This is exciting! My family has an off-the-grid cabin which has weak LTE service. Using Starlink is possible (and other people in the area use it) but the power demands are quite high. I was going to first try a 4g antenna hooked up to a local hotspot, but this might give us other options. It's a little unclear how it works from this info - hopefully they have a version that individuals can stand up if there's no network operator in their area.
I'd be very, very surprised if it got anything more than 1 kbps in the next couple of years. Very likely much less (think several seconds to send a single SMS-length message).
That's how much Iridium and Globalstar (the two existing comparable LEO solutions) can do without large external antennas for current satellite messengers (Garmin InReach, SPOT, more recently Apple iPhones etc.)
Actually using 1-2 Mbps will likely remain unaffordable for a while even once it becomes possible, given the cell sizes and frequencies involved.
Starlink is much cheaper than that because it uses the Ka-band (which has tens to hundreds of times more bandwidth available for this application) and directional beams on both ends of the connection, vastly increasing spatial reuse.
This was the number I was remembering, which was "two to four megabits per cell zone" so definitely not _per device_ (unless you are in a lonely cell).
For Iridium (which also uses LEO satellites and spot beams), the typical cell size is tens of thousands of square miles, though!
Even if Starlink manages to provide much smaller cells (which is not trivial, especially with omnidirectional mobile devices as clients instead of phased-array dishes), we're talking several orders of magnitudes compared to a regular terrestrial cell.
We don't have "off-the-grid" cabins in the UK as much as I love one. To think you want to carry connectivity to somewhere remote where you could idle with nature is terrible.
You should be asking why do you need such a service.
With respect, I'd urge you to think about what you are saying.
Most people who visit this cabin do want to turn off their devices. That's the goal. When the cabin was built, we lived in a reasonable world where being un-contactable for a week was common. That world is dead.
We need reliable connectivity because without it many people could not travel to the cabin at all. They don't have the power to change the world they live in or their position in it. They may need to take a zoom meeting or respond to an email.
Instead of impertinently implying I am not aware of the downsides of this state of affairs I encourage you to articulate what you mean in a way that doesn't talk down to people.
P.s. The Uk does indeed have "off grid" cabins![1]
I also hate it! But we live in a world where people are expected to have connectivity so right now those people simply cannot visit the cabin. If you are in the position to wind the connectivity clock back 50 years, please do.
