is Starlink now dead for Outdoor Events?

When Starlink launched it quickly became a game-changer for outdoor events. All of a sudden you could get reliable 100Mbps+ download speeds at low latency nearly anywhere. It didn’t take a professional to install, and it was cheap enough (assuming you potentially misused the ‘residential’ tier) that anyone could have one.

In outdoor events we saw firstly the event Wi-Fi providers starting to use it for the whole site’s internet connectivity, but then contractors, bar companies, traders, funfair rides and even the general public starting to bring them to event sites, all wanting their share of this high speed internet service.

However, as this popularity has rapidly spread, performance has significantly deteriorated. Particularly in ‘congested’ areas and despite trying to address this with launching newer dish models, High Performance hardware and Priority plans. Fundamentally we are starting to reach the capacity limits of the system.

Information about Starlink capacity and performance is not widely published, and is highly complex, but we can estimate that the theoretical maximum download capacity of a spot beam (or cell) is around 700Mbps, and each spot beam covers an hexagonal area on the ground approximately 15miles across. 700Mbps does not go far when each dish on the ground has the capability to download at over 100Mbps. Of course not every dish will be utilizing all of that capacity at once, but we can see now why a large festival site with 100 dishes on site are now not getting anywhere near the advertised speeds (not allowing of course for any others in the same geographical area).

What can we do about it then for outdoor events?

The problem is allocation of service, a concession unit for example with two EPOS devices doesn’t need 100Mbps; but the main stage video team desperately trying to download new last-minute content for the imags does; if they both have their own Starlink we have no way to prioritise these two flows (although, one of those users is actually more business critical than the other despite needing less), and actually a new version of iOS downloading in the background on the EPOS devices is taking all the capacity slowing down both the card payments and the video team.

So, we can try and still use Starlink but back to a traditional model – the Wi-Fi provider brings a couple of High Performance Starlink dishes, and distributes that service across site and manages traffic prioritisation. The problem is this model costs more, and you’ve got to stop all those other stakeholders from using their own Starlinks. If you’ve got Live-ins on site, that could be near impossible, and of course you’ve also got to consider other people outside the event but within the same spot beam area.

Or, we have to accept that Starlink isn’t a viable option anymore, and go back to the more expensive alternatives?

Long live Tooway?