STARLINK Internet service on St. John!
Back in February of 2021, while the pandemic was but 11 months young, we put down a $100 deposit on Starlink - SpaceX’s Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Internet system. A few friends on island did the same, then sometime last fall, we read online reports of late-2023 or mid-2024 as a possible date for the Virgin Islands to have viable Starlink connectivity.
You may be thinking - ‘Don’t you already have VIYa broaband tied into the unifi network with LTE Cellular as a backup network?’ Yes, we do, and it’s fairly inexpensive. But both are reliant on one thing - telephone poles. Storms wreak havoc on man-made telephone poles and the wires they have strung on them. So we’re always looking for ways to be less tied to the un-reliable world.
Sep 2017: Hurricane Irma Damage in Chocolate Hole on St. John 5 years ago this week
Back in February of 2018, just 6 weeks after purchasing and taking over Great Expectations, we invested in 40 new solar panels and 3 Tesla Powerwalls to remove the mess and inconsistency of a fuel generator AND provide solar power to the villa and back to the grid. We upgraded a year later with another 18 panels and 2 more Powerwalls.
NOT-Island Time
Out of nowhere in early April, we received an email explaining we owed $538 for our future Starlink system (which we paid promptly), and that we would receive notifications about shipping plans. We keep up on most things island, technology, and space oriented and figured - ok, here comes island time.
Then not 2 days later we received an email stating our system had shipped and it would arrive by April 20. Amazing!
Setting up the Starlink internet dish was a breeze…15 min of bolting the facia arm, 30 minutes to run some custom cable, and 30 seconds to boot and self-adjust for signal.
During the end of April, right into June, we would see 3-4 Starlink boxes arriving at the mail center almost daily - a lot of other people wanted peace of mind as well!
We installed the system on the guest house facia in about an hour (for easy future take down in case of inclement weather) and whamo we were up and running!
End Results
Consistently getting 150Mbps down and 20-30Mbps upload speeds with Starlink
Our villa is mostly off-grid (except for air conditioning) as it has been for 3 years
We generate 85 - 110kWhr of solar power daily
Our 5 x Tesla Powerwall 2’s store 67.5KWhr of power for when the sun don’t shine
Our primary Internet was via VIYa HFC (hybrid fiber coax), and our failover internet was LTE cellular through our network. It's now Starlink primary and LTE backup
When another storm comes, we simply unplug the Starlink dish, tuck it under the bed, and put it back up the next day running the villa and internet/communicaions off our solar and Powerwalls.
If only we owned land that went all the way down to Hart Bay or Chocolate Hole - we’d find a way to put in a small desalinization plant!