1 min readTelstra has announced a partnership with Starlink that will allow it to sell home phone and home phone plus internet plans powered by the satellite service provider by the end of this year.
Telstra expects these plans to be available "late 2023" and will be available to those in rural and remote Australia. Pricing has yet to be confirmed, but Telstra currently charges $55 per month for a voice-only home phone plan delivered via the NBN, while Starlink charges $139 per month for its standard internet service.
Starlink plans do however have hefty hardware fees, of up to $924. These are currently discounted to $199 for those in select parts of rural Australia, and $599 for the rest.
Telstra also plans to offer business-grade Starlink plans with faster speeds.
The news follows Telstra announcing another satellite-based partnership with OneWeb. The OneWeb partnership is designed to upgrade parts of Telstra's regional mobile network, but will also allow it sell fixed broadband services similar to Starlink in the future.
Like Starlink, OneWeb uses Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites. LEO satellites are closer to the earth than the satellites used for internet solutions like Sky Muster NBN, speed and latency are both better. The downside is that thousands of LEO satellites are needed to deliver internet, while traditional satellite internet solutions only use between one and four.
