The Technical Problems They Don't Advertise

Starlink advertises 20–40ms latency. In practice, latency spikes to 100–600ms during peak hours, satellite handoffs, or adverse weather. For video calls, gaming, or VoIP, this makes the service unreliable — not just slow.

The low-earth orbit design helps vs. traditional geostationary satellite, but the constellation is still maturing. Handoffs between satellites cause brief but noticeable interruptions multiple times per hour.

Rain fade is real. Heavy rain, snow accumulation on the dish, and dense cloud cover all degrade signal quality. Users in high-precipitation areas report losing service entirely during storms — sometimes for hours.

The dish has a built-in heater to melt snow, but it draws significant power and doesn't always keep up in heavy snowfall. The heater is not available on all hardware versions.

Starlink requires a clear view of the sky — specifically a wide cone toward the north (in the northern hemisphere). Trees, rooflines, chimneys, and neighboring structures cause "obstruction" outages that Starlink's app may not fully predict before you buy.

The Starlink app has an obstruction checker, but it uses your phone's camera and is not always accurate. Many users only discover obstruction problems after paying the $499 hardware fee.

When Starlink goes down, there is no status page with real-time outage information for residential customers. No push notification, no estimated restoration time, no proactive communication. You find out when your internet stops working.

Business/Priority plan customers have access to some support channels, but residential users are largely on their own. Third-party sites like Downdetector often have more timely outage information than Starlink itself.

Starlink's residential plan is "best effort" — meaning your speeds are deprioritized when the network is congested. In areas where many Starlink users are online simultaneously (suburban and semi-rural areas), speeds can drop dramatically during peak hours.

Starlink has been expanding its user base aggressively. Some early adopters who had excellent speeds in 2021–2022 report significantly worse performance as more users joined their cell.

The Starlink dish consumes 50–100W continuously — significantly more than a standard cable modem/router setup. For off-grid users (a key target market), this is a meaningful power draw that affects solar and battery system sizing.

Starlink does not prominently disclose power consumption during the purchase flow. Off-grid users who sized their systems based on advertised specs have reported unexpected power issues.