The university said the locations – at Thursday Island, Burketown, Dajarra and Emerald – previously only had poor reception and were susceptible to regular outages.
The installation of the low-Earth orbit (LEO) service was conducted with local Cairns infrastructure firm AirBridge and telco Vocus.
James Cook University’s head of digital infrastructure delivery, Dean Coran, said the investment would help the university broaden its footprint in remote areas.
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“This advancement has provided reliable internet connectivity so people who wouldn’t normally have opportunities or reliable internet can come in and get a feel and taste for what higher education is like and the different courses that JCU provides,” he said.
“Before Starlink, the only solution we had for these remote areas was 4G connectivity, which had hardly any reception, had bandwidth issues, and was more susceptible to outages as you’re relying on phone towers and old technology.
“We’ve also enhanced the connectivity with the same solution at our research stations at Fletcherview Station and Orpheus Island. Orpheus Island would have at least one outage most week, and since we’ve put Starlink in, they haven’t had one.”
Vocus became the first major Australian telco to distribute Elon Musk’s Starlink in 2022 and, earlier this year, introduced quicker “bonded” services.
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It comes after Space Connect reported on Monday how the first Australian Competition and Consumer Commission report comparing satellite internet coverage concluded that Starlink’s LEO satellites significantly outperformed NBN Sky Muster’s geostationary satellites.
The report found NBN’s latency averaged 664.9 milliseconds across all hours, so poor it would struggle to consistently play videos or handle online computer games. Starlink averaged just 29.8 milliseconds.
The findings will further blow NBN, with critics arguing that the federal government made the wrong call by launching two geostationary satellites for $2 billion in 2015.
“While the latency is stable during busy hour congestion, its high duration is likely to hinder activities that require real-time responsiveness,” concluded the Measuring Broadband Australia program on Sky Muster’s service.
“Users relying on Sky Muster for such applications may experience delays, but the service remains predictable in its performance.”
The findings are the first since the competition regulator’s quarterly report into broadband performance was expanded to include satellite providers and mark arguably the most authoritative assessment of performance ever released.
Starlink connections were also significantly faster than the government-backed service, with peak speeds of 470 Mbps for downloads and 74 Mbps for uploads, compared to NBN’s 111 Mbps and 22 Mbps, respectively.
LEO satellite constellations, such as Starlink, offer quicker services than traditional geostationary satellites, such as NBN Sky Muster, because they are closer to Earth.
However, the lower height also means LEOs effectively cover a smaller area and, therefore, need to operate in larger, connected constellations to be effective.
Starlink, a subsidiary of SpaceX, has the advantage of being able to launch thousands of satellites without paying external customers because it operates its own reusable rockets.
It’s currently thought there are more than 6,000 Starlink satellites in orbit.
Adam Thorn
Adam is a journalist who has worked for more than 40 prestigious media brands in the UK and Australia. Since 2005, his varied career has included stints as a reporter, copy editor, feature writer and editor for publications as diverse as Fleet Street newspaper The Sunday Times, fashion bible Jones, media and marketing website Mumbrella as well as lifestyle magazines such as GQ, Woman’s Weekly, Men’s Health and Loaded. He joined Momentum Media in early 2020 and currently writes for Australian Aviation and World of Aviation.
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