Today, X user Oleg Kutkov uncovered a new product called Starlink Mini. In the post he shared 3 images, 2 of different angles of the hardware, along with a third that features a small circuit board with a model number and FCC ID.
Having broke the news,@elonmusk confirmed it was indeed real, replying with a series of posts to share more details.
What is Starlink Mini?
Starlink as we knew it, was a series of low-earth orbit satellites that provide internet access to those with a Starlink dish and monthly subscription and all you needed was a power source and a clear view of the sky.
Starlink has expanded over the years from a consumer service to offer business grade options, roaming plans for those who travel a lot and boats and planes.
Speeds can vary, but typically sit around 300Mpbs for home users, a substantial upgrade for those in regional and remote areas.
Starlink Mini will offer an ultra-portable Starlink dish the is 28.9×24.8 cm (11.4″ x 9.8″) in size, which Musk says will easily fit inside a backpack.
How fast is it?
With the new generation of Starlink Satellites, more of the transmission is being done at the satellite side, meaning we can access it with smaller devices.
Despite the smaller, more portable dish to receive the signal, Musk shared that we should expect up to 100Mbps download speeds and 11.5 Mbps upload with a very tidy 23 millisecond latency.
These speeds are fast enough to sustain a 4K move and even game on.
How much does Starlink Mini cost?
Possibly the biggest part of today’s announcements is the cost of Starlink Mini. The device cost will be around half price the current Starlink.
Costs of the Starlink dish have fluctuated over time, but is currently priced at A$599 in Australia, making the Starlink Mini around A$299. There have been times where Starlink goes on sale and if that happens we could see Starlink mini much cheaper.
The other cost associated with
‘s Starlink is the monthly subscription fee. The existing home subscription price costs A$139.00 per month in Australia, which means we could see Starlink Mini available for under A$70 per month.
Getting up to 100Mbps down for A$70 per month certainly changes the equation for many and should start to make telco’s exceedingly nervous given this is likely to steal market share.
Starlink initially targeted those in remote areas and for those with terrible satellite of fixed wireless NBN, Starlink was an obvious replacement. If Starlink Mini offers great speeds at great prices, then it threatens to take customers who currently use NBN FTTN and are technology-locked to less than 100Mbps for similar or less cost.
Starlink has included unlimited data (fair use policy applies), but there’s still no official confirmation that will be the case with Starlink Mini (let’s hope so).
When is it available?
It looks like Starlink Mini will be a few months away for the first areas (despite Elon using it today). We’re hoping that it comes to Australia quickly as there’ll be many ready to hit the order button when it does.
With the lower price point, it starts to make sense for a lot more businesses to have this as a backup to their primary connections. Sure the bandwidth may not sustain all business-level activities, but if you have a primary link go down, you’d really like to have some kind of fail over and have things run a little slower, rather than nothing.
