What is Starlink and Can I use it for Business networking?
Internet is a critical system in business. Email, phones, sales, research, and most communications all utilise internet yet good internet service is sometimes still quite tricky. New offices and offices outside of towns and cities often pose challenges with lead time for install and even speeds being the most common challenge.
Starlink to the Rescue?
Starlink is the new network provider you might have heard of from Elon Musk’s company SpaceX. It utilises satellites to provide internet via a dish – though the dish is actually flat.
This means you are no longer relying on someone running a cable or fibre to the location, so long as you can see the sky you can probably use Starlink. The speeds are good, typically above 100Mbps down load speed and overall performance is generally great.
So is Starlink the answer?
As with lots of tech there are reasons for and against!
The first reason Starlink might not be appropriate for you is something called latency. This is the time it takes for parts of the communication to go from your device to wheat ever you are using. This is particualrly and issue with voice traffic so phones might not be as good as you expect. However, in live usage we have seem offices of up to 40 people all successfully using Starlink for voice.
The second common reason is the lack of ability to link in to existing networks. The way Starlink works can make services such as MPLS tricky, but services such as SDWan and VPNs can all work.
Cost wise its quite affordable with fixed locations plans at a similar price to basic fibre lines.
If you have a location which is posing issues to get network into Starlink is certainly worth investigating.
For more advice about your specific needs speak to VMhosts!
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