We are on a "grandfathered" Rogers Mobile Internet Flex stepped plan of $60/5GB, $75/10GB, $90/20GB, $110/50GB, $145/100GB. If over 100GB it costs the $145 + $5 for each GB in excess of the 100GB. Rogers revised the plans to more expensive rates a few years ago but old remain in place as long as long as you keep them.
Starlink in Canada increased from $129 to $149 per month on April 2. When I ordered my Starlink equipment the rate was cost was $649 and that is the rate I paid. Two hours later Starlink announced an increase to $699 for deposit holders and $749 for new orders. I need wired ethernet and ordered the adapter which Gen 2 requires for $45. I also needed a $70 router.
Our data needs are modest. We use the internet for banking, shopping, email, news (mainstream and alternatives) and YouTube videos. We abandoned our satellite TV 2 years ago and gave up on Netflix a bit later. We just weren't watching it. We have a great library system where we can get movies, TV series and other DVDs, but mainly we just watch YouTube and other videos on topics that we like. We each have Windows computers but mostly use Android tablets for entertainment and learning. Our interests are completely different so we often use earphones so we don't interfere with each other. Instead of cloud services we have a couple of Synology DS118 NASes for data backups.
We are usually under the 50 GB/$110 rate but exceeded it once or twice last year when Microsoft did their giant updates on our Windows computers. We're getting closer to the 50 GB limit most months and the $145/100 GB rate will likely be the new normal soon.
My main concern with Starlink was the potential for long downtime from equipment failure. I was planning to keep our cellular internet for backup but would have changed it to a minimum plan at $10 for 100MB per month plus expensive additions if you go over the 100MB. It would have been used only during power outages or a Starlink failure. Short power outages are fairly common. The Rogers ZTE MF275R router has a battery backup that will last for an hour or so and an UPS will run it for many more. I read where the Starlink Gen 2 averages about 39 watts without the heaters plus I would have to run the new router required for wired ethernet. I can't find data for the ZTE router but it is likely a lot less than that. It's handy to have internet during an outage. BC Hydro has a good outage reporting system so rather than calling about the outage you can check to see if it has already been reported. Once they have determined the trouble they even give an expected restoration time. But until then you can often determine when you will be back on depending on what other outages are in the area. If it's only going to be a few hours I don't bother getting out the generator and extension cords. The Starlink would give us less time to use the internet without a generator.
The main reason I ordered Starlink was because our cell signal was very marginal and upload capacity essentially useless. I only discovered yesterday that the cell signal has gone back to good values after over two years of marginal values. Although much lower than Starlink, the cellular data rates with these good signal levels readily meet our needs.
I intend to reorder Starlink($130 deposit) and re-evaluate our cell signals when they again offer to ship the equipment. The Starlink satellite coverage is great at my location. The data from this site:
Satellite Map
normally shows 3 to 4 possible connections at any given time. I have never seen 0 and have seen up to 8. Also, a couple of neighbours on our road have Starlink and are very happy with the service.
