[Starlink] Starlink in Northern Europe: A New Look at Stationary and In-motion Performance

Daniel AJ Sokolov daniel at falco.ca
Thu Feb 27 22:40:05 EST 2025


I live North of 60, in Whitehorse in the Yukon. With about 35,000 
inhabitants, We are the largest Canadian city in the North.

Here, we could get Starlink for a while. But last year, they introduced 
a waiting list. There is no more capacity to go around.

I assume this will remain so for a couple more years, until we get new 
satellites.

In other parts of the Yukon, I am not aware of waiting lists.

Cheers
Daniel AJ



On 2025-02-27 at 14:02, Ulrich Speidel via Starlink wrote:
> I had a quick look.
> 
> The most important bit of information I was looking for is on page 7, 
> and it's not explicitly mentioned despite its importance - rather it's 
> delivered on the side of the figures: the latitude of the measurements. 
> Ballpark 65 deg north. That puts the measurements beyond the range of 
> the bulk of the Starlink shells at 43, 53, and 53.2 degrees inclination, 
> leaving only the 70 and 97.6 deg inclination shells within view.
> 
> Why does this matter? Two reasons:
> 
> 1. A location at 65 deg north sees on average around 8 qualifying
>     satellites at any time - those are satellites that are at least 25
>     deg above the horizon (so their beams don't get into terrestrial
>     microwave link receivers). That compares to over 40 qualifying
>     satellites should you find yourself luck to live between 40 and 45
>     deg north, and over 20 at the Equator (even keeping GSO protection
>     into account).
> 2. The qualifying satellites you see north of about 60 deg are still
>      >90% version 1.5's. They have lasers for backhaul but a
>     comparatively small number of Ku band beams for downlink to Dishy.
>     South of 40 degrees, almost half the qualifying satellites you're
>     going to encounter are from the version 2 series, which have a lot
>     more beams. These beams are also higher capacity ones.
> 
> Why does the number of qualifying satellites and beams matter? 
> Basically, if you add up all beams on all satellites within view, you 
> get the pool of beams that Starlink can pick from to serve your Dishy. 
> More beams in total = more options = bigger cake = bigger slice of 
> capacity for your Dishy.
> 
> Now how big a slice of the cake you can get depends not only on the 
> satellite mix in view, but also on how many other user terminals in your 
> immediate (cell) and wider (nearby cells) in your neighbourhood want to 
> access that capacity cake. This depends a lot on population density and 
> on what the competing terrestrial connectivity options are. In a place 
> with low population density, fibre to almost everywhere and a good 4G 
> and 5G coverage, all at good prices, there won't be a lot of competing 
> users for the cake. The Oulu area in Finland, where they took the 
> measurements, appears to be in that category, mostly. The paper doesn't 
> discuss these determinants of performance, however.
> 
> On 28/02/2025 4:04 am, Hesham ElBakoury via Starlink wrote:
>> Hi Craig,
>> No it is not my paper.
>> It has interesting results that I would like others to see and provide 
>> feedback on.
>>
>> Hesham
>>
>> On Thu, Feb 27, 2025, 6:36 AM Craig Polk <c.polk at comsoc.org> wrote:
>>
>>     Hesham,
>>
>>     Is this your paper? Are you submitting it for the WG to review as
>>     a possible INGR Topic article?
>>
>>     Best regards,
>>     Craig
>>
>>     ----
>>     Craig Polk, MSEE, MBA
>>     Program Manager
>>     Future Networks Tech Community | futurenetworks.ieee.org
>>     <http://futurenetworks.ieee.org>
>>     3 Park Avenue, 17th Floor, New York, NY 10016
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>> +New+York,+NY+10016%C2%A0++Office:+%2B1?entry=gmail&source=g>
>>     Office: +1
>>     <https://www.google.com/maps/search/3+Park+Avenue,+17th+Floor, 
>> +New+York,+NY+10016%C2%A0++Office:+%2B1?entry=gmail&source=g>
>>     212-705-8926 | Mobile: +1 908-255-6568
>>     Email: c.polk at comsoc.org
>>     Future Networks World Forum | https://fnwf.ieee.org/
>>     Connecting the Unconnected | https://ctu.ieee.org/
>>
>>     On Thu, Feb 27, 2025, 12:01 AM Hesham ElBakoury
>>     <helbakoury at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>         This paper [1] This paper evaluates the Flat High Performance
>>         (FHP) terminal's performance in Finland, Northern Europe.
>>
>>         *_Abstract_*
>>         "Starlink has introduced the Flat High Performance (FHP)
>>         terminal, specifically designed to support the vehicles and
>>         the vessels in motion as well as the high-demand stationary
>>         users. The research on FHP terminal throughput analysis
>>         remains limited, only a few existing studies evaluate FHP,
>>         focusing on the limited parameters and scenarios. This paper
>>         evaluates the FHP terminal's performance in Finland, Northern
>>         Europe. We examine round-trip time (RTT), uplink, and downlink
>>         throughput for both stationary and in-motion use. We measure
>>         network efficiency across six geographically diverse servers
>>         and get insights of network routing strategies. Our results
>>         show that Starlink provides high-speed, low-RTT connectivity,
>>         however, the throughput experiences fluctuations with slight
>>         degradation when in motion. Additionally, we compare Starlink
>>         and terrestrial network RTT and possible routing paths."
>>
>>         Hesham
>>         [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.15552
>>         
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