High Speed Internet in the Sunshine Coast Hinderland

Due to the remoteness of the sunshine coast hinderlands some residents are left to grapple with poor ADSL connections and where ADSL is not available traditional satellite internet is used to bridge the gap in an ever connected world.

Mobile internet may be an option but for some residents mobile reception is slow at best due to the geography of the hinderlands creating blackspots throughout the region especially outside of the town centres.

The resident at Policeman Spur Road had been trying to run a business from home but due to poor ADSL speeds simple tasks like sending an email at times became unbearably slow.

For that reasons RVC put forward a proposal to ditch the ADSL and use the newly available Starlink Satellite Internet with a 4G failover.

RVC installed the Starlink satellite dish on a 3m mast to avoid any obstruction and near the base installed a 4G antenna optimised for Bands 1 and 3 with 17dBi gain.

The Starlink satellite fed into the 4G router with the 4G set to failover. The reason for 4G failover is that the Starlink satellite service still suffered from occasional dropouts and to maintain internet connectivity 4G failover was chosen over the ADSL as it was faster and more reliable.

The 4G antenna was pointed towards the closest cell towers at Witta over 10km with nLOS (Non Line of Sight) providing speeds between 5-30 Mbps down and 3Mbps up dependant on time of day.