I’m such an industry nerd that I sometimes read customer reviews of large ISPs just to see how the public perceives them. Most ISPs have more negative reviews than positive ones, and that’s to be expected since people are more likely to complain when things go wrong than give praise when things are working as promised.

One of the most interesting ISPs is still Starlink. The company is doing well and announced in March of this year that it has 2.6 million customers worldwide. A lot of reviews come from people who love Starlink and sing its praises, particularly those who are in rural areas with no other realistic alternatives. Starlink seems to have a higher percentage of positive reviews than other big ISPs.

The people I know who use Starlink say that broadband speeds have slowly been improving. This makes sense since there were 6,219 Starlink satellites in orbit at the end of June. A lot of the complaints about Starlink in the early days were due to having a much smaller fleet of satellites in the sky. There are now enough satellites that there should always be several satellites overhead for folks who have a decent open look at the sky.

It’s worth noting that Starlink is still only about half the way through its first constellation deployment and has the FCC’s approval to deploy almost 12,000 satellites. The company still says that it has an ultimate plan to reach 30,000 satellites. Something to start watching is that the satellites are supposedly going to last roughly five years. The company started deploying in May 2019, so there will be an increasing number of replacement satellites needed in the coming years—meaning a lot of launches will be for replacements rather than new satellites.

The negative reviews of Starlink are interesting because the company has issues that are different from those of other ISPs. Here are some of the most common and interesting complaints about the company.

A lot of people hate the $120 monthly Starlink subscription, but some customers come to Starlink from more expensive broadband, like hot spots or high-orbit satellites, both of which have stingy data caps. Starlink prices are competitive with many of the largest rural WISPs.

The high price means that Starlink must be one of the ISPs feeling the impact of the competition from FWA wireless from T-Mobile and Verizon. Those companies got their 8.6 million customers from somebody. It’s hard to think that Starlink customers don’t jump to prices that are half the Starlink rates. FWA customers within two miles of a cell tower see faster speeds than Starlink. But the real challenge to Starlink in the U.S. will be when the many broadband grants are finally built in rural areas.

Probably the most interesting complaint about Starlink is the unpredictability of IP addresses and location identification. Customer’s are not identified by their own receiver location, but by the location of the ground station where the signal from the constellation lands. For most Starlink users, the ground station, and their apparent location varies. I know a lot of people who would be happy for the Internet to not know where they are, but Starlink users says this creates odd problems.

The complaint that sounds like other ISPs is about Starlink customer service. Starlink customers can’t talk to a live customer service rep, and everything must be done through the Starlink app. People say that this can work reasonably well, but customers say that if they hit a dead-end with the app, they are stuck without a solution.

Many people hate self-installation, but Starlink now offers professional installation for $199 in many parts of the country.

Users also get frustrated with technical support since they can’t talk to a live person at the company. It’s nearly impossible for a user to know if a problem they are having is at their end or with Starlink.

Overall, customers seem a lot less annoyed with Starlink than do the customers of the big cable companies, big rural telcos, or other ISPs serving rural areas. But, like with most big ISPs, it’s still somewhat of a love/hate relationship.