there any issues you have experienced?
I am fed up with Orange. A tree took down a fibre pole during the storm, but the fibre remained connected and due to the chaos in the region we did not make a fuss and even helped in propping up the pole so that the cable was not taking all the strain. Yesterday, a van decided to smack the pole and finish the job properly.
Trying to report the outage was a nightmare! Orange wer more interested in ensuring that I understood a call out fee if an engineer attended to discover the fault was inside the house! Eventually, it was taken seriously when all five neighbours in the commune phoned in, but now we have to wait for the situation to be assessed by their civils team!
I am looking at Starlink - 29€ per month with no up front cost. Hell of a lot cheaper than Orange. OK, there is no phone or TV - neither of which I need, so what is bad other than it makes Elon a dollar or two richer..?
Serious question though that could be a deal breaker - with a Starlink router, can one extend the service via an RJ45/ethernet cable to say, a gite, down the driveway, as one can with an Orange router?
We toyed with Starlink, but our moral compass objected. So in the absence of a full orange connection we have an Orange FlyBox which has been great. But not the cheapest.
I am using a Starlink V2 - the router only has one RJ45 and it goes to an eight port switch, from there to the other end of the house to a repeater, the NAS in the cupboard next to the router, the Alarm hub and the Phillips Hue hub.
The current Starlink router appears to have 2 RJ45 ports so you should be good to go.
I have had Starlink since May 2022 and i would recommend it. I got it because i was fed up staring at the fibre on the pole outside the house with no date (at the time) for it to be offered to connect to - it had been there 18 months by this point.
Had 4g box then starlink then went to fibre with red by sfr as we use it for us and our gites.
Fibre we find far faster and more bandwidth/no worries on data limits but indeed subject to poles going down.
Providing you dont mind putting in a few ethernet cables you can have the best of both worlds for not a lot of money:
install an ethernet switch and link everything to it. If you buy the right devices it can even power your internet access points
buy and fit a starlink and subscribe to the backup plan (its cheap and minimises what you pay the wonderful Elon Musk)
keep your fibre but if it goes down disconnect the fibre cable from the switch and connect the starlink instead (and switch it to a higher data plan)
Thanks everyone! Based on comments here and outside, I have ordered a base 100Mbs package due here in a week.
Wow - how easy! No filling out forms and giving my life history! They take all my details, name, address and phone from Paypal and with another mail to set my password, I just have to wait a week for the dish and router and self activate with a free month thrown in!
Elon, you are a star
What swayed me was that yesterday, an engineer turned up finally. I told him, and pointed to the broken pole, but no, he insisted he had to test the network first. Despite me telling him there is no network to test, he proceded to open up everything and take his time about it. 40 minutes later he returned and said there was a break in the cable. I think my retort of ‘thanks Sherlock idiot’ set things up for a long wait, as I then had a text that there would be another intervention next week to decide a way forward…!
For good measure, I shall also move my cellphone contract and save yet more money. Next question is who is best value for 4G..?
My family used Starlink when they got caught right in the centre of Hurricane Helene in 2024 and lost all power for three weeks. A neighbour, ex-special forces got onto his former army office and they contacted Musk’s company who sent several sets of whatever was needed so people could keep in contact with worried relatives and do some work too. SIL said it was an efficient system and worked well.
I have a basic Orange mobile contract with a small amount of data just in case I need to use WhatsApp or Google when out and about.
At home on my Bouygues powered WiFi, I don’t need any mobile data and I have zero indoor cellular coverage anyway. Orange FR supports WiFi calling anyway for folks that don’t use WA or FT.
I used Orange , could not have fibre without paying for a long trench to be dug to reach house 50mts because of location.
Now on Starlink since Nov fantastic service and their help is extremely good.
I just had to buy a long bracket as my roof overhangs 50-60 cms all sides. It’s so much cheaper €29.
You can also get additional mini routers to mesh with the main. I have stone walls 70/90cms and the mini router helps to get signal to far end of attached barn.
Ooh thanks I’ll give it some thought. I’m guessing it’s harder for a satellite to ignore my place in the Lot than for the terrestrial transmitters which do it very well
Tell me if I’d still need to keep my mobile or is there some sort of mobile coverage included?
The Starlink system doesn’t provide any cellular service, but if your cellular network provider supports WiFi Calling, calls to your mobile will be routed over your WiFi (provided by the Starlink).
Of course, Starlink lets you use WhatsApp, Telegram, FaceTime over the WiFi it provides.
Yes, you can extend the network. The Starlink router has an Ethernet adapter option, so you can run a cable to another router, switch or access point (for example to a gîte), just like you would with an Orange box.
Many people do this to create a second Wi-Fi network in another building. The only thing to note is that Starlink uses CGNAT, so hosting services or opening ports can be more complicated.
Otherwise, for basic internet use it generally works quite well in rural areas where fibre is unreliable.
Go into starlink.com, click on ‘residential’, enter your address, you will get a wuote of €29 pm, clivk ‘yes’, click Paypal for the deposit of €19. Then you will get an email with all your personal details asking you to set up a password.
We messed around for three months trying to get any sort of internet connection, fibre or copper, with both Orange and SFR, it was nightmare. Nobody would enable the previous owners copper line because they said fibre was available, but it was only available at the end of the drive 100m away. They expected us to supply and install the fibre to house. They didn’t even tell us this until they turned up to install.
At the day of the failed install we ordered Starlink, directly from California and we received it within only 48 hours, and it was up and running within 30 minutes of unboxing! Most of that time was fixing it to a pole at the gutter line of the house.
We also have it in UK as we can’t get fibre here, and when we had an issue with cable the customer service was 2nd to none! They sent me a new cable within 48 hours at no cost.
At both properties we run it into Ethernet splitters and then across many other repeaters for the house and outside. It just works all the time!
I thinks it one of the best inventions in the last 30 years!
It’s also super cheap in France at 40 euros a month compared to the £75 a month we pay in the UK!
People might not like some of Elons politics but nobody can argue that the guy knows how to build very reliable stuff with great customer service!
At the moment we’re running an ethernet cable from the orange livebox in our house to our cottage, which is not ideal and I’m wondering about Starlink as a stand-alone for the cottage/gite.
I’d be grateful for some more info please. What is the process of setting it up? (I’m reading about poles and gutters?)
We’ve trees close to our cottage, is that an issue?
But surely there is the cost of the satellite dish and installation?
I haven’t read a contract, so I don’t know what the hardware related conditions of the Residential contract are, but I know there’s no up front cost, just the monthly charge.
You need a clear view of the sky over quite a wide area above the dish (which is a flat, rectangular panel). The setup app is very good and easy to use.
The pole kits (which come with wall brackets) are around €50 and you will have to find a way to connect the dish outside to the modem inside using the supplied cable.
