You get $100. So do I.
Starlink pays both of us, as cash or service credit, when you order through my referral link and stay two months. Same price either way.
Look for the green $100 banner on Starlink's page, then finish your order in that same tab. How the $100 works
Start here: if you can get fiber, get fiber
I'll put this at the top because it's the honest answer and it costs me a referral to say it. If a fiber provider serves your address, take it. It will be faster, more consistent, unaffected by weather, and usually cheaper per month. Nothing in this article is an argument against fiber. This whole site exists because most rural addresses will never see it.
The latency argument, settled by arithmetic
The most common confusion I run into is people lumping Starlink in with the satellite internet they tried a decade ago and hated. They are not the same category of thing, and you can prove it with a calculator.
Traditional satellite internet uses satellites in geostationary orbit, which sits at a fixed altitude of 35,786 km — that specific number is what makes the orbit hold station over one spot on Earth. Radio signals travel at the speed of light, roughly 300,000 km per second. So:
| Orbit | Altitude | Theoretical minimum round trip |
|---|---|---|
| Geostationary (traditional satellite internet) | 35,786 km | ~477 ms — four legs of 119 ms each: you up, down to the ground station, back up, and down to you |
| Low Earth orbit (Starlink) | ~550 km | ~7 ms on the same four-leg calculation |
Those are floors, not real-world figures — actual latency on either system is higher once you add ground routing, processing and network conditions. But the floor is the point. A geostationary provider cannot deliver a responsive video call no matter how much they improve their hardware, because roughly half a second of the delay is the signal travelling 143,000 km. No engineering budget shortens that path. It's a distance problem.
Dropping the orbit by a factor of sixty-five is what removes it. That's the actual innovation, and it's why the old "satellite internet is unusable for calls and gaming" wisdom stopped being true.
Where each option genuinely wins
| Option | Take it when | Avoid it when |
|---|---|---|
| Fiber | It's available. Full stop. Best performance and best price per megabit. | Never — but it almost certainly isn't offered at your address, which is why you're reading this. |
| Cable | Your address happens to sit inside an existing footprint. Solid and well-understood. | You're past the end of the plant. Extension builds are quoted in thousands of dollars to the customer. |
| Fixed wireless (local tower) | You have clear, verified line of sight to the tower and the provider has a good local reputation. Can be genuinely excellent and often cheaper. | Terrain or mature trees sit in the path. Coverage maps are modeled, not measured — insist on a real check at your roofline. |
| Cellular home internet | You have strong signal from a site that isn't already loaded. Often the best value available when it works. | Evening performance sags, or the carrier limits availability in your area — both signs the local site is at capacity. |
| DSL | You're close to the equipment and need something cheap and adequate for light use. | You're miles out on a long loop. Distance decides your speed, and you cannot pay to change it. |
| Geostationary satellite | Genuinely nothing else reaches you, including Starlink, and you need connectivity of some kind. | Anyone in the house makes video calls or plays anything online. See the arithmetic above. |
| Starlink | The wired options don't reach you and you have — or can build to — a clear view of the sky. | You're in dense mature tree cover with no way to get a mast above it. Obstructions are its real limitation and no subscription tier fixes them. |
Where Starlink actually falls down
Since I've spent this article being enthusiastic, here's the other side, plainly:
Obstructions are unforgiving. This is the single biggest cause of unhappy customers. If you cannot get a clear view of the sky, this product will frustrate you, and that is a site problem rather than something support can resolve.
Upfront hardware cost. You buy the kit. A fixed wireless provider will often hand you the radio as part of the service, which makes their first month much cheaper to try.
It's a network, and networks get busy. Performance depends on how many people share your cell. That's true of cellular home internet too, but it's worth saying rather than pretending capacity is infinite.
What I switched from, and what I'm running now
Worth being specific, because my situation isn't the one people expect.
I wasn't stranded without options. I had Xfinity. Cable, at the address, available and installed — and for me it was terrible. That's my experience of the service I had, not a claim about what anyone else gets, but it's the reason I went looking in the first place.
That's the case I think gets overlooked in every rural internet discussion. The conversation is usually framed as "connected or not connected," and a lot of people are neither — they're nominally served by something that doesn't actually do the job. Having a provider listed at your address and having internet that works are different things.
What I run now: standard Residential plan, roof-mounted, Chesapeake Beach, Maryland — a consistent 100 Mbps down, including through storms. Not a best-case reading taken once; that's what it does.
So if you have cable and it's bad, don't assume satellite is a step down from what you've got. That assumption is what kept me on Xfinity longer than I should have been.
The short version
Fiber if you can get it. Fixed wireless if you have verified line of sight and a decent local provider. Cellular home internet if your signal is strong and the site isn't saturated. Starlink if none of those reach you and you can see the sky — which, for most people who end up on this page, is the situation.
Common questions
What people ask me about this
Is Starlink better than fiber internet?
No. If a fiber provider serves your address, take it — it will be faster, more consistent, unaffected by weather and usually cheaper per month. This site exists because most rural addresses will never see fiber.
Why is Starlink's latency so much lower than older satellite internet?
Distance. Geostationary satellites sit at a fixed altitude of 35,786 km, which puts the theoretical minimum round trip at roughly 477 ms — four legs of about 119 ms each. Starlink's satellites orbit at about 550 km, giving roughly 7 ms on the same calculation. Those are floors rather than real-world figures, but no engineering budget shortens the geostationary path, because it is a distance problem rather than a hardware one.
Where does Starlink actually fall down?
Obstructions are unforgiving, and that is a site problem rather than something support can resolve. You buy the hardware upfront, where a fixed wireless provider will often hand you the radio as part of the service. And it is a network — performance depends on how many people share your cell.
What did you switch to Starlink from?
Xfinity. Cable, at the address, available and installed — and for me it was terrible. I was not stranded without options; I was nominally served by something that did not do the job. Having a provider listed at your address and having internet that works are different things.
If that's you
Ordering through my referral link gets you $100, as cash or service credit — and I get the same. Check your address on Starlink's site first — it'll tell you whether service is available before you commit to anything.
Look for the green $100 banner when Starlink's page opens — that confirms the code took. You pay month one as normal; the $100 is issued once you have been subscribed for two months. Finish your order in the same tab — the referral can be lost if you close it and come back later. Here's the full timeline.
Get the $100 →