Is Starlink a Good System for Preppers?

If you followed us after Hurricane Helene, you may remember that we got a Starlink system 18 days after the storm hit. That gave us the ability to once again communicate to friends and family via phone, text and email. It was the first time after the storm hit that we got news from something other than our AM/FM radio.

Now Starlink has offered us a “free” Starlink Mini system, which is the mobile system you can mount on your RV or take backpacking. I don’t have an RV, and we don’t go backpacking, but I took them up on the offer anyway. The Mini will be in addition to the permanent antenna mounted on our house. If we never use it, we pay just $5 a month to be on standby, which I equate to a $5 rent payment. If we use it, we get a roaming plan for half price.

I see a few uses for this antenna:

1. If our current antenna is damaged by high winds or some other event, we have a backup.
2. If we go on a road trip, we can bring the Mini with us. Because it draws fewer watts than the full-size unit (about 25 watts from what I have read from third parties), we can power it with an adapter that plugs into a cigarette-lighter or similar power port. We could also hook it up to a small solar generator or battery.
3. If we have to evacuate, it can come with us.
4. Should I need communications while working from the top of the mountain, I could bring it up there.
5. We can lend it to someone else if their Internet goes down or provide internet access to a group of people in an area without traditional cell or internet coverage.

Portability

I can buy a handheld satellite phone and make calls on a satellite network, but that’s expensive. I’m getting the Starlink Mini for free—as long as I keep my full-size antenna—and it will allow me to make calls using the Wi-Fi calling setting on my iPhone, send texts and email, and surf the web using any Wi-Fi enabled device. Like any router, it can handle multiple devices at once, so multiple people can use it, something a single satellite phone cannot offer.

Starlink is expected to offer satellite service to regular cell phones in the future. I consider this a bridge to that point. Also, I expect the larger antenna area of the Mini will give it higher speeds than a cellphone.

In the meantime, my plan is to find a padded pouch for a laptop or tablet that will fit the Starlink Mini and pack it securely in there, along with the power cords and adapter. Then I’ll stash it with our bugout gear where it will be handy to grab in an emergency.

The Starlink Mini as a Backup

We learned the hard way that internet service delivered via above-ground wires and cables can be knocked out as easily as your electrical service during a severe storm—and Helene was among the worst of all storms.

After Helene, our electric utility got the electric grid back up in three weeks, a remarkably short time considering the extensive damage. The cable company took more than ten months to get us service again. During that time, we used Starlink. After our fiber optic was finally reconnected, we opted to run both it and Starlink using a router with failover. In other words, if our fiber supplier went down, the signal would switch over to Starlink. We did this for two months and found that we rarely, if ever, crossed over to Starlink. So we were paying $120 a month for Starlink service we rarely used.

That is where the Starlink standby plan comes in useful. We can use our fiber optic—for which we pay less than $40 a month as part of a promotion—and keep Starlink on Standby for an additional $5 a month, which will be $10 when we have both it and the mini on standby. That gives me a backup to my backup. For less than $50 a month, I will have two different internet providers and one redundant antenna. This is just right for a prepper who believes one is none and two is one.

How Slow is Standby Mode?

While it is in standby mode, our Starlink antennas provide 500Kbps (kilobits per second), which is half a megabyte, or somewhere between 180 and 500 times slower than Starlink’s normal high-speed connection. That may sound terribly slow, but it is enough to make a phone call (which requires about 100Kbps), send a text, or use email. It just isn’t enough to run multiple devices or watch movies.

I am old enough to have surfed the Internet on a dial-up modem that was 14.4K until we upgraded to 56K. Before broadband became common, I sat in video conference rooms where an ISDN line provided slow, jerky video and bad audio of people in conference rooms on the other side of the country. An ISDN line—which was so expensive only corporations had them—was 128Kbps, or four times slower than Starlink in standby mode. Yet somehow, we managed to survive. I compare using standby mode to driving a 1932 Ford Model A instead of your modern vehicle. You don’t want to go back to driving the Model A, but it sure beats walking.

So Standby mode will be a step backwards, but it will still allow us to communicate. In a disaster, that’s what we will need. Plus, open the Starlink app and click a button, and Starlink goes back into full-speed mode. Of course, the bill jumps back up, but I’m OK paying for what I get; I just don’t want to pay for something I don’t need.

And if our fiber optic gets wiped out again, or if they jump their prices, we can return to Starlink by clicking that same button.

The Downside of Satellite Communications

While I think Starlink is a boon to preppers, the potential downside is it might not work if something happens to the satellite network. If we get into a serious war, space could well be a battleground. Satellites could get knocked out or jammed. Likewise, an EMP or a CME could disable a portion of the Starlink satellites. If that happens, staying with fiber optic internet might look like a brilliant move. Of course, if we reach that level of war, Internet access is unlikely to be our biggest concern.

If the satellites work but the internet backbone is down, the DNS servers have been hacked, or some other event knocks out internet service, having Starlink has no real benefit. In my opinion, the internet infrastructure is more likely to go down than the satellite network; we’ve had two such outages in November, although they only affected portions of the web. A longer or wider failure could be in our future. Then we’ll have to get out our radio again because it will be one of the few methods of long-distance communication that still function.

Finally, communication is two-way, which implies there is someone on the other end to get the call or text. In a grid-down scenario, most people won’t be able to charge their cell phone and many cell towers will go down within 12 to 48 hours. You’d better hope your call gets through early in the emergency or it may not get through at all. This is where email and texting are options as they require less bandwidth. And with a centralized email system like Gmail, your message will be held in the recipient’s mailbox until they log in. A phone call requires both parties to be available. Email does not, an advantage during TEOWAWKI.

Communications in a Disaster

We call food, water, and shelter the big three of prepping and include self-defense, first aid and emergency medicine, and communications to be the next three. Once you get the big three figured out, think about the next three, and don’t ignore communications.

Whether you opt for Starlink, satellite texting, HAM radio, or another system, our personal experience during Helene showed us the importance of communications. I have GMRS and other radios, but Starlink will be much more useful in a disaster—assuming there is someone out there to talk to.