In this video we explain, where Starlink is irreplacable and where it may be overkill. We compare the dataspeeds of the Starlink and 5G modems in cities. 5G can give us 463 MB/s download speeds.
Should you use Starlink because it is available?
Now, this is a challenging video and I actually am shooting my third version of the story because I am nervous about how to say what I want to say and not getting people to think I’m saying the wrong thing. If that makes sense. But basically what I’m trying to get at is Starlink works really well, but it makes most sense in places where it is needed, because it is a system with limited capacity as with anything. And if everybody jumps on a specific idea, it’s going to get overloaded. The same happens with 4G, 5G. You could see here in Australia and it probably everywhere in the world. So December time, our summer holiday, these little towns that only has limited capacity and then suddenly a lot of people go there for two or three weeks of holiday, that tower is going to struggle a little bit for that time. Then once it’s back to the normal gear, then that tower serves the purpose perfectly well for those little towns.
It’s the same with Starlink, if we in the city all decided, “Well, let’s just all jump on this awesome technology.” At any given time there’s one satellite flying over and that little satellite is covering that area and it needs to suddenly handle I don’t know how many users, but much more than makes perfect sense. There’s going to be the same type of problem and the capacity to overload will be significant. So I have a demo that I’m going to run. So first of all, I’ll just fire up our Starlink system again, here in Lonsdale, just to get a concept and a value for what Starlink currently could do given the capacity and how it’s developing and so forth. I had played with this when it came out two years ago. Now I’m running this here in Lonsdale, just in front of the warehouse, and you could see I tested 180 down and about four, almost five up. To be fair, I tested it many other days as well for the other videos that I was doing and then I got 10 to 15 megabits up. So it’s not like that is an absolute value but that’s just the order of magnitude that we will be looking at. As well as latency, it’s about 50 to 60 milliseconds which is really, for satellite system, incredible. So there we go. That is Starlink.
Is 5G Faster Than Starlink?
Now if you were in the middle of the country, if you were in a really remote place and there’s almost no cellular coverage or maybe there is no cellular coverage, either as a caravaner or maybe on a boat or as a business and a household, getting those values is incredible., From something that was just had a little bit of internet, suddenly this is what you can do. Life changing. Life changing, suddenly you’re connected, can do anything you want to do. It works really well. That makes perfect sense. However, the second test I do, is of course, play with the new incredible RETX50 from Teltonica. Set it up on exactly the same spot. so you can see in the setup right next to the other modem, just to be fair. Always cabled, because I want to eliminate potential questions about wifi and so forth. So it’s a cabled connection to the same laptop. Everything is 100% the same. So repeat the test using the RTX50 and the 5G SIM. Now here in Lonsdale, we are right next to a tower. So it’s perfect conditions for a 5G connection and the speed you could see that I got there is 460 down and 91 megabits up and the latency is 20 milliseconds. So everything is better. Everything is better on 5G in a place where the towers are actually designed and meant for that purpose. So everything has its place. You need to put every technology in its context and in its location where it makes most sense. So if you are in a populated area like this, I would say using technology that is suitable and well developed for that area just makes most sense. It makes your life simpler, it makes the technology providers life simpler as well because then they can use…
5G vs Starlink Summary
There’s always this limited capacity for resources, no matter where you look at it, there’s just so many resources available for a specific application. So if everybody who could use 5G jumps on a technology such as Starlink because they feel this is the coolest thing since sliced bread, they are taking away, potentially, the same resource that could be available to somebody who is actually remote and wanted to use the same. Now of course there’s still… The system is much bigger at the moment than what the applications are. The system is much bigger at the moment than what the applications are. So it’s not currently a problem, but I think more just logically thinking, cost-wise, application-wise, technology-wise, performance-wise, that’s the word I was looking for, 5G for 5G and 4G areas is awesome where it makes most sense and with using external antennas you can actually extend that reach away from the base stations and still get the same reliable connections. Then when you go beyond that, think of water, as I say, think into remote really remote places, then Starlink is going to be phenomenal. But that’s really it. I think I’ve, I’ve done two videos now just over the last few days on Starlink. One is to show a awesome 4G backup using RUT360. That works like a treat. Now just putting kind of a boundary around where do you apply the logic for using 5G or 4G, that’s what I think makes most sense and again, this is March, 2023, so the picture may change soon enough. I actually read an article yesterday that there is some competition for Starlink coming up as well. So not going to say this is not ever going to be of interest, but for now the focus for us needs to be to make sure that 4G, 5G and the future 6G as well, is getting the attention it deserves, ’cause that is absolutely an incredible connection. And just thinking, again, just coming back to that picture, I had 460 megabits down here in Lonsdale. Oh, what more do I want? I can do so much with that kind of bandwidth. I mean it’s much more than I actually need. So I’m happy. I hope this makes sense. I hope I didn’t upset too many people but I just think use technology where it makes most sense, to keep it simple. Thanks for watching, subscribe if you want to see more like this and if you have any suggestions or comments about what I was saying here, happy to have a discussion, happy to have a think and see if we can debate and come to a common ground if you don’t agree with me.