I am not in Canterbury, but I do have Starlink. For me its so much better than the rural Broadband I had before Its not even close.

You would need to look at the plans and determine which one is best for your use case and number of users.

I am on the cheapest plan. Speed test just now at peak time got 52 Mbps down and 53 Mbps up. Off peak its higher. Other plans may be higher but its only me using it so its not an issue.

Starlink works great

Generally, a WISP will have better latency, but if its 4G based starlink is alot better.

my WISP connection is 100/40, Starlink is 200~450/50 (Generally sits around 350+ except for peak)

Starlink have spent a ton of engineering on ensuring their QOS is inplace, likely CAKE based with how it preforms. Due to doing it end to end their jitter & latency is insanely impressive.

I bond both of them for near fibre like speeds

The switching of satellites is near seamless, i do see the occasional sub 1 second pause. Definitely recommend giving in a good location to avoid obstructions but i have pushed 250mbit directly through trees facing the wrong way without any hassles.

You could also consider UFB if you are happy to spend something.

Addresses which are close to a school, or VDSL cabinet, or the feed for a VDSL cabinet goes close to them, can land at reasonable install costs (ie: sub $30k)

If some ducks are in a row the install can actually be a lot cheaper to fairly rural locations you wouldn't expect vs. seemingly better locations which have a railway line to cross or no close existing conduit for Chorus to stick the UFB cable into.

The point I am making is don't automatically exclude UFB just because you are rural. I have seen some prices more expensive then I expected and others cheaper.

But if you are on Barrier or at the end of a long gravel road most likely Starlink is the way to go.

 Current Speedtest 

31/19 isn't too bad for a rural connection (faster than my Mum's rural DSL). What type of speeds are you seeking?

Is that on their own fixed wireless network, or 4G broadband?

quickymart:

 

31/19 isn't too bad for a rural connection (faster than my Mum's rural DSL). What type of speeds are you seeking?

 

It might be good compared to a terrible DSL connection, but that doesn't excuse places still selling things like that as new connections.

Questions

what plan are you on with Ultimate Broadband?

(i see their cheapest plan is for speeds around 50Mbps max with an option to get higher speeds with a higher priced plan)

what and where is the router located?  (Do you have an external antenna)?

I see UB also provide starlink….  Would the cost of that set up and ongoing fee be more or less than upgrading the plan or equipment for the current wireless broadband? (Assuming it’s wireless and not rural VDSL/ADSLj.

Based on those speeds and latency i'd say it's probably 4G based not on their own network.

Here is starlink directly testing through a wall or two on my work phone

bit of load on it too so not a perfect test, but certainly solid.

Moving forward my crystal ball says there are really only 3 games in town in rural areas outside of the UFB general-rollout.

4G / 5G

Pro: Low install cost, widely available, low geo-political risk, medium commercial risk

Con: Single supplier risk, variable performance

LEO / Starlink

Pro: Reasonable performance, low install cost, very widely available, lower technical risk then cellular at this time.

Con: Single supplier risk. Could be high geo-political risk.

Custom / community (paid) UFB

Pro: Very high performance, can connect to any Chorus ISP so low supplier risk.

Con: High install cost, single point of failure (though high priority to be fixed), most ISP's don't want to handle the initial install for these so may have to shift providers to get connected.

My advice for anyone wanting this option is to get it now while Chorus has maximum incentive to move these addresses off copper. From experience - there is quite a bit of work involved for Chorus in these installs so if the copper is deregulated its uncertain what the ongoing availability of these will look like imho. They are not obliged to offer this option.

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We went with option 3. Our reasons for making this choice were high motivation to get fibre (I work in the internet industry) and a good location. We are in a township which had been rolled out for RCG and this had the effect of reducing the price we had to pay. We also fortuitously had a conduited VDSL cabinet fibre feed going close to our place and this meant an easier - and cheaper - install because they could cut into the existing conduit and push our fibre through this to get to the junction. They did not have to tunnel under any road or railway.

I have recently arranged a quote for someone else in a surprisingly rural area but they also got lucky because they have a fibre going past their place to feed the VDSL cabinet - which I assume is also conduited because I doubt Chorus would dig up the length needed to get to their place at the price we were quoted.

The same person also has family property on Barrier, and while in theory Chorus will do UFB to there, its not something we are even going to try for. Context - in this case location - matters. At their Barrier place they use Starlink.

On the other hand I also got an outrageously high quote to install someone close to a township with a general rollout but in this case Chorus had to dig up most of the way and get past a train line. Cha ching.

So its fair to say the price is highly variable.

Affordability also plays a part. We own our place outright so while we had to stretch a bit to pay for it, we were able to.

This is not a project for someone who is renting or counting pennies to make ends meet.

So in summary there isn't a perfect answer. 

Location, affordability, which exact options are available and motivations all play a part.

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ADSL / VDSL

At this time Chorus have not received regulatory approval to turn this off in non-UFB areas. But I suspect it will be coming sooner or later and its a bit of a red herring anyway. ISP's (including us) are looking at their exit from copper.

Wireless

The reason WISP's speed and performance is stuck 10 years ago is because it doesn't make commercial sense to develop their networks considering the number of clients being lost to LEO. The smart players in this industry are rollout out their own fibre networks. So moving forward I wouldn't make too many plans on this basis.

Disclaimer:

While I work in the industry and have included some input from this experience, this should not be construed as professional advice. As always DYOR and come to your own conclusions.

Not in Canterbury, but in Taranaki on the Starlink 200 plan I’m getting an average of 136Mbps down, 29Mbps up and latency of 29ms. This is testing to Chorus Lab Auckland since Starlink traffic for me goes to Auckland. I was getting closer to 200 and 50 a couple of weeks ago, so more people must have jumped on the Starlink bandwagon.

It does the job and don’t really notice any difference day to day compared to the 500Mbps Fibre plan I had before moving. I do get the odd drop of video calls some afternoons for 10 seconds, but overall impressed with the service for bits of tin flying past!

The reason I went for Starlink over the local WISP was the faster speed, but mainly the unlimited data.