Starlink's new feature makes the service portable - for a price

A select number of Starlink customers now have the opportunity to access a new “Portability” feature and take the satellite internet with them.

A user on the Starlink subreddit posted an image of the message they received stating that for an extra $25 a month, you can take your internet connection to a new location.

Service restrictions

There are some restrictions, according to the official support page. You can’t take the connection with you to another continent, but you can take it to a different country. If you decide to take Starlink to another country, you can only stay there for two months. Past that time frame and you’ll have to change your registered address to the new one and then purchase another Starlink service.

The same is true if you stay within one country, but are gone from home for too long. However, the time frame for this scenario is rather vague. Starlink states if you’re away from the registered location for too long, you’ll be forced to change address, but no specific time frame is given.

You also can’t use Starlink while moving as it won’t work and doing so will actually void the warranty. The company’s teams are currently working on making that possible, but no launch date is available. Starlink also warns that a good connection is not guaranteed. They explain that because Starlink prioritizes the registered service address, going somewhere else will degrade the connection to an extent, especially during times of “...peak usage or network congestion,” Starlink clarifies.

Faster and better

That said, the Portability feature appears to be working quite well for some customers. YouTuber Dave Lee posted a picture of his StarLink connection while camping on his Twitter account. He had a download speed of 145 Mbps.

Starlink’s service is getting better as time goes on. According to a recent internet speed report by Ookla, Starlink was the fastest internet satellite provider during Q4 2021. Their service achieved an average download speed of 104.97 Mbps. Second place was Viasat with 21.81 Mbps on average.

Across the continental United States, service is all over the place. The fastest and most consistent speeds are on the West Coast, with large swaths of the country seeing speeds below 60 Mbps, according to the same Ookla report. But even then, Starlink’s slowest speeds are still faster than the FCC’s standard of 25 Mbps. With Starlink’s new premium tier, it looks like they’re making good on their promise of fast speeds everywhere.

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