Starlink: Rural Australian customers flock to Elon Musk’s new internet service

But is the billionaire’s promise that Starlink can close the digital divide for rural Australians too good to be true?

Thousands of rural and regional Australians have signed up to “game-changing” internet service provider Starlink that is shifting the frontiers of Australia’s digital divide, offering speeds and data that farming businesses have never before had access to. But experts say the company’s high prices and hands-off approach to customer service could leave some people worse off.

Tristia Lakey with her Starlink satellite on her livestock property at Sunbury. Picture: Nicole Cleary

When the pandemic forced farmer and healthcare worker Tristia Lakey to start working from home in early 2020, she found she had traded in a long work day and a two-hour daily commute for even longer hours hovering over a tenuous internet connection.

From her 240-hectare cattle, sheep and goat property north of Melbourne, Tristia logged into her regional hospital’s virtual private network using the only internet connection available to her – the National Broadband Network’s satellite service – and did her best to attend meetings and manage projects remotely.

Tristia spent long minutes waiting for files to open or save, turned her video off in meetings to save bandwidth, and anxiously rebooted each time her connection dropped out.

On the weekends, she managed the farming business’s website and social media channels, selling meat to customers by order.

“My stress levels would go up, worried the internet would drop out … I would work longer hours to get the work done,” she says.

At the start of 2022, her husband, John Lakey, heard about a new internet option – Starlink – designed by tech entrepreneur Elon Musk’s company SpaceX.

The product was a white dish, about the size of a large pizza tray on a stand, which connected to a constellation of low-earth orbit satellites and promised faster speeds, unlimited data and lower latency – a term for the delay between sending and receiving a signal. Musk himself trumpets Starlink as being “great for any sparsely populated areas with expensive or little to no connectivity”.

John didn’t waste time putting in an order.

When it arrived, the Lakeys set it up themselves, rigging it on to a drum they filled with water outside their house.

The new set-up was “a game changer”, Tristia says.

Not only could the Lakeys stream movies, video chat and work from home without a hiccup, they realised they could do work on the farm that used to be out of reach.

Tristia Lakey uses her new high-speed internet connection to more efficiently run her family’s farming and meat sales operation, and incorporate new digital technology into land management practices. Picture: Nicole Cleary

They hired a specialist from NSW and worked with him over video chat to create detailed topographical maps of their property. They mapped new fence lines and areas for “ripping” to improve the property’s water infiltration.

“That wasn’t possible before,” Tristia says.

And the Lakeys aren’t the only ones who have realised the potential Starlink’s new internet service offers.

Country Women's Association NSW CEO Danica Leys.

On a cattle and cropping property west of Mullaley in NSW, farmer and Country Women’s Association chief executive Danica Leys says she is excited about the prospect of connecting timesaving farm monitoring equipment to Starlink’s network.

Leys and her husband have invested in an electric fence energiser, which – if connected to Wi-Fi – allows them to check for faults on their fencelines via an app on their phone and remotely turn the system on and off.

“You spend a lot of time physically monitoring things (on a farm). By trying to do things digitally, you can take time out of your day,” she says.

According to a user-generated map, several thousand mostly rural and regional Australians have now connected to Starlink via about 20 “ground stations” in Tasmania, Victoria, NSW, Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia.

Exact numbers are not publicly available. AgJournal contacted SpaceX to find out, but did not receive a response.

The company has also declined to provide its customer numbers to the National Farmers’ Federation’s Regional Tech Hub, an Australian advocacy and support organisation.

The secrecy is one of several mysteries surrounding the private company. “A lot of other organisations will generally be happy to share numbers, because they’re just proud of how many homes or businesses they’ve reached. It’s quite the difference with Starlink and SpaceX,” Regional Tech Hub manager Trent Geddes says.

Anonymous users have contributed to an online map of the service over the past 12 months to track where coverage has become available, because initially Starlink didn’t offer one. (Starlink has now added a map to its website.) The company is also notoriously hard to contact, so users share tips and solutions to technical problems in online forums.

The business model is “you order online, we ship to your door, you do your own thing, and contact us if it’s not working for you,” Geddes says.

Falcon 9 launches 58 Starlink satellites. Picture: SpaceX

Elon Musk says Starlink will revolutionise internet access for remote and isolated regions. Picture: Jim Watson / AFP

But if you do need to contact them, it isn’t straightforward. Starlink doesn’t have a phone number customers can call for support. To report an outage or make a complaint, customers need to lodge a ticket via the company’s app.

“My son thinks it is the most hilarious thing,” Queensland-based cabler Terry Deacon says. “You need to have the internet to fix the internet.”

Deacon has been installing Starlink equipment for customers in southeast Queensland and northeast NSW since the company began rolling out across Australia last year. He says he has now connected more than 100 customers, and demand for the service is continuing to increase.

But Deacon has some concerns about unqualified installers offering to install the equipment for a fee.

“You don’t really want someone knocking a hole in your wall if they don’t know what they’re doing,” he says. “Licensing and accreditation is there because these are skills that take time to master. If a system isn’t connected correctly and something breaks, that won’t be covered by warranty, and it isn’t a cheap product.”

Finley resident Greg Norris, who spent about $1100 on a Starlink kit, shipping, and his first months’ account fee, plugged his new system in when it arrived in late March, but found he couldn’t make it work.

He lodged a ticket online for support on April 1 and received an automated response. Over the following 12 days, he submitted two more tickets, which the company cancelled, recognising them as duplicates of the original.

“I don’t want to make a fuss. I just want internet that works,” Norris says.

After sharing his experience in an online user forum, Norris was contacted by advocacy group Better Internet for Rural Regional and Remote Australians, who contacted Starlink on his behalf. The company has since provided a refund of Norris’ first month’s bill and has committed to replacing the faulty unit, but he needs to wait for it to arrive from the US.

Some customers have reported similar delays in receiving a response from Starlink’s support team, while others say the company has been remarkably responsive.

The Lakeys run a livestock operation and meat sales business, and Starlink has transformed their ability to do business online. Picture: Nicole Cleary

This long-exposure image shows a trail of a group of SpaceX's Starlink satellites passing over Uruguay as seen from the countryside n February 2021. Picture: Mariana SUAREZ / AFP

Starlink’s business model is “unique” in Australian telecommunications because “everything’s based overseas”, Geddes says.

“There’s mixed results in whether an offshore support can adequately support an end user, especially in a rural, regional or remote area,” he says. “Most of your other companies that provide services in Australia have an arm in the country.

“You pay a fee over $100 to have (the equipment) shipped directly from the US. And the equipment usually takes a couple of weeks to come. Even if you need parts, they’re all from the US. There’s no Australian warehouse to look after Australian customers.”

There are also question marks over how long the product will last, Geddes says. The satellite dish provided to customers is under warranty for 12 months.

And the cost of the service – $139 a month plus set-up costs – is significant compared to NBN’s SkyMuster, which starts at $34.95 a month with free installation.

But Geddes says the change Starlink is ushering into Australia with remote internet access is a positive one, despite the concerns about support.

“There is change occurring. And it’s beneficial for everyone who is outside of a major regional centre,” he said.

Starlink is the only player offering unlimited data on high speeds, over low latency satellite internet to consumers in Australia, but others aren’t far behind.

Telstra this year announced it was initiating a partnership with European satellite company OneWeb to offer satellite internet in Australia. Geddes says there are few details available on the Telstra project to date, but it is positive to see Starlink promoting competition in Australia.

“The fact that one major player in the consumer grade services at the moment is one that has a lot of money behind them, that’s driving other companies’ interest in rolling out worldwide. And through providing more competition in this game, it can only be better, once you’ve had more players jump in and have a crack at it.”