Starlink Maritime and marine VSAT basics

Starlink Maritime replaced legacy marine VSAT for most recreational and midsize commercial yachts starting 2022-2023. Hardware: two Starlink dishes (redundancy is required for the Maritime tier) plus a Starlink router. Cost: ~$5,000 for hardware plus $250-1000/month for the service tier (Global Roaming for recreational is cheaper than Maritime; check current pricing). Bandwidth: 40-220 Mbps down, 8-25 Mbps up depending on location and satellite loading. Latency: 25-60 ms typical, good enough for video calls, streaming, remote diagnostics, gaming. Installation basics: (1) Mount the dishes with a clear sky view above 15-25 degrees elevation, north-facing at low latitudes, adjusted for your cruising area. Dishes must not see each other's beams (interfere). (2) Power: dishes draw 50-75W each continuous, so a two-dish install pulls 100-150W, that's real power on a boat and drives your inverter or house-bank sizing. Not a small consideration. (3) Ethernet from the Starlink router to the boat's WiFi network, most boats keep their existing wifi network and treat Starlink as the WAN. (4) Weather: dish clearance from waves and spray matters, the dish is IP-rated but salt residue on the phased array degrades performance over time; rinse quarterly. Alternative for smaller vessels: KVH TracNet H-series (LEO/GEO hybrid) if you need guaranteed L-band fallback, or Iridium Certus for very-low-bandwidth safety comms only. VSAT (KVH TracPhone V-series, Intellian VSAT) is legacy at this point, 10x the cost of Starlink, worse latency, worse throughput, only justified in specific geopolitical corners of the ocean where Starlink hasn't been licensed.