Starlink at Sea: Transforming Connectivity for Sportfishing Boats

Many of you have probably witnessed one of the caterpillar-shaped objects moving across our evening or night sky recently. I saw one for the first time about eight months ago while we were fishing around 140 miles offshore. To be honest, it was pretty amazing to me seeing Starlink at Sea. Even with all the other new technology these days, it just seemed like something more futuristic than just another satellite put up into orbit far above the earth.

The Rise of Starlink in Maritime Connectivity

I heard about the new Starlink satellite system a couple of years ago from a friend but didn’t know of anyone actually using it on their boats until about a year ago. Elon Musk started launching these Starlink satellite “trains” back in 2019 with the main goal of bringing better access to the internet for people around the world. They now have close to 4,000 operational satellites that are in a relatively low orbit around the earth, about 350 miles above us.

Starlink at Sea Big Impact on the Sportfishing Community

These satellites have 16 beams in which each individual beam covers an area of 235 miles and can handle 2,000-plus users. The plan is to deploy a total of 12,000, with a possible extension to 42,000 satellites in the future. If this happens, it would be 15 times the number of all operational satellites in orbit today. The first subscription plans that I heard of offered a low price for Residential use, and a RV plan that was a little higher (especially if you opted for the “In Motion” antenna), and the Marine plan, which was initially priced where only superyacht owners or big offshore marine companies could afford it.

Navigating the New Plans: From RV to Mobile

Boat owners found that by purchasing the RV plan, they got service offshore in many areas around the world, but that has now changed. Starlink seems to have been trying to figure out the market for their product over the past six months and have gone through a few pricing transitions. They switched the RV plan to what they called the Roam plan, then finally to a Mobile plan, which is what they offer now in a few different versions. They also started geofencing so that you have to purchase a specific plan if you travel offshore.

Choosing the Right Plan for Marine Use

Mobile-Regional is $150 per month at the time of this writing and is for use at any location on land in your home continent. At $200 per month, Mobile-Global is for use at any location on land worldwide. There are several Mobile-Priority plans as well:  $250 per month for 50GB of data, $1,000 per month for 1TB and $5,000 per month for 5TB. They are for use on ocean or land around the world. We opted for the Mobile-Priority $250/month plan and will upgrade if needed, depending on how much data we start going through with guests on phones, internet and streaming movies. Hopefully, these existing plans will remain now that the dust has settled a bit.

KVH and Starlink: A New Partnership

With the large Starlink response from the boating world, KVH has entered a partnership with Starlink, offering a KVH/Starlink Companion plan. This plan will integrate the two systems so that should Starlink service be unavailable, KVH will be available at $75 per month for 100MB and $31 per month for a user specific VOIP (voice) line number.

Conclusion: The Future of Connectivity at Sea

For so many owners these days, the need for being accessible to their businesses and customers is a huge priority, and Starlink has just made that a lot easier.

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