Starlink resellers?

[Blue_Cookeh]

Hi all,

 

Has anyone successfully purchased Starlink for their school and can recommend a reseller willing to invoice? Going direct is... incompatible with how schools generally pay for things I find. I've had one quote back from a reseller that is basically double the monthly cost of what Starlink charge direct.

 

Currently trying to find something better than the 25/5 FTTC connection we're relying on. Three will offer us 5G Broadband but again, invoicing.

 

Cheers

[TheRobins]

How big is the school? Do you think that the starlink data limits may be an issue?

 

Could you not look at funding for direct fibre.

 

Sadly I suspect that the reseller will be charging you for using their Direct Debit or Credit Card and the time involved in processing the invoices themselves.

[DalekSec]

You can buy Starlink via PO etc: https://www.starlink.com/business

 

If you're running a school off of it i'd recommend going for the business plans over the personal ones.

[Blue_Cookeh]

We've had an OR survey that needed in the region of £20k+ ECCs so far (no change from 10 years ago...), is there funding for fibre available? I haven't found anything or been pointed that way by existing providers.

 

The 1/2TB priority plans Starlink offer shouldn't be an issue for our size of school, particularly if we offload some traffic to the slower backup FTTC connection. It's a primary with ~200 pupils - the majority of use is web browsing and some streaming from staff laptops/a laptop cart/iPads.

 

Is there a PO option on the Starlink site?! Every reference I've seen thus far points to requiring a credit card and any PO looked to be US only, unless I'm being daft (highly likely given how long I've been investigating various options)

Edited March 14, 2024 by Blue_Cookeh

[2ilent8cho]

We've had an OR survey that needed in the region of £20k+ ECCs so far (no change from 10 years ago...), is there funding for fibre available? I haven't found anything or been pointed that way by existing providers.

 

Did you never apply for this last year? https://www.schoolicts.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/DfE-Gigabit-Broadband-FAQ.pdf

[TheRobins]

We've had an OR survey that needed in the region of £20k+ ECCs so far (no change from 10 years ago...), is there funding for fibre available? I haven't found anything or been pointed that way by existing providers.

 

The 1/2TB priority plans Starlink offer shouldn't be an issue for our size of school, particularly if we offload some traffic to the slower backup FTTC connection. It's a primary with ~200 pupils - the majority of use is web browsing and some streaming from staff laptops/a laptop cart/iPads.

 

Is there a PO option on the Starlink site?! Every reference I've seen thus far points to requiring a credit card and any PO looked to be US only, unless I'm being daft (highly likely given how long I've been investigating various options)

https://www.schoolicts.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/DfE-Gigabit-Broadband-FAQ.pdf

 

This document is the one I could find to hand, I know one or two schools local to us who were sucessful in getting gigabit connectivity. Not sure if it helps but worth a look.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

Snap

[Oaktech]

Not for a school, but Clarus Networks have provided for a business I did some work for.

[supportman]

Sounds like a good idea for a backup line. I was having similar issues trying to get 5G on three under our business contract as a 2nd line into our smoothwall.

[PaddyNewman]

How big is the school? Do you think that the starlink data limits may be an issue?

I've never experienced any data limits as a residential user, and I would consider myself an excessive use individual.

 

Aside from billing and the increased price... I can't see the direct benefit of business, aside from the fact they probably prioritise your traffic if you cell is well populated. I certainly do not see any slowness at any time. I've got speedtests that run every 30 minutes and over this week never has it come back less than ~180Mbps (I put in place because they were doing weird throttling to around 50Mbps when you hit a certain amount of traffic a day, that has gone though)

[londonbg]

We're using Starlink load balanced with several other connections as we're still not properly cabled where we are despite being in Central London.

 

We used the residential option on a bank card for the purpose.

 

Has been very reliable thus far.

[FirstClass]

Do you use VPN connections for staff? The residential Starlink is CGNAT without a public IP and I was wondering a way round it as I'm installing starlink as a temp measure for a school during a broadband chane over.

[londonbg]

Slow reply. Apologies. We use Tailscale and/or Zerotier as all our connections are non fixed.

[Blue_Cookeh]

Bit of a thread bump but we finally got around to sorting this out.

 

We ended up purchasing Starlink through Clarus (so we can pay up front via PO), with Sophos provided by Wave9. Both companies were excellent throughout procurement and provisioning, and the Starlink has been top notch for the past couple of weeks we've been using it. It's taken our Primary from 30/20Mbps to 230/30Mbps. With the high performance dish we've seen 100% signal quality (with a brief 5 minute downtime at 3am for a dish software update) and averaging 25ms latency. The Sophos failed back to our FTTC beautifully for the 5 minutes it needed to.

 

It's certainly not suitable for everyone, especially with the upload, but we don't have any reason for staff to connect back to site remotely and we use Tailscale for remote tech access.

Edited March 5, 2025 by Blue_Cookeh

[PaddyNewman]

That sounds decent, especially for your requirements. My Starlink has averaged 200/20 over the last 3 months when it runs its random speedtests and about 33ms but I am on the residential standard dish (I can't justify the cost of high perf for home use!)

You get a decently lower ms and I would assume prioritised traffic during busy times, handy bits of kit!