Do You Really Need Starlink

We have been using a Teltonika RUTX50 modem router which has almost eliminated any need for our Starlink Roam service while outback touring to date. Recently announced removal of the pause feature and Starlink's pending $8.50 per month standby cost ($102 per year) now being enforced by Starlink in addition to the $139 per month ($1668 per year) we already pay for a fixed residential service meaning we will just let Starlink cancel the roam service we initially paid close to $1500.00 in equipment cost alone to acquire. This latest change has now led us to a point where we are seriously considering cancelling our residential $139 per month Starlink plan due to this inflexible and belligerent attitude. At our $139 per month Starlink fixed location we already have access to cheaper and equivalent speed NBN fixed wireless and the ever improving coverage of 4g and 5g data with Telstra and Optus. Starlink are now even offering much cheaper first year contract on-boarding deals for new customers and charging existing customers more.

It should be important for business to remember where they came from and to remember those who helped get where they are now. Maybe don't overestimate the amount of potential subscribers and expect any return on political expenditure.

The Teltonika RUTX50 with the 5G Combo MIMO Mobile GNSS WI-FI Roof SMA Antenna part number PR1KC640 is always setup and available, powered directly from the vehicles DC power providing wifi over a wide area in and around the tow vehicle and van negating the need to continually deploy and packup the Starlink dish and cables each time. Without considerable expense and aftermarket parts there is the additional and considerable overhead of AC power requirements by the Starlink unit. We never get through all the prepaid data allowance provided with our sim cards used in the Teltonika.

Here is something else interesting, data usage, the amount of data Starlink report we use via them is massive e.g three to four times more compared to any of our data use with any other provider. We are not talking about one or two other providers here either, we are comparing many telco 5G, 4G, ADSL, HFC, VDSL and NBN FTTN HFC and FW connections. Then there are all the small momentary Starlink dropouts at times which become extremely noticable using VOWIFI calling where even with the mobile phone set to flight mode with wifi enabled vowifi calls are dropping out every few minutes. Similar dropouts occur with streaming music and video over our Starlink fixed residential plan.Typical surfers wasting their lives on friendface, clocktok, tweettweet, testtube etc wouldn't typically notice these dropouts and think the overpriced service is fantastic.

We used the Teltonika as the sole router when we did use Starlink instead of using the absolute rubbish power wasting routers Starlink provide with their dish. The Teltonika RUTX50 simply has so much more to offer in features and usability and I am confident it will be still in use long after Starlink has had its day.

We originally purchased a fixed location V1 Starlink kit for $670 as an early adopter in 2021. Despite the outages, it delivered excellent speeds when it was online. This first Starlink plan was purchased to supplement and load‑balance our existing Fixed Wireless NBN connection, along with a Telstra 4G/5G link and two Optus 4G/5G links, not as an only resort option. The rubbish Starlink router provided with this original unit has not been used except for initial setup, we use pfsense as our router and firewall.

Later we bought a V2 kit for $450 to use with the Starlink Roam plan, which at the time offered an unlimited monthly subscription of roughly $150 and included a pause‑option feature. Without that pause option, we would not have purchased the second kit.

Regarding the new Starlink Roam V2 actuated mobile kit we also spent:

$130 on a better quality and shorter Ethernet cable (the supplied cable is excessively long for most installations).
$232 on a storage bag and an Australian made pole mount, because the genuine Starlink pole mount costing $70 proved unsatisfactory and remains unused.
$60 on the official Starlink Ethernet adapter.
To avoid the high DC‑to‑AC conversion loss, we added a YAOSHENG Rectangular Dishy Cable Adapter to RJ45 plus a V2 to PoE Injector 150W GigE Passive PoE Injector with Surge Protection, 48-57V / 3A / 150W totaling $182.00 and a Victron DC‑DC Orion-Tr 24/48-2.5 converter at $92.00 plus extensive DC and Data cabling plus circuit protections, connectors and switching, allowing us to power the Roam Starlink unit directly from DC avoiding the higher AC voltage requirement of the Starlink power hungry and inferior router. This extra equipment added another several hundred dollars to our total overall hardware cost.
This is a total of $1146.00 for hardware alone before we add the additional few hundred dollars materials and labor cost to install and wire everything ready for use and then there is still always the setup and pack up time required each time it is used and dont forget an additional $80 per month for a measly 50GB or $195 per month for unlimited use.
Note 50GB per month is way more than we ever use with any other ISP but for some questionable reason we see data use reports in our Starlink account of three to four times this amount across billing months when we have not even been home for large percentages of the month?

We initially used the additional Starlink Roam plan at home for testing, then paused it until we planned to travel. Shortly thereafter, Starlink raised the price of the unlimited plan to around $195 per month, which was prohibitive especially considering the much lower per GB cost of our 4G/5G data. Fortunately, they later introduced an 80 GB plan for $80 per month, which is more affordable but still much more expensive that our Telstra and Optus prepaid data sims.

During a trip to far‑north‑western NSW and far‑south‑western QLD we re‑enabled the Starlink service, but we only used it for a single night, something we could have managed without. Our Teltonika RUTX50 router, paired with a genuine multipurpose roof‑mount antenna, a prepaid Boost plan, and a prepaid Optus data SIM, performed flawlessly.

Now, in August 2025, Starlink announce that the pause feature will be removed entirely. They are demanding an additional $8.50 per month to keep the service active otherwise, the paused service and equipment we paid for in good faith will be terminated. If we lose the ability to reactivate the equipment when needed, we’ll simply rely on our existing Teltonika setup and wait to see what is on offer when Amazon Project Kuiper launches in 2026.

In short, Starlink’s recent changes don’t align with our reasons based on their offer when we purchased their equipment. The Teltonika RUTX50 offers far more flexibility and isn’t tied to a single US‑based provider who keeps changing their offer for a service with diminishing performance due to over subscription because they assume their customers have no other option.

We plan to recover our initial investment in the V2 kit by moving our fixed residential $139 per month to standby at $8.50 per month. We can easily get by on NBN and the 4G/5G services. This will save us $130.50 per month (costing Starlink a monthly loss of $130.50) and in 9 months time we will break even.

Will be very interesting to see what happens when Amazons Project Kuiper becomes available in 2026.